Gettin' Lucky

Chapter Six

“Told you it was a safety deposit box key,” Abby stage whispered beside me. We huddled together in the bank’s backroom filled with rows upon rows of tiny doors. My eyes kept drifting to the massive vault door fearing that at any moment it could slam shut and trap us inside.

I’m not saying it’s not an outlandish fear, but I was once stuck inside a port-a-pot for three hours because the door jammed. 

The bank manager — who was willing to hear my tale of the buried flask, then discover my grandmother did have a box at the bank — finished turning both keys. A two-foot-long slender box slid out into her arms. With a smile that cracked her hefty foundation, she lay it upon the lone table in the room.

“Please, take your time,” was her response and, to my surprise, she turned to leave.

“Aren’t you gonna…?” I began, when the door closed behind her. Even though we were sealed in, at least the bank knew we were back here. Took me an hour and a half to get anyone at the music festival to listen.

Awestruck I gazed down at the plain, gleaming box I had no idea existed. “I thought she’d open it,” I muttered, my hands limp at my side.

“Nah, doesn’t work that way. You could have stolen gems, or illegal papers, or who knows what in there. This way the bank has plausible deniability, while also getting to keep all that criminal money,” Abby mused to herself. She’d been a bank teller for a few years before switching to IT. It wasn’t why I asked her to accompany me, but it served well when the teller balked at my asking to see a manager. I didn’t have much of an account here, enough in my savings to splurge at a hamburger joint should the need arise.

Grazing her fingers over the hinged lid, Abby snapped it a few times. The metal clank bounced off my teeth as I stared daggers at the mysterious box. “Well, are you gonna open it or do I have to?”

Okay. Shaking off the thunder pounding in my chest, I wrapped my hands around the cold metal. It was a drizzly grey day outside, more winter than spring, but this felt colder than the stained snow. Colder than the grave. “Just, opening up something my dead grandmother left for me after she buried the key in a flask.”

“Was there anything else in that thing?”

I smelled a hint of whiskey but that was it. Doubtful Abby meant that. She was probably hoping for instructions or a treasure map. Shaking my head negative, I plucked up the lid. A fat, yellowing envelope caught my eye.

When I hefted it into my hands, the flap fell apart revealing green and white piles of legal tender. The scent of old books and rusting iron struck my nose as I yanked up the first of dozens upon dozens of hundred dollar bills. 

“Holy s**t, Jess!” Abby gasped for both of us. My mind shattered as I stared down at two to three inches worth of $100 bills. 

Lifting the envelope from my fingers, Abby began to count out the pile, laying each in a perfect fan-out as she went. 

Grandma? What is this? What…

“There’s five grand in here,” Abby sputtered, quickly doing the calculations. “Is that another envelope?”

Sure enough, the stacks of cash couldn’t all fit into one, so Grandma stuffed another full of the same $100 bills. As Abby got to work counting out the entire haul, I gripped to the table and struggled to breathe. Towards the end of her life, we were scrimping and weighing which medications to refill every month Medicare screwed us over. And all that time this was here?

Why didn’t she say anything?

“Can’t believe this wasn’t in her will,” Abby sputtered, already on the fifth row. It looked like a tarot reading for the exceedingly wealthy. I see riches in your past, riches in your present, and riches in your future.

A breath rattled in my throat, the back of my brain ticking through everything I could do with this windfall. “She was starting to go in the end. Probably forgot to tell me, or already thought she did.” 

“Holy hell,” Abby yanked the box up and tipped the lidded section towards the table. “There’s stocks and bonds in here too. Who knows what it’s worth now. Bet you could pay off your student loans with all of this.”

Tears sprung in my eyes at the thought of my grandmother hiding away her small fortune in the hopes that one day I could use it. 

Abby kept pulling more and more sheets of paper from the magical box, each landing on the pile of unburied treasure. She was laughing, talking about how we were owed the fanciest dinner the second after talking to a financial planner. A thunk from inside the box paused her giddy blue-skying.

We both turned to the nearly empty stainless steel, Abby shaking it to reignite the sound. “Your Gran didn’t work for the mob, right? It isn’t a finger in there or something?”

“No, she was a seamstress.” I groaned at the macabre thought but was still hesitant to dig around. It was a lot of money that seemed to come from nowhere. Easing the lid open, I peered inside as if I was checking on the cage of a radioactive rat. With the tip of my finger, I shoved aside the papers in the way. Gold struck my eye and I froze.

Abby stood behind me, her chin pressing to my shoulder. “Is that a…” Without a thought, she plucked up the gold coin hidden in my grandmother’s pile of secrets. “Huh? Think it might be worth something?”

Ochre colored, the edges were blobby as if this coin was cast by hand and time. My head buzzed in pain, the sides of my vision frizzing as I hefted the small coin in my palm.

“Ever seen anything like it?” Abby asked.

Yes. Pressed to my cleavage while kissing. Bouncing against my spine as I was ridden from behind. Glistening from the shower we shared. Dangling off the neck of the mysterious stranger who came to my neighborhood looking for something.

It was an exact duplicate of his treasure.

Closing my hand around the coin, I tried to swallow the scream rising in my soul.