There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron Page B

categories, setting aside the occasional personally addressed envelope, and discarding junk mail and advertising circulars. She’d done this kind of thing countless times when the Historical Society acquired paper archives, separating the wheat from the chaff.
    When she had everything categorized and sorted by date, she stopped to assess. REMINDER. PAST DUE. OVERDUE. The words were in bold on envelope after envelope. Water, gas, electricity, heating oil bills: all were at least two months overdue.
    And yet there were also envelopes with checks. Social Security. Fireman’s pension. In all, the uncashed checks added up to about fifteen thousand dollars, plenty to pay off unpaid bills.
    Evie opened her mother’s latest bank statements. There was only five hundred in checking; a little over four thousand in savings. There’d been no activity in either account since mid-March. No deposits. No withdrawals. No nothing.
    She was afraid to open the latest credit card bill. But when she did, she found a zero balance due. Zero! She opened the three earlier statements. Her mother hadn’t even used the credit card in March, when the overdue balance had been more than eight thousand dollars with finance charges accruing to the tune of hundreds of dollars a month. In April that balance had been paid off in full.
    How had her mother paid the bill? Evie went back to the bank statements but found no checks corresponding to the payment. And how on earth was her mother managing to keep herself stocked with vodka and cigarettes, never mind cat food for strays, if she wasn’t withdrawing money or using her credit card?
    The only mail left to be sorted was about a dozen pieces that looked personal. There was the birthday card Evie had sent, unopened. Two more of the envelopes also looked like greeting cards. One turned out to be happy birthday from her mother’s dentist; another birthday card was from “Frank.” Of course, the neighbor who’d come over and introduced himself that morning. She put all three cards on the mantel.
    Finally, there were five identical brown envelopes, each with her mother’s name and address handwritten on the front. She picked up one of them. It was thick, as if a sheaf of papers was folded inside. The flap wasn’t sealed. Evie lifted it and looked inside. She pulled out a bundle wrapped in a sheet of white paper. She opened it up to find a stack of hundred-dollar bills.
    What on earth? Evie started to count them. When she got to twelve, the doorbell rang.

Chapter Eighteen
    Startled, Evie dropped the envelope. Cash scattered across the linoleum floor. As she scrambled to pick up the hundred-dollar bills and stuff them back into the envelope, there was a rap at the door and a voice. “Hey, Evie. It’s Finn.”
    â€œHang on. I’m coming,” she called as she cast about for somewhere to stash the cash-filled envelopes. She stuck them in the refrigerator’s veggie bin. Then she went to answer the door.
    Finn stood at the foot of the front steps. “Hope it’s okay I came by this late. I saw you were up.”
    He saw she was up? Then she realized that anyone on the street side could have seen in. She’d left the kitchen curtains open.
    â€œIt’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” Finn said, apparently unruffled by Evie’s silence. “So I brought you this.” He pushed forward a panel of plywood. “For the window. And you left this in the store.” He held out a six-pack of beer, raised his eyebrows, and gave her a tentative smile.
    Nice gambit. Evie hadn’t seen this guy in, what, decades? She felt safe with him, but she knew better than to go on instinct alone.
    He must have sensed her reticence, because he set the beer on a step. “Listen, never mind. I’ll just . . .” He propped the plywood panel against the front of the house, held up his hands, and backed away.
    How dangerous could a