Mama had banked at First County for forty years.
I had used the same bank for thirty.
It was the kind of small-town branch where employees remembered your name.
I arrived shortly after five.
A teller named Dana greeted me.
I explained that my mother had died and that I had discovered documents connected to her accounts.
Dana entered Mama’s name into the computer.
Her expression immediately changed.
She excused herself and returned with the branch manager, Gerald Watts.
He looked at me.
Then at the flour tin under my arm.
“Mrs. Parrish, please come into my office.”
Once we sat down, Gerald folded his hands.
“Your mother came to see me.”
“When?”
“About fourteen months ago.”
He opened a drawer and placed a folder on the desk.
Mama had known she was running out of time.
And apparently she had spent more than a year preparing for the moment I would eventually walk into that bank.
Inside the folder were copies of the original settlement agreement.
The real amount was clearly printed:
**$63,000.**
There was also the false disbursement document Wayne had shown us.
Bank records showed an account created in my name and later emptied.
Then I found something even more significant.
A legal memorandum.
Mama had consulted an attorney.
The document outlined what Wayne had done:
Fraud.
Misappropriation of a minor’s funds.
Falsification of documents.
And theft.
Mama had asked Gerald to keep the file confidential until after her death.
She believed that if I discovered the flour tin, I would understand where to go next.
I stared at him.
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