Playing Dead by Julia Heaberlin Page A

I’m going to be sick.” Sadie’s little body was dry heaving, bent over.
    Bobby being Bobby, he couldn’t shut up, and I was too busy holding Sadie’s hair back to stop him.
    “Your Granny never touched those cards again,” he persisted. “They had ducks on ’em, I think. I heard she burned ’em in a witch’s ceremony.”
    I took a threatening step forward and Bobby did what he did best. He ran.
    Granny turned the peaches Sadie and I gathered that day into twelve pretty jars of jam, but that batch always tasted bitter to me.

CHAPTER 9

    I turned the key over in my hand, grateful for the four-letter imprint on one side: “BOWW.” Otherwise, the search for a mysterious safe deposit box somewhere in the behemoth state of Texas—or maybe anywhere in the forty-eight contiguous states—could have swept us on a useless, consuming journey.
    Instead, it was almost too easy. Our search took approximately thirty seconds of old-fashioned thumbing through the Yellow Pages. There it was, a discreet ad in the bottom right corner of page 41. Bank of the Wild West, 320 West Third Street.
    Quaint. I’d never noticed it once in all my years of traipsing around downtown Fort Worth. It certainly wasn’t an institution I ever heard Daddy or Wade mention. What reason would Mama have to use it?
    “Mom, we’ve got to go,” Maddie said, tugging on her arm. “It’s almost three.”
    “We’re registering for school today,” Sadie told me apologetically. “The
M
through
Z
’s start signing in at three-thirty. And we’re wallpapering her locker with peace-sign paper and buying a Taylor Swift lunchbox. It’s been a long-standing date. Maybe we could go to the bank tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll be back by the time the bank closes.”
    She hesitated at the door. “So what are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to the bank.”
    I desperately didn’t want to go by myself. To open a box of Mama’s secrets in a strange bank without someone to catch me when the earth shifted. But, even more than that, I didn’t want to wait. Or involve Sadie and Maddie unnecessarily. I needed this to be over as quickly and cleanly as possible.
    “Tommie, are you sure? You don’t look … like you feel good.”
    I knew she was thinking about the lavender. Wondering if her tough, fear-no-bull big sister was going the way of her patients.
    “I’m fine,” I lied. “I’ll pick up the stuff, dump it in a bag, and bring it back here. We’ll open up everything together tonight.”
    Forty-five minutes later, an assistant bank manager quickly put that thought to death. Ms. Sue Billington strode over when I stepped into the Bank of the Wild West as if she were on a mission to sell me the latest Buick. She was dressed in a JC Penney uniform: navy blue two-piece suit, starched white shirt, suntan hose, and black Easy Spirit pumps. I saw a bulge on the left side near her size 12 waist. She was packing.
    She also carried invisible red tape, which she had been wrapping around and around my head for the last seven minutes. We glared at each other across her shiny, glass-topped desk, empty of everything but a computer, a phone, a pen, and a spanking-new empty yellow legal pad.
    Her voice was breathy, sweet, patronizing. I stared at her mouth, a leathery pink purse, the lines around it creased from an overgenerous application of Maybelline foundation a couple of shades too dark, maybe in an effort to match the suntan hose.
    The little mouth kept saying versions of “No way.”
    “I’m her daughter,” I tried again. I slid my driver’s license back at her, leaving a smudgy trail on the glass. “I’m her guardian. Mysister and I share control of all her legal matters. I have the key to her safe deposit box in my hand.”
    “Please lower your voice, ma’am. I heard you the first time and the second time.” She spoke slowly, reminding me of the Sunday School teacher who’d slapped me with a name tag that said “Sinner” after I’d raised my