The Stories We Tell (19 page)

“The payment didn't go through because you were overdrawn at the time. You are fine now, if you'd like to resubmit.”

“What?” A cold chill moves underneath my skin.

“When the funds were transferred out for a week, you were overdrawn. Because of your extraordinary credit, I didn't charge you overdraft fees.”

“Transferred? I didn't authorize any fund transfers.”

“Well, someone did.” His voice is losing its surety.

“Will you please check for me?” I ask.

The music playing while I'm on hold butchers the theme song from
The Sound of Music.
I glance toward Max. Would he have withdrawn or moved money? Francie? Had I done it and not remembered?

Max is wearing his apron, stacking paper to place under the platen. His eyes are focused on his work and his dark hair falls across his forehead. And in that moment, I see everyone I love through a different lens—it's a quick and disturbing flash. What are they capable of doing? Do I see them only the way I want to see them, not for who they really are?

Mr. Bush's voice returns. “Mrs. Morrison?”

“Yes, I'm still here.”

“Your husband, Averitt. He moved the money from the Fine Line account and then replaced it a week later.”

My heart is pushing against my chest. Yes, Cooper has access to our company account. This is a small bank, owned by a friend of my father-in-law. Our family accounts, the philanthropy accounts—everything is there in one place. But Cooper has never touched our company money before.

“No,” I say. “That must have been a mistake. He wouldn't move company money.”

The uncomfortable pause leaves me holding my breath. “Well then, you need to ask him, because I am looking at the signed transfer slip.”

“To where?” I ask. “To what account did he transfer it?”

“If you'd like to discuss this, you can come into the bank, Mrs. Morrison. This is not the kind of information we normally discuss on the phone.”

“I will.”

I hang up, and Max lifts his head. I imagine he felt me staring at him. “You okay?” he asks.

“I need to get to the bank.”

*   *   *

The bank is in an old schoolhouse converted, as is everything, to accommodate the business. It's a bloodred brick structure with curved windows and dark brown trim that mimics the color of rusted iron. The windows, wide-paned and tall, reflect the cloudy afternoon, appearing murky and shadowed. I park on a side street and deposit my quarters into the meter. The afternoon is heavy with threatening rain. I stop for a minute and glance up toward the sky. When I was young and overwhelmed, afraid, I would stare into the sky through the tangle of gnarled branches and imagine the world like a puzzle I could put together. The sky—divided into pieces by oaks—was really whole and complete, and I liked knowing this fact. That no matter how I looked at it, it was still the same sky—always.

I enter the bank and cold air whooshes toward me. The entryway is decorated like a waiting room in a plush doctor's office: muted photos of Savannah framed in white; overstuffed peach-colored couches and a large glass-topped coffee table. A receptionist sits behind a long white desk, where she types into a computer. She looks up as I approach her. “Hello, Mrs. Morrison. How are you?” Her voice could come from a computer, it's so polished and robotic.

“I'm here to see Mr. Bush. He's expecting me.”

“Well then, go on. He's waiting.” Her gaze returns to her computer as her hand waves me toward the back hallway.

The second door on the right is where I find his office. Mr. Bush is standing behind a long table, and he smiles at me as I enter. He's an intimidating man, his hair gray around the temples and his blue eyes dark. He flashes a grin and points to a chair across from his shining black desk. He then sits and clicks on his keyboard before twisting the computer screen toward me. “These are your family's multiple accounts: family; business, LLC, philanthropy.”

“My name is on all of them?” I ask.

“No.”

“Can you tell me which ones don't have my name?”

“I can print you a list.” He speaks like an unpracticed ventriloquist, his lips barely moving.

“Great. I'd appreciate that. For now, I'm here to figure out where Cooper put the money when he moved it for a week.”

“It was divided up, Mrs. Morrison. If you'd like, I can print you statements of your full accounts, but it will be Mr. Morrison who knows where the installments went and why.”

