“Good morning. I'd like to deposit this, please.”
The man who spoke stood at the front counter of Harbor Trust Bank with sawdust caught in the seams of his navy work jacket and a folded paper envelope in his right hand.
His boots were clean enough to keep mud off the polished floor, but the leather had been scuffed by years of climbing ladders and moving through unfinished houses.
A thin white streak of drywall compound crossed the cuff of his shirt, and there was a small cut beside his thumbnail that had not quite healed. Nothing about him suggested that he had come to the Main Street branch for anything more complicated than depositing his weekly wages.
Hannah Price looked up from her terminal and smiled. She had worked at Harbor Trust for eleven months, long enough to recognize which customers came in every Friday and which ones always wanted their receipts folded a certain way.
The man in front of her was unfamiliar, but he was holding the same sort of envelope she accepted a dozen times each day. “Of course, sir,” she said, sliding the deposit tray toward him. “May I see the check and the account information?”
He set down a check for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, accompanied by a deposit slip and a letter bearing the name Bell Construction. Hannah read the amount twice, not because she thought the check was fraudulent, but because the transaction was larger than anything she had personally processed that week. Beneath the amount was a notation identifying the Rose Bell Scholarship Fund, a restricted community education account administered through the bank. She straightened the papers and reached for the internal verification number printed on the check.
“I'll handle this one, Hannah.”
The voice came from behind her with the sharp, practiced authority of someone who expected every conversation to stop when she entered it. Sloan Mercer, the branch manager, crossed the marble lobby in a cream-colored suit and heels that clicked against the floor. Her hair was arranged into an immaculate shoulder-length wave, and a gold brooch marked with the Harbor Trust emblem gleamed on her lapel. She did not ask Hannah whether there was a problem; she simply reached past the young teller and took the papers out of her hands.
Sloan looked at the customer first, then at his boots, and finally at the check. Her expression changed from mild surprise to open disbelief, the sort of disbelief that seemed designed to make the other person feel foolish before a single question had been asked. “Did you take a wrong turn on your way to a job site?” she asked. The man glanced toward the revolving front door, then back at her, as though giving her an opportunity to decide whether that was meant as a joke. “No, ma'am,” he answered. “I'm exactly where I need to be.”
Sloan tilted her head. “And the hair?”
He touched the edge of his closely cropped hair, where pale sawdust was still visible. “What about it?” he asked. Sloan gave a short laugh and looked toward a man standing near the mortgage offices, inviting him to share in the moment. “Trent, do we have a dress code for customers?” she called. Trent Wallace, the assistant branch manager, grinned and answered, “We do now.”