I had always believed money came with a price.<\/p>\n
I just never imagined my grandmother would be the one to prove it to me.<\/p>\n
Edward Collins shut the office door behind him.<\/p>\n
Then he crossed the room, took his seat, and laid the check on the desk between us.<\/p>\n
He looked serious.<\/p>\n
Not angry.<\/p>\n
Not frightened.<\/p>\n
Just serious enough to make me wonder what he had discovered.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Harper, I've examined the check, and the initial results look legitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a moment, I couldn't find an answer.<\/p>\n
I stared at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he was going to tell me there had been a mistake.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he would point to a number and explain that someone had misplaced a decimal point.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars was the sort of figure I associated with newspaper headlines, expensive houses, and people whose lives had nothing in common with mine.<\/p>\n
It wasn't something I expected to see written on a check handed to me by my grandmother.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n
Edward turned the paper toward me.<\/p>\n
He explained that the account was real, the signature agreed with the one the bank had on record, and the check number appeared to be in order.<\/p>\n
There was enough money in the account to cover it.<\/p>\n
I listened carefully.<\/p>\n
I understood every word.<\/p>\n
Somehow, none of it seemed to make sense.<\/p>\n
I picked up the check and examined it again.<\/p>\n
The handwriting was familiar.<\/p>\n
My grandmother had always written slowly, with letters that leaned in different directions when her hands were tired.<\/p>\n
Her signature was there.<\/p>\n
So was the amount.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars.<\/p>\n
I counted the zeroes without meaning to.<\/p>\n
Then I counted them again.<\/p>\n
The paper felt ordinary between my fingers.<\/p>\n
That was what bothered me most.<\/p>\n
A piece of paper shouldn't be capable of changing a person's entire understanding of his family.<\/p>\n
Yet there I sat, holding something that might do exactly that.<\/p>\n
Edward waited until I looked up.<\/p>\n
He had the patience of someone who had explained difficult situations to nervous customers many times before.<\/p>\n
I suspected he had learned that people needed a moment to catch up with their own lives.<\/p>\n
I certainly did.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the money is mine?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn't answer immediately.<\/p>\n
Instead, he rested his hands on the desk and explained that confirming a check was genuine did not mean the money could immediately be placed in my available balance.<\/p>\n
The bank needed to complete additional procedures.<\/p>\n
A transaction of that size required closer examination, including checks for possible fraud, confirmation of where the money came from, and approval through the bank's internal process.<\/p>\n
He made it clear that these precautions were standard.<\/p>\n
Nobody was accusing me of doing anything wrong.<\/p>\n
The bank simply couldn't treat an unusually large payment like an ordinary deposit.<\/p>\n
I understood his explanation.<\/p>\n
At least, I understood it in the practical sense.<\/p>\n
My mind was still somewhere else.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about my grandmother.<\/p>\n
She was not the sort of person I associated with six million dollars.<\/p>\n
She had never presented herself as wealthy.<\/p>\n
She had never spoken to me as though money made someone important.<\/p>\n
Whatever she possessed, she had kept it to herself.<\/p>\n
And now I was sitting in a bank office, learning that she had apparently written me a check worth more than I could reasonably expect to earn over the course of my working life.<\/p>\n
I had spent years teaching literature.<\/p>\n
My days revolved around books, lesson plans, papers to grade, and students who sometimes seemed convinced that reading a novel was an unnecessary form of punishment.<\/p>\n
I knew how to explain a character's motives.<\/p>\n
I could spend an entire class discussing why someone made a terrible decision.<\/p>\n
But I had no idea what to do with a check for six million dollars.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long will the bank need?\u201d<\/p>\n
Edward said the full process could take several business days.<\/p>\n
The exact timing depended on the verification and approvals required before the funds could become available.<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
It was the only response I could manage.<\/p>\n
Several days.<\/p>\n
That sounded reasonable.<\/p>\n
It also sounded impossibly long when I considered the number printed on the paper.<\/p>\n
I placed the check back on the desk.<\/p>\n
Then another thought occurred to me.<\/p>\n
One that made the whole situation feel different.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandmother didn't just give me a check.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edward waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe gave checks to the rest of the family, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
His expression changed only slightly.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a dramatic reaction.<\/p>\n
He didn't lean forward or reach for the phone.<\/p>\n
But I noticed that he was paying closer attention now.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many other checks are we talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n
I began listing the people who had received them.<\/p>\n
My parents.<\/p>\n
My brother, Eric.<\/p>\n
My sister, Olivia.<\/p>\n
My aunt Diane.<\/p>\n
My uncle Martin.<\/p>\n
And me.<\/p>\n
Six people besides the grandmother who had written them.<\/p>\n
I watched Edward as I spoke.<\/p>\n
He didn't interrupt.<\/p>\n
He didn't tell me what he thought it meant.<\/p>\n
When I finished, he remained quiet for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then I realized I had no idea how much money my grandmother had decided to distribute among us.<\/p>\n
I knew the amount on my own check.<\/p>\n
I knew that the others had received checks, too.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, I knew almost nothing.<\/p>\n
I had not asked how she had arrived at the figure.<\/p>\n
I had not asked whether the checks were all for the same amount.<\/p>\n
And I had certainly not imagined that visiting a bank to verify one of them would leave me questioning how much I really knew about my grandmother.<\/p>\n
Edward glanced down at the paper again.<\/p>\n
I followed his eyes.<\/p>\n
The check had not changed.<\/p>\n
The signature was still hers.<\/p>\n
The amount was still six million dollars.<\/p>\n
But the question had become larger than whether the money existed.<\/p>\n
I had walked into the bank wanting to know if the check was real.<\/p>\n
Now I was beginning to understand that its authenticity might be the simplest thing I had to deal with.<\/p>\n
I had always believed money came with a price. I just never imagined my grandmother would be the one to prove it to me. Edward Collins shut the office door … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39260,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39240\/revisions\/39260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}