“Was any of it transferred into the family account?”

“No.”

“Okay, if you will please print all statements from all accounts, I'd appreciate it.”

He clicks his fingers across the keyboard and his mouth is screwed up tight, twisted. Beneath his rimless glasses, his eyes squint. He is quiet; the room is quiet, until the printer groans and spits. Within minutes, he hands me a stack of papers. “I hope this will help. But please know that the exact amount that was transferred was replaced.”

“I'd like to change the permitted users on my account, please.” There, I've said it.

Mr. Bush raises an eyebrow (only one), and his forehead doesn't wrinkle. Botox on a banker. This makes me want to laugh. “Okay,” he finally says. “You're the primary account holder and the LLC is in your name.”

I hear the words beneath the words: Your husband is one of our most influential customers; you shouldn't be changing things around. Maybe I'm making this up, but then again, maybe I'm not.

Mr. Bush reaches into a filing cabinet and pulls out some papers. “These must be signed, dated, and notarized before any changes are made.”

I take a pen from a tortoiseshell holder on Mr. Bush's desk. When I'm done filling out all the blanks, I look up. “It's just me. I am the only authorized user right now, until we can get this figured out.”

“Not your other employees?”

“No. Just me.” I stand and hand the papers to Mr. Bush.

“These need to be notarized,” he says.

“Then notarize them.”

“My notary isn't in today.” He stares at me without standing.

“You're kidding, right? I mean, you are a witness standing here watching me. This is my money, my company. Authorize it now.”

He takes the papers from my hand, the papers I am waving at him as if fanning him for the heatstroke he looks like he might have. “Thank you, Mrs. Morrison.”

I turn to leave, but then at his door I stop to look at him one more time. “Thanks for your time.”

The rain starts just as I slam shut my car door and see the fluttering white paper on my windshield: a parking ticket. Five minutes past my meter time. Just perfect.

I've avoided eye contact with anger for most of my life. When I feel it coming, I run or hide into something more appropriate. Gentleness, I was taught, brings the best results. Yet ever since shattering the wineglass on the kitchen floor, something red-faced and boisterous was released in me. I feel it now staring at the wet and fluttering parking ticket, seeing Mr. Bush's righteous eyebrow lifting. I drop the
F
bomb as loudly as I can inside my empty car, then slam my fist onto the steering wheel.

I returned to the studio in less than the twenty minutes it took me to drive to the bank. My heart slows and I calm down. I'll talk to Cooper tonight. There must be a reasonable explanation. He accidentally moved it and then put it back. He bought me a gift. He was planning a surprise and … No. None of it makes sense. I run out of
reasonable
quickly.

I walk into the studio, to find Max, and I realize that he's the reason I've driven so fast, the reason I came straight back here. He turns when he hears me, and I reach his side to see what he is looking at with such intent. It's number eight:
Find Adventure.
“What do you see for the design?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“When you think
Find Adventure,
what do you see?”

“This one is tough,” I say, sitting to look up at him. His dark hair is a mess; an ink smear runs across his forehead, where he's been brushing his hair all day. My hand reaches across the space between us to wipe off the ink.

He draws back and away when my fingers touch his forehead. Embarrassment flutters through me with sharp-tipped wings.

A long silence grows between us, and I'm not willing to fill it or answer his reaction with my own. He speaks first. “I see something like two people walking through the forest, where anything at all is possible.”

I nod and rest my hands one on top of the other in my lap. “That's nice.”

Nice—what an inane thing to say.

When I first met him, Max was attending SCAD. In three short years, he had his degree in book arts, with a minor in folklore and mythology. His parents could pay for only three years of college, so he did everything he could to shove four years into three. His love of ancient stories often rises up in imagery. “There's this story,” he'll say. Which is exactly what he's saying now.

“And?” I ask, still refusing to look at him, at the ink smear I want to clear.

“There are dreams that are usually called ‘the dream of the predator'—you know, when someone is after you, chasing you.”

