“It’s kind of quiet!” Patty called from the kitchen. “Can you check on the girls, make sure they’re okay?”

That brought a round of giggling from the girls’ bedroom, and Brad smiled, standing up. “I’ll see what’s going on!” he said, loud enough for all of them to hear.

There were squeals, then silence, and he stomped loudly as he headed down the hallway. “Ready or not, here I come!”

THREE

1

It was a customer who told him.

As always, Kyle had parked this morning next to the metal trash bins in back of the store and had not gone outside since opening up. But when Rollie Brown came to trade in a bunch of Michael Connolly books for store credit, he happened to mention that the vacant space next to Brave New World was going to be home to a new bank.

Kyle frowned. “A bank? Are you sure? Seems kind of small for a bank.”

Rollie shrugged. “That’s what it says.”

Sure enough, when he went outside with Rollie to look, leaving Gary in the store, the adjacent space was no longer for lease. Not only was the Century 21 sign gone, but a new sign had gone up in its place, a square notice on the inside sill, leaning against the window, stating that this was to be “The Future Home of The First People’s Bank.”

“See?” Rollie said.

The First People’s Bank.

An interesting name, Kyle thought. Was it really the first people’s bank? Because he would be willing to bet there’d been others, if not in Arizona then in other states. And what exactly constituted a “people’s bank?” Or was it actually the first people’s bank? Which brought up the question: who were the “first people?” Native Americans? Was it owned by some tribe? Or were the first people some lost race that had been on Earth long before the rise of man?

This was why he never got anything done, he realized. He wasted his time on things like speculating about the etymology of names that had no meaning beyond commercial viability.

Kyle peered through the dusty glass. The single room inside was long and narrow, more suited to an ice cream parlor than a bank. Against the side wall opposite his own store, a built-in wooden counter ran most of the length of the space, and in the center of the floor lay a jumble of chairs and broken tables, along with a couple of empty cardboard boxes. It was the counter that had given him the idea of turning the place into a coffee bar, and he noted with regret that if the space was to become a bank, the counter would have to be demolished.

“You’re right,” Rollie said. “It is kind of small for a bank.”

Kyle nodded. “Yeah.”

Unfortunately, there went his hopes for expansion.

It had been a pipe dream, of course, particularly with the way things were going financially, but the death of any dream was hard to accept, and he walked back next door feeling oddly bereft.