As low man on the totem pole, Jimmy Collins, the newest teller, took his lunch break last, and when he returned to the bank shortly after two, he was so excited he was nearly out of breath. “Have you heard the news?” he asked, addressing them all. “The Bank of America! It’s closed!”

“There is a God,” Cal said, grinning.

“B of A’s closing? Why?” Coy wondered aloud.

“Not closing. Closed. And why? I have no idea. Not enough foot traffic would be my guess.”

Maggie nodded. “Most of their customers just use ATMs.”

“Or bank online,” Jimmy offered.

Cal grinned. “Which means we’re the only game in town.”

Thank God, Coy thought. Maybe the worst of it was over. Maybe things would start picking up now that their competition had called it quits. He glanced around the familiar room, his gaze settling finally on his desktop, on his engraved wood nameplate, on the little Pirates of the Caribbean coffee cup Florine had brought back for him from a trip to Disneyland. He smiled, feeling happy, feeling, for the first time in a long time, safe.

3

Burning butterflies gave off a smell that was completely unique.

He didn’t exactly like the smell. But he didn’t hate it, either. He found it…interesting.

V.J. touched the flame of the lighter to the wings of the final butterfly. Like the other two he’d caught, it had been immobilized by a pin to its midsection, although, unlike the others, its wings were still fluttering.

That ended quickly, though, and once fire had consumed the bug’s body, V.J. pressed his right index finger into the ashes. They were warm but not too hot—pleasant—and he held the finger in front of his face, looking at it, seeing some of the glitter from the colorful wings in the gray ash that coated his skin. Placing his finger on the blank three-by-five card next to the burnt butterflies, he rolled it from left to right until a clear fingerprint was visible. Carefully cutting off a length of scotch tape—one inch long; it had to be one inch long—he placed the tape over the fingerprint to protect it, then opened a small metal filing box and added the card to the others he’d made.

He put the box back into its niche on the shelf above his desk, then went into the kitchen, pouring himself exactly ten ounces of orange juice, drinking it in three complete swallows in less than twelve seconds. Immediately afterward, he went into the bathroom, closed and locked the door, pulled his pants down, sat on the toilet and defecated.

There was a moment of concern when he looked into the toilet afterward, but he took out his measuring tape and determined the length of the stool. He was okay. It was five inches exactly. More than three and less than six.

He sighed with relief.

All was right with the world.

4

When Brad got home, the girls were fighting again, and Patty was on the phone with her sister in Texas. He broke up the fight—apparently Sue had tried to play with one of Jillian’s dolls after Jillian had specifically told her sister that she could only touch her toys if she paid her a quarter or let her punch her arm ten times—and told both girls to apologize to each other and share their toys or neither of them would be playing with any toys for two days.