Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bank Line

Dexter waits in the bank lobby with a letter saying she is unwell, and she answers him in front of the whole line and walks out with her money, and finds the antique shop across the street closing in ten days.

I was still looking at the teller's screen when the bank door opened behind me and I knew who it was by the cologne.

Dexter walked up the line with a manila envelope under his arm and his county badge clipped to his belt.

Eighteen people were waiting for a teller, and every one of them looked up.

"Gillian," he said, in the voice he used for sad news. "Babe. Thank God. Lacey said you'd be here."

I hadn't told Lacey where I was going.

I had only put it on my calendar, which she had copied into her phone the day before.

I filed that away with everything else from ninety-one days of kitchen gossip, and I kept my face still.

"I'm not your babe, Dexter."

"I know you're hurting." He turned to the line and held the envelope up. "I'm so sorry, everyone. She's been under a lot of stress. She hasn't slept, she's been saying strange things, she gave back her ring in the middle of a restaurant. I only want to help her."

A woman in scrubs near the front looked at me with real pity.

It was a good performance.

It was also the smoothest thing he had ever done, and I understood for the first time that he had been practicing it for a long time.

The bank manager came out of her glass office and put a hand on the counter.

"Mr. Kellington filed a letter on Friday," she said quietly. "He's listed as your emergency contact. We have to take that seriously."

"He is," I said. "Listed. A year ago, when we got engaged."

I turned around and faced the line.

"My name is Gillian Corrigan. I manage the cafeteria at St. Vincent's, and I feed about six hundred people a day."

The woman in scrubs blinked.

"On Wednesday I ended my engagement. On Friday this man filed a letter saying I might be unwell, so the bank would freeze my father's money. I'd like everyone here to notice that those are two different days."

Nobody said anything.

Someone near the back said, "Oh, he did not."

Dexter gave a small, patient laugh.

"Gill, nobody's saying that. I'm trying to protect you."

"You're trying to hold my money."

"Nobody has to take your word for it," the woman in scrubs said suddenly. "She's Gillian from the cafeteria. She remembered my dad's allergy list after one time. If she's unwell then I don't know who's well."

A man in a work jacket said, "Take him off the account, ma'am."

The manager looked at the line, and then at Dexter's envelope.

"Mr. Kellington isn't a spouse, a guardian or a doctor," she said. "I'm removing the hold, and I'm removing you as her contact. Today."

"You can't do that."

"I just did it."

Dexter stood there with his mouth a little open and the envelope hanging at his side.

His hand came up toward my arm again.

I stepped back, and the woman in scrubs stepped in front of me without even looking at him.

"I've got her," she said.

He heard that.

I watched him hear it.

Then he turned and walked out through the glass doors, and the whole line watched him go.

Gordon's check came a few minutes later.

My aunt brought it herself, in a church dress, with her purse held in both hands.

She didn't look at me while she slid the cashier's check across the counter.

"It's the rest of it," she said. "He sold the slip on Saturday and borrowed against the house for the difference. Your father would have wanted you to have it."

"Thank you."

"I should have read those statements years ago," she said, very quietly. "I'm sorry I took so long."

It was $168,000, in one check, with my name on it.

Added to the $172,000 the bank had just released, it came to $340,000, to the dollar.

I stood on the bank steps in the sun and made myself think.

In the Terminal, money had been worth nothing and everything.

Nothing, because no store was open and nobody could spend it.

Everything, because whoever held the keys to a dry cellar, a water tank or a sealed case of insulin decided who ate and who slept by the heater.

I didn't need a lot of things.

I needed one place that nobody would ever find, with a roof, a door that locked from the inside and a source of water that wasn't rain.

I needed it before October 16.

I started walking toward the bus stop and stopped at the corner of Lorain and West 25th.

Across the street was a narrow brick building with a green awning, and a faded sign that said KOVAC & SON ANTIQUES.

I had walked past it a hundred times in my old life, and never once gone in.

There was a banner taped across the front window, and the glue was coming loose at one corner.

It said EVERYTHING MUST GO, and under it, in marker, LEASE ENDS IN TEN DAYS.

Behind the glass a tall man in a gray cardigan was standing with a broom in his hand.

He wasn't sweeping.

He had his eyes closed, and he was asleep on his feet.

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