Chapter 4 - The Glass Partition
I barely slept that night.
My mind raced in the dark room of the small apartment I rented twenty minutes away from my dad's house. I kept thinking about the look in Grandma’s eyes when Denise tore into her. I thought about the way my dad had stayed silent. I thought about the forty hours a week I spent wiping down diner tables and stocking pharmacy shelves while Tyler lived rent-free and called me a charity case.
The next morning, my shift at the diner didn't start until 11:00 AM. At 8:45 AM, fifteen minutes before opening, I parked my beaten-up Honda Civic in front of the First Heritage Credit Union on Elm Street.
First Heritage wasn't River County Savings. It was a modern, sleek brick building with glass doors and digital displays. I knew the check was a long shot—a ghost, as Denise had called it. But I had a deep, visceral refusal to let Grandma’s gesture be treated like garbage. If I was going to be rejected, I wanted to hear it from an official teller, not from my stepmother's poison mouth.
At 9:00 AM sharp, the automatic doors unlocked. I walked inside.
The lobby was quiet, smelling of fresh carpet and industrial floor cleaner. A young teller with dark hair and a neat blue blazer smiled as I approached her counter. Her name tag read Sarah.
"Good morning! How can I help you today?" she asked cheerfully.
"Hi," I said, my palms suddenly feeling clammy. I reached into my wallet and pulled out the folded, vintage check. "I know this looks strange, and it’s probably completely invalid, but... I need to ask about this."
Sarah took the check, her smile slightly wavering as her eyes fell on the vintage, ornate crest of River County Savings & Trust.
"Oh," she said softly. "River County? Wow, I haven't seen one of these old templates in years."
"I know," I said quickly, bracing myself for the polite, practiced speech explaining that the bank had been defunct since 2014. "My grandmother gave it to me. My family said the bank closed down, but I just wanted to double-check before I threw it away."
"Let me run the routing sequence," Sarah said smoothly.
She placed the check under her desktop scanner. The machine whirred, sucking the heavy paper in and spitting it out.
Sarah looked at her screen.
A second passed. Then two.
Her cheerful expression slowly melted away. Her eyebrows drew together. She leaned closer to the monitor, her fingers flying across her keyboard as she typed in a rapid string of commands. She stared at the screen, her eyes widening slightly, then looked back down at the check on her counter.
"Is... is everything okay?" I asked, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs. "If it's worthless, it's fine, I can just—"
Sarah didn't answer right away. She pushed her chair back so violently it slammed into the counter behind her. She stood up, leaned over the glass partition, and looked left and right before focusing on me with intense, wide eyes.
"Miss Bennett," she whispered, her voice tight with excitement. "Please do not leave. Stay right here. Do not walk away."
"What?" I gasped.
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"This check isn't worthless," Sarah said quickly. "I need to get the branch manager right now."
Before I could process her words, Sarah turned on her heel and hurried down the carpeted hallway, knocking urgently on a heavy frosted glass door at the far end of the lobby.
