AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My supervisor, Cindy, is already there, getting the computers booted up.
“Morning,” she says. “Nice jacket.”
I take a saucy spin. “I hope it’s not too much.”
She shakes her head. “I’m pretty sure our customers come into the branch just to see what you’re wearing.” Her approving smile gives me that squishy warm feeling that I assume daughters get with their moms.
Cindy is in her late fifties, so it’s perfectly logical that I could be her daughter. I hadn’t known my own mother for very long. She died of a brain hemorrhage when I was five.
I take Cindy being here as another sign that I am exactly where I belong, despite what I told Drew. Sure, bank telling isn’t a super rewarding job. I don’t save animals’ lives like he does.
And I have to deal with Janet, who is even more difficult to work with since I got promoted over her. But given the way my life started out, and my inability to go to college, and my mediocre grades—I feel pretty lucky.
“Can you set up the cash drawers?” Cindy asks. “I’m a little behind due to the system update.”
“Not a problem. Janet isn’t here yet?”
Cindy rolls her eyes. “She said she would be late because her car needs an inspection, and she can’t go to any of the places near her because they’re always rude to her. So she has to drive across town and will probably get stuck in traffic.”
“Jeez. She can’t do that on a Saturday?”
Cindy shrugs. “I do not question the ways of Janet. I might go mad. We’ll manage fine.”
“We will. We are competent. We are enough.”
“You know it,” Cindy says. She likes my positivity mantras. Most of the time, they get me through.
Last weekend was definitely an exception. Felicia. The rain. My shoes.
But then there was Drew.
I head to the vault to collect the cash trays. This is one of my special tasks as assistant head teller. I do not take it lightly.
The morning settles into a happy rhythm. All the Monday regulars come through, depositing their small business receipts from the weekend.
Clyde opens the door and stamps his boots before entering. He owns a feed store, and he’s eighty if he’s a day.
“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine this morning?” Clyde leans his elbow on the counter as he pushes a pile of cash and checks under the window.
“Why, thank you, Clyde. Weekend go well?”
“Had a bit of a wild moment yesterday.”
He pulls a round snuffbox out of his back pocket. The denim is bleached white in the outline of a circle where he carries it. I never see Clyde without a snuffbox.
“What happened?” I thumb through the cash, swiftly turning each bill to face the same way.
“One of my regulars, old Mary Myrtle, owns a chicken farm. She decided that my feed had gone bad because several of her chickens keeled over.”
“Oh no.”
“She piled all those dead chickens in a box and brought them up to the store as proof that my bagged feed caused them to kick the bucket.”
“She brought them into the store?”
He pinches a bit of snuff from the canister and slides it in between his cheek and gum. I carefully avert my eyes.
“She shoved the whole smelly lot of them in my face, and I told her to get her dead hens out of my establishment.”