“Willa has one.” I look at him now, and he smiles. “She keeps having a dream like that.”

“They're really normal dreams. One of the most famous folklore tales is the one about the bride who goes into the woods.” He takes a breath and looks off, as if the story is written on the far stall's wall. “There's this bride. It's her wedding night and she gets that thing—that intuition that tells you that something is just not right. She suspects something is wrong with her groom, but she's not sure. Every night, he sneaks into the woods and returns quietly. So the night before her wedding, she goes into the same woods and hides in the high branches of a tree and waits.” Max pauses, picking up the charcoal pencil and sketching a tree, naked at first but filling with leaves as continues the story.

“It was dark and the tree hid her well with its dense leaves. She waited and waited, finally falling asleep in the crook of a branch. But then she was startled and awoke, to see her groom below the tree, digging a hole and singing a song about how he would bury his bride there.” He stops and leans back to look at me and then sings in a low voice, not his own. “Good-bye, my love. Good-bye, sweetheart. Sleep well and long.…” Max draws out the last word.

“Stop.” I say. “You're creeping me out. You've told much better stories.” Laughter gathers at the edge of my voice. “That's terrible and sad.”

“No, that's a great story,” he says. “She went on an adventure and found out the truth and didn't marry him. Otherwise…” He pauses and slashes the edge of his palm against his throat and rolls his eyes back into his head, imitating death, but with a smile.

“Got it,” I say. “So, yes, a forest is good, but let's not have her hide up in a tree.”

“Agreed,” he says. “Adventure means going out into something new, right?”

“Something unknown,” I say. “And what's more unknown than a forest?”

“Especially a maritime forest, like around here, where you might end up in dense woods or the river, depending which way you turn.”

“Yes! Add a river in the background, a hint of water in the middle of the trees and dark.”

“This is where we need Francie,” he says, loudly enough for her to hear.

“
Moi?
” she asks, looking over her shoulder.

Francie comes to us. We catch her up with our idea. “Awesome and all that. But I'm late for a gig tonight. I'll start in the morning, okay?”

“What gig?” I ask.

“Playing at the coffee shop. Nothing big.” She waves a dismissive hand and gathers her things to leave. “See you tomorrow.”

Max and I sit there, again alone with our designs and stories and thoughts. As the studio doors slide shut, he stands, and I think he'll leave, but he walks to the steel cabinet and pulls out a bottle of Jameson and two glasses I bought at an antique show when I meant to buy carved-wood fonts.

He returns to the table and sits, pouring a glass for each of us.

“No way,” I say. “I haven't slept in days. I can't drink dark liquor or I'll…”

“You'll what?” he asks.

“Regret it.”

“Or find adventure,” he says, and pours a half inch into my glass.

“Adventure.” I lift the whiskey and tilt my head back, allowing the liquid to burn past my tongue and down my throat, past the ache in my chest. Tears spring to my eyes. “That story you told,” I say through a cough. “You didn't just mean it for the card line, right? You meant it about Willa, too.”

Max drinks his whiskey. “Yes … probably.”

“It's not that easy—like hiding in the wood to wait for the answer. Memory isn't like that. It's not some time line like in history class. It's not some fact sheet, and it's certainly not linear. Memory is mixed and messy even in the best minds. I see pictures from my childhood and I think, Oh, I remember that day. But do I only remember it because of the photo? Is it even a
real
memory? Add getting hit in the head and weird dreams and … how could she possibly make sense of anything?”

My hand rests on the table and Max places his hand over mine, hiding it completely. “What is a real memory anyway? But we can make some sense of it, right? We can find out the best we can for her,” he says.

The Jameson is loosening my thoughts. “All we can know is what we know.”

“No,” he says softly.

“How, then?”

“There are things I don't know yet. Things you don't know yet.”

I stare at my empty shot glass and wonder how many people have drunk from this old glass. How many to celebrate or, like me, forget?