"I drove you," Odessa said. "Bus 114. You were the one who read the whole way. You read with a flashlight in the winter when it was still dark. I used to worry you'd ruin your eyes."
Tasha's mouth opened. Then she laughed, a startled, delighted sound that made a man at the teller line turn around. "Miss Dessa," she said. "Oh my God. Miss Dessa. You used to give us peppermints on the last day before Christmas."
"Starlights. The red and white ones. Not the green. The green ones nobody wanted."
"Nobody wanted the green ones," Tasha agreed, and for a second they were not in a bank at all. Then she seemed to remember where they were, and her face changed again into the professional face, but a softer version of it. "How's Mr. Lucien?"
"He passed. Four years in December."
"Oh, Miss Dessa. I'm so sorry."
"Thank you, baby. How's your grandmother's roof?"
It was not a question most people would have asked. But it was the first question in North Lake Charles, the way How's your mama had been the first question once. Tasha's jaw set.
"Still tarped," she said quietly. "The back half. We've applied three times."
"Here?"
Tasha glanced toward the glass office at the end of the row. A man was inside it, on the phone, leaning back in a leather chair with one ankle on his knee. "Here," she said. "Before I worked here. And once after." She lowered her voice further. "I'm not supposed to talk about it."
"Then don't," Odessa said. "Not yet."
She patted the young woman's arm and walked the rest of the way to the glass office by herself.
* * *
Grant Whitfield was forty-four years old and had been the manager of the Ryan Street branch of Gulf Coast Heritage Bank for six years, which was long enough to have stopped thinking about what the job looked like from the other side of the desk. He was a tall man with good teeth and a lot of hair that he was proud of, and he wore a lavender tie that his wife had picked out, and he had a habit, when he was thinking, of tapping the cap of an expensive pen against his lower lip.
He finished his phone call with a laugh and the words "you know I will, buddy," and then he hung up and stood and came around the desk with his hand out, already smiling. The smile slipped by about a quarter of an inch when he saw her, and then it came back, wider than before, the way a man steps up his speed after he stumbles so that nobody will notice the stumble.
"Mrs. — Arceneaux?" He said it the Anglo way, Arson-oh, which was close enough. "Grant Whitfield. Welcome, welcome. Have a seat. Can we get you a coffee? Water? Tasha, could you —" He looked past her, but Tasha had already gone back to her desk.