"Yeah."
"Are you scared?"
Maeve hadn't expected that question. Nobody had asked her that. Not her father, not Gil, not her friends, not even her grandmother.
"Yeah," she said. "Kind of."
Kenzie looked at her for a second longer, a strange look, as if she were seeing something she hadn't noticed before. Then she went out and closed the door, gently, all the way, until the latch clicked.
***
Her father did not drive her to the credit union.
He was gone before she got up. His truck was gone from the driveway, and there was a mug in the sink with a ring of coffee in the bottom, and that was all. No note. Maeve stood in the kitchen at seven-fifteen in the only nice thing she owned, a navy-blue dress she had worn to her cousin's wedding two years ago that was now a little short, and looked at the empty driveway, and told herself she had not expected anything else.
Grandma Bev picked her up at seven-fifty in the Buick. She was wearing a different cardigan, a green one, and a strand of pearls Maeve had only ever seen at funerals.
"You look nice," Maeve said.
"So do you. Get in."
The Marlow Community Credit Union was a squat brick building on Main Street between the hardware store and the shuttered movie theater. It opened at eight. They were first in line. Maeve carried the jar in both arms, the way she had held it the night before, and she felt ridiculous walking in with it, like a kid bringing a piggy bank to open her first account, and also she would not have let anyone else carry it for a thousand dollars.
The teller was a woman in her thirties named Shonda, according to her nameplate, who had clearly been briefed. She smiled at Grandma Bev the way people in Marlow smiled at Grandma Bev, with a kind of respectful caution, and she said, "Morning, Mrs. Sorensen. This the big day?"
"This is the big day."
Shonda ran the jar through a counting machine, then counted it again by hand because Grandma Bev was watching. Twelve hundred and twelve, plus nine dollars and forty cents in coins. She entered it. Then Grandma Bev took the blue passbook out of her purse and slid it across the counter, and Shonda printed the new line into it with a little mechanical chatter, and slid it back.