Epilogue
The bank was bustling the next Friday afternoon.
Vero’s first week behind the counter had been going pretty well.
She’d been watching the tellers so closely for so long, she hadn’t had much to learn.
By the end of her first week, she had been given permission to work her own window, which was a good thing since the bank was hopping today.
The line doubled back on itself, creeping into the vestibule.
She was grateful for the thick plexiglass barrier that kept her from having to listen to people complain about how long it was taking to be served.
A car rolled slowly past the drive-through window.
Vero glanced up from her drawer, pausing her count, her attention drawn by the low rumble of the Camaro’s engine outside.
She could just make out the driver’s silhouette through the heavy window tinting.
Javi stared back at her. His engine growled as he put it in gear, and his car disappeared around the side of the building.
Vero turned back to her drawer, starting her count over as the man at her station made a dramatic show of checking his watch.
A moment later, Javi appeared in the door. He slipped off his mirrored aviators and his eyes caught Vero’s through the barrier. If he wants to talk to me, he can wait in line like everybody else, she thought.
But Javi wasn’t like everyone else. He sauntered straight to the front of the line— her line—without bothering to wait his turn.
Patrons stepped aside to let him pass. One man started to say something to him but changed his mind when he got a look at Javi’s tattoos.
He was wearing a form-fitting T-shirt and his hair was pulled back at his nape, revealing the full extent of his ink while leaving plenty to the imagination.
Javier Romero had the most disarming smile Vero had ever seen, but he could also turn badassery into a full-time job, and today he was making it work for him.
Darren came out of his cubicle and froze when he spotted him. He touched the bruise at the bridge of his nose and slipped silently back behind the safety of his partition as the crowd parted to let Javi through. He came straight to Vero’s window and rested his elbows on her counter.
“Grab lunch with me?” he asked, having the nerve to look contrite.
“Are you making a deposit or a withdrawal, sir?” she asked through her speaker. Partly to piss him off and partly because her manager was watching her.
Javi lowered his voice. “I just want to talk.”
Vero depressed the button to turn on her speaker again.
“Does talking involve telling me where you’ve been for the last three years?
” Helen’s eyes flicked to Javi from the next window.
So did everyone else’s. Blood rushed to Javi’s cheeks.
“Maybe you should step out of line while you think about it,” Vero said.
“I’m kind of busy here. Next!” she called over his head.
He stood there staring at her for a long moment, looking for all the world like he had something left to say. When Vero waved her next customer forward, Javi took a deposit envelope from his pocket and pushed it through the slot in her window. He didn’t wait for her to open it before striding out.
Vero used her letter opener to slash the envelope.
Two tire valve caps fell into her hand. She wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean, or what these misplaced parts represented to either of them.
All she knew was that she had thrown them in his face yesterday—either as an F-U or as a confession. And today he’d given them back.
Vero looked up to see if he was gone, only half listening as her next customer came forward and asked for cash back with his deposit.
A woman behind him in line had captured Vero’s attention.
Something about her felt familiar, though Vero couldn’t place why.
The writhing, whining boy in the woman’s arms couldn’t have been much older than two, and the little girl holding the woman’s hand was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, as if she were fighting to hold her bladder.
The girl gave her mother’s hand a firm tug and the three of them stepped out of line, scurrying through the crowd to the restrooms.
A few moments later, Vero spotted them again, this time at the very back of the line.
The woman’s shoulders hunched with the weight of her children. Of her day. She couldn’t have been much older than thirty, but she seemed too exhausted to be that young.
Vero said goodbye to the customer she was servicing, then held up a finger, signaling for the next person in line—a cranky man with a scowling face—to wait.
She stood on her toes and caught the mother’s eye, signaling for her to come to the window.
The poor woman had already waited patiently in the line once, and it didn’t seem fair that she should be forced to do it again with two wiggly children just because one of them had to pee.
The mother hurried forward with her kids, making profuse apologies to the cranky man as he began to make a scene.
