Chapter 5: Little Acorns

Eighty thousand dollars.

I thought about the joint account I'd never been allowed to see.

I thought about Sharon in my front hall saying, "We've got nothing."

"Cash," I said.

"That's what he said. Shook my dad's hand on it at the club."

"Then I hope he has it."

Lyle looked at me a second longer.

He took a business card out of his jacket and set it on my keyboard.

His cell number was written on the back in square carpenter's capitals.

"In case you decide you know something," he said.

He ducked under the LOANS sign on the way out.

My coworker at the next desk rolled her chair over before the door had closed.

"Who was that?"

"A man with a credit question."

"Julie. I'd have a credit question for that man."

I put the card in my desk drawer.

Then I took it out and put it in my wallet.

On Tuesday I dropped Evie at Little Acorns at seven-thirty, same as always.

It's a low brick building off Schrock Road with a green door and a playground I try not to look at too hard.

The slide is cracked down the middle and wrapped in duct tape.

Evie ran straight to the toddler room to find her best friend, a solemn boy in a fire truck shirt who only ever eats crackers.

He handed her a cracker.

She handed him a plastic stegosaurus.

That's their whole relationship, and it's been going on for a year.

"Julie, honey. Got a minute?"

The owner was standing in her office door with a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST BOSS.

She's sixty-seven. She opened Little Acorns before I was born.

She held my hand the morning I dropped off Evie for the first time and cried in the parking lot.

I followed her into the office.

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