Chapter 7: Tri-County

Tri-County Bank opened at nine, and I was standing at the glass door at eight fifty-one.

I had slept in the room over the diner with Noah's mother's lamp on.

I had no phone, no car and thirty-one dollars.

I did have my license, my birth certificate and my grandmother's instructions.

A guard unlocked the door and looked me up and down.

"Account help is at the desk on the left," he said.

"I need the trust officer."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

"Name?"

"Chloe Carroway. I turned eighteen on Saturday."

He did not know why that mattered, but I watched a woman in a gray blazer look up from her desk across the lobby.

She stood.

She walked toward me with her hand already out.

"Ms. Carroway," she said. "I'm the trust officer. We sent a notice to your home address two weeks ago. I was hoping you would call."

"I never saw it."

Her mouth tightened a fraction.

"Come back to my office."

Her office had a window onto the parking lot and a plant that needed water.

She asked for my license and looked at it for a long time.

She typed.

Then she turned her monitor a quarter turn, so I could not see it yet, and folded her hands.

"Before I show you," she said, "you should know you are the beneficiary."

"As of Saturday, you may request a full accounting."

"I want the full accounting."

"I thought you would."

She printed it.

The printer in the corner whirred for what felt like an hour.

When she put the pages in front of me, the first one was a deposit, dated eight years ago.

Eighty-four thousand dollars, in a single line.

Beside it was my grandfather's name.

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