Vero ignored his loud complaints. She smiled at the woman, passing two lollipops under the barrier for her children as her son buried his face in her neck, occasionally peeking out to flirt with Vero.
The mother reminded both children to say thank you, then she thanked Vero again for allowing her to reclaim her place in line.
She was polite and self-effacing, and her children were sweet.
The check she cashed had been signed by a man with the same last name, from his business account.
Vero recognized the name of his landscaping company from an ad she’d seen on local TV.
On the comment line, he’d written Child Support Payment, but the amount he’d paid this woman was a pittance.
Suddenly, Vero knew why the woman had looked so familiar. Fifteen years ago, she could have been Vero’s own mother, struggling to make ends meet on her own, with a deadbeat ex, a full-time job, and a little girl in tow.
And that cranky jerk behind her who was making a scene was about to get his ass handed to him if he didn’t cut that poor woman some slack and leave her the hell alone.
Vero counted out the woman’s cash and waved goodbye to her children, hoping the three of them could make it out of the lobby unscathed.
But Mr. Singh was already on his way over to Vero’s window.
And she knew, the same way she’d known when the police had shown up at her sorority house a few weeks ago, that it would be her word against the world.
She couldn’t let herself go through the insult and indignity all over again.
The cranky old man folded his arms, watching with a self-satisfied smirk as Vero was scolded in front of everyone in the bank.
Her brief tenure came to an abrupt end when she told her manager and the cranky old man where they both could stick it.
She tendered her resignation with her middle finger, collected her things, and strode right out the back door to the employee parking lot, where she gleefully slashed her former boss’s tires with the letter opener she’d just taken from her desk.
She stood up, feeling both proud and disappointed in herself.
Quitting had felt like the right thing to do, but now she was right back where she’d started.
In a new state with no job, sleeping on a couch that didn’t belong to her, checking the news every day to make sure her name and face weren’t splashed all over it.
She’d managed to crack the case and prove herself at the bank, but there was no way to return home to Maryland to solve the crime she’d been accused of, no way to prove her innocence.
Even if she could, what did she have to go back for anyway?
A sorority house full of backstabbing “sisters” who didn’t trust her.
As she turned for her car, she saw the weary mother hurry around the building, one hand holding fast to her daughter’s and her son bouncing on her opposite hip.
Her children’s faces were sticky with lollipop smiles as their mother jogged to catch up to Vero.
She tucked the letter opener in her back pocket and moved away from Mr. Singh’s car.
“I saw what happened. I’m so sorry,” the woman said, breathless from her run.
She let go of her daughter’s hand to rummage in her diaper bag and held out the crisp new bills Vero had just counted out for her.
Enough for a deposit on an apartment. Enough to get Vero off her cousin’s couch and Javi’s bed. To start over, right here in Virginia.
It was also enough for diapers, groceries, and repairs for the clunker of a minivan she’d seen this poor woman arrive in. “Don’t be,” Vero said, waving away the cash and the apology. “I hated that job anyway. I can find another.” No big deal, right?
The woman looked at Vero as if she were her own personal savior, the hero of some terrible drawn-out tragedy that Vero couldn’t begin to comprehend. She hoped for this woman’s sake the story would at least have a happy ending.
The woman hefted her son higher on her hip.
She started to turn away, then changed her mind.
“You seem really great with children,” she said.
“I could use a sitter. I can’t afford much—a few hours per week—but if you’d be interested in a job, I’d like to hire you.
My name’s Finlay, by the way.” She extended a hand. “Finlay Donovan.”
That name brushed the fuzzy edges of a memory. A photograph in a romance novel. A woman hiding behind dark sunglasses and a wig.
It felt like fate had pushed Vero into the woman’s path. Like Vero was falling through another window, one she hadn’t even seen coming, into a brand-new life. Only this time, she might find a softer place to land.
Vero dusted tire grime from her fingers and shook the woman’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Finlay. How quickly can I start?”