He went away, then returned with a grimy blue gym bag. He swung it onto the table and unzipped it.

The dank stench of compost wafted from the bag’s mouth and Patricia leaned forward and looked inside. It was stuffed with money: fives, twenties, tens, ones. The pain in Patricia’s left ear disappeared. Her breath got high in her chest. Her blood sizzled in her veins. Her mouth got wet.

“Can I touch it?” she asked, quietly.

“Go ahead.”

She reached out for a twenty, thought that looked greedy, and picked up a five. Disappointingly, it felt like any other five-dollar bill. She dipped her hand in again and this time pulled out a thick sheaf of bills. This felt more substantial. James Harris had just gone from a vaguely interesting man to a full-blown mystery.

“I found it in the crawl space,” he said. “It’s eighty-five thousand dollars. I think it’s Auntie’s life savings.”

It felt dangerous. It felt illegal. She wanted to ask him to put it away. She wanted to keep fondling it.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I wanted to ask you,” he said.

“Put it in the bank.”

“Can you imagine me showing up at First Federal with no ID and a bag of cash?” he said. “They’d be on the phone to the police before I could sit down.”

“You can’t keep it here,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I can’t sleep with it in the house. For the past week, I’ve been terrified someone’s going to break in.”

The solutions to so many mysteries began to reveal themselves to Patricia. He wasn’t just sick with the sun, he was sick with stress. Ann Savage had been unfriendly because she wanted to keep people away from the house where she’d hidden her life savings. Of course she hadn’t trusted banks.

“We have to open an account for you,” Patricia said.

“How?” he asked.

“Leave that to me,” she said, a plan already forming in her mind. “And put on a dry shirt.”

* * *

—

They stood at the counter of First Federal on Coleman Boulevard half an hour later, James Harris already sweating through his fresh shirt.

“May I speak with Doug Mackey?” Patricia asked the girl across the counter. She thought it was Sarah Shandy’s daughter but she couldn’t be sure so she didn’t say anything.

“Patricia,” a voice called from across the floor. Patricia turned and saw Doug, thick-necked and red-faced, with his belly straining the bottom three buttons of his shirt, coming at them with his arms spread wide. “They say every dog has its day, and today’s mine.”

“I’m trying to help my neighbor, James Harris,” Patricia said, shaking his hand, making introductions. “This is my friend from high school, Doug