I kept seeing the check whenever I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
Not the amount alone.<\/p>\n
The handwriting.<\/p>\n
I knew it was hers, and that made the whole thing harder to dismiss.<\/p>\n
I had spent years thinking of Grandma as someone whose life I understood.<\/p>\n
Now I wasn't so sure.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what to do with that feeling.<\/p>\n
I also didn't know how to explain it to anyone else.<\/p>\n
Six million dollars was a number people could understand.<\/p>\n
The uncertainty behind it was harder to describe.<\/p>\n
The bank had given me a reasonable explanation for the delay.<\/p>\n
The transaction needed more verification.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
I tried to keep the facts separate from the questions forming in my mind.<\/p>\n
The account existed.<\/p>\n
The signature matched the bank's records.<\/p>\n
The funds were sufficient.<\/p>\n
The final approval had not happened yet.<\/p>\n
I repeated those points until they felt less strange.<\/p>\n
It helped a little.<\/p>\n
Not enough.<\/p>\n
I had to remind myself that I wasn't the only person involved.<\/p>\n
My parents had received a check.<\/p>\n
So had Eric and Olivia.<\/p>\n
Aunt Diane and Uncle Martin had received checks, too.<\/p>\n
Whatever Grandma had decided, she had included the whole group.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether any of them had already started making plans.<\/p>\n
The thought made me uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
I had no idea what the others were doing, and I didn't want to assume they were reacting as I was.<\/p>\n
Some people might have felt excited.<\/p>\n
Others might have been suspicious.<\/p>\n
Someone might have taken the check as a sign that Grandma wanted to change something in the family.<\/p>\n
I didn't know.<\/p>\n
I wasn't even sure what I thought myself.<\/p>\n
I had spent years teaching students to distinguish what a story actually said from what a reader imagined it meant.<\/p>\n
It seemed unfair that I was now struggling to follow my own advice.<\/p>\n
I had a check.<\/p>\n
I had a bank manager's explanation.<\/p>\n
I had six names connected to the same unexpected decision.<\/p>\n
Everything beyond that remained uncertain.<\/p>\n
I wanted to call someone and talk about it.<\/p>\n
Then I wondered what I would say.<\/p>\n
Would I tell them that the bank had confirmed the check was legitimate?<\/p>\n
That wouldn't be completely accurate yet, because the review was still underway.<\/p>\n
Would I say the money was mine?<\/p>\n
That would be premature.<\/p>\n
Would I tell them I thought Grandma had a reason for giving the checks?<\/p>\n
Of course she had a reason.<\/p>\n
But I didn't know what it was.<\/p>\n
That was the part I couldn't get past.<\/p>\n
I knew my grandmother had made a decision.<\/p>\n
I knew the decision involved money on a scale I had never associated with her.<\/p>\n
I knew she had included several members of our family.<\/p>\n
I didn't know why.<\/p>\n
And I didn't want to fill the silence with a story of my own invention.<\/p>\n
For now, I decided to wait.<\/p>\n
The bank would finish its work when it was able to.<\/p>\n
I would deal with the facts as they became available.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a satisfying plan.<\/p>\n
It was the only honest one I had.<\/p>\n
I kept seeing the check whenever I closed my eyes. Not the amount alone. The handwriting. I knew it was hers, and that made the whole thing harder to dismiss. … <\/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-39244","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\/39244","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=39244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39264,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39244\/revisions\/39264"}],"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=39244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}