The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil: A Novel by Victoria Christopher Murray

Author:Victoria Christopher Murray [Murray, Victoria Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, African American, General, Christian, Romance
ISBN: 9781439194263
Google: hGVZRRlNYnAC
Amazon: 1439194254
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2011-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

IT HAD TAKEN ONLY HOURS, but in that time, our lives had completely changed. As I stood at the door, watching Adam put the Kia in reverse, I thought back to all that had happened since this morning. …

I was still functioning like a zombie when I came home from work just an hour after Shay-Shaunté gave me that check.

“What’s wrong, Shine?” Adam asked the moment I lugged through the door.

“Shay-Shaunté sent me home.” The cadence of my words, the tenor of my tone made me sound like a robot.

My husband’s face filled with fear. His assumption: My coming home was a sign of bad news.

I explained, “She gave me this and told me to take the rest of the day off.”

I handed the check to Adam and watched him do exactly what I’d done. Big eyes, open mouth, hyperventilation came next.

“What the …” He stopped before he actually cursed, just like I’d done. “Shine,” he began again slowly, “what is this?”

“It’s a check. Half. For … you know.”

He staggered backward to the couch, and then, when his legs were too weak to hold him upright any longer, he lost his balance and plopped down.

But he held on to the check. With both hands.

I gave him another minute to digest this truth, and then I sat next to him. Together, we stared.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked.

Slowly, Adam lifted his eyes, as if he was coming out of a trance. He focused on me and gave me one of those looks that he sometimes gave to our children when he thought their questions weren’t too smart.

“What should we do? We should go to the bank!” he said, then he jumped up. “We need to get to the bank … now!”

I swear, not even a minute passed before we were inside the car and swerving out of the driveway. I’d expected Adam to push the pedal to the metal, but instead he drove conservatively, staying right on the speed limit. No policeman, no speeding ticket was going to slow us down.

Still, we were at the bank in less than ten minutes. I would’ve expected a little more of a challenge depositing so much money. But I guessed that because we already had a personal banker with the Bank of DC, and because we’d moved lots of money through our accounts over the years (though most of our accounts were busted before we walked in with this check), it only took about thirty minutes before Darren Grey, our banker, had our funds deposited and cleared. It helped that the check Shay-Shaunté had given me was written on a Bank of DC account, though I didn’t notice that until we got to the bank. Really, that surprised me. It was a Ferossity check, and I handled all of the company’s banking. Never before had we used Bank of DC.

By the time Adam and I were back in our car with the money deposited and a few hundred dollars in Adam’s pocket, I’d forgotten all about the check and where the funds had been drawn from.

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