Paradise Lost

banker couldn’t see that.

“Let’s see,” he said. “‘That’s eighteen hundred forty-six dollars and seventy-two cents, including the service charges. Under most circumstances I’d be happy to waive the service charges, but since we no longer have any of your other business ...”

He let the rest of the sentence hang in the air. Meanwhile Con­nie, grappling with finding a way to fix the problem, wrote down the amount he had mentioned.

“What about my credit card?” she asked. “Can we transfer the money in from my VISA?”

Ken Wilson cleared his throat. “There’s a problem there, too, Connie,” he said apologetically. “Your VISA account is over the limit right now, and the payment was due yesterday. That’s another seventeen hundred sixty dollars and forty-three cents. That would just bring the balance down to where you wouldn’t be over your limit.”

As Ken Wilson spoke, Connie was remembering how Ron had encouraged her to sign application forms for several other credit cards—ones that evidently weren’t with First Bank. “Even if we never touch them,” Ron had told her, “we’re better off having them available.” And indeed, if any of those applications had been approved, the resulting credit cards had never made it into her hands or purse. And if her VISA at First Bank was maxed out, what about balances on the other cards—ones Connie had no record of and no way to check?

I won’t think about that right now, Connie told herself firmly as she wrote down the second figure. After adding that one together with the first, she arrived at a total of $3,607.15. Swallowing hard, ( ;mini. drew a circle around it.

“Your office is still on Central, isn’t it?” she asked.

 “That’s right,” Ken Wilson replied. “Central and Camelback.”

“And how long will you be there?”

“I have an appointment out of the office this afternoon, but that won’t be until one o’clock. I’ll need to leave here around twelve-thirty.”

“All I have to do is dry my hair and throw on some clothes,” Connie told him. “I should be there with the money within forty-five minutes.”

She heard Ken Wilson’s sigh of relief. “Good,” he said. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you.”

Connie hung up the phone. Then, with her whole body quak­ing and unmindful of her still-dripping hair, she walked back through the house. She went to the room which had once been her mother’s study—the green-walled cozy room which had, after her mother’s death, become Connie’s study as well. With trembling hands she opened the bottom drawer of the dainty rosewood desk and pulled out her mother’s frayed, leather-bound Bible. One by one she began to remove the old-fashioned but still crisp hundred-dollar bills that had been concealed between many of the thin pages. Claudia Armstrong Richardson had told her daughter the story so many times that even now Connie could have repeated it verbatim.

Claudia had often related how, as an eleven-year-old, her idyllic life had been shattered when she awoke that fateful morning in October of 1929 to learn that her once affluent family was affluent no longer. Her lather had lost everything in the stock market crash. There had been a single payment of three hundred dollars due on the family home in Columbus, Ohio, but without sufficient cash to make that one payment, the bank had foreclosed. Months later, the day they were scheduled to move out of the house, Claudia’s father had gone back inside—to make sure the back door was locked, he had told his wile and daughter. Instead, with Claudia and her mother waiting in a cab outside, Roger Armstrong had gone back into the empty room that had once been his book-lined library and put a bullet through his head.

“So you see, Constance,” Claudia had cautioned her daughter over and over, “you must keep some money set aside, and not just in banks, either, because many of the banks were forced to close back then, too. The only people who were all right were the ones who had cold, hard cash put away under their mattresses or hidden in a sock. You have to keep the money someplace where you can get your hands on it when you need it.”

Over the years, long after Claudia had married Stephen Richardson and long after there was no longer any valid need for her to be concerned about such things, Claudia Armstrong Richardson had continued to put money in the Bible, right up until her death, insisting that Connie put the money there for her once Claudia herself was no longer able to do so.

There were times Connie had argued with her mother about it. “Wouldn’t it be safer in a bank?” she had asked.

“No!” Claudia had