-6-
Friday
The phone call came at ten-thirty the next
morning. Cathy had been awake for a couple of hours, catching up on
chores. The summons yanked her out of the monthly frustration of
balancing her checkbook. Though she kept careful records, the
figures never seemed to add up right.
She dropped her pencil, pleased to have an
excuse to take her mind off the numbers. A secretary calling from
Mr. Lowell's office asked if she could be there at eleven-thirty.
Cathy agreed.
Ten minutes later, she'd reduced the
discrepancy between her balance and the bank's statement to four
dollars and sixty-six cents and decided that was close enough to
satisfy any sane human being. She wrote a few checks to pay bills,
cleaned up the financial apparatus, and put it away; then changed
into a s
