Grandma sat very still.
“Mrs.
Sterling,” Diane said, “based on what I’m seeing, I’m going to recommend we freeze this account immediately and open a formal fraud investigation.
I also want to advise you to contact law enforcement.”
“We’ll be doing that,” I said.
Diane nodded.
“There’s one more thing.” She slid a printed page across the desk.
“This is the external account the funds were transferred to.
I can’t give you the account holder’s name.
But I can tell you that our system flagged this same external account in connection with two other fraud cases in this county in the past eighteen months.”
Grandma picked up the page.
She looked at it for a long time.
Grandma’s house was a twenty-minute drive from the bank.
I knew the route without thinking — I’d driven it every Thanksgiving and Christmas for as long as I could remember.
The big oak on the corner of Dellwood Lane.
The white mailbox with the reflective numbers.
The front porch with the two green chairs that had been there since before I was born.
One of the green chairs was gone.
I pulled into the driveway and sat there for a moment, looking at the gap where it had been.
“Don’t react,” Grandma said.
“Just walk in.”
She had a key.
Of course she had a key.
She opened the front door herself and stepped inside.
The hallway cabinet was gone.
The wall where it had stood showed a faint rectangle of slightly darker paint, the outline of thirty years of presence.
The coat hooks were still there, holding nothing.
Grandma walked through the hallway into the living room without pausing.
The dining room set was gone.
The carved table, the six chairs, the sideboard with the brass handles.
Gone.
The room looked like a stage set after the production had closed.
“Grandma.”
“I see it.”
She moved into the kitchen.
The appliances were still there.
The curtains she’d sewn herself were still on the window.
She opened a drawer next to the stove and looked inside.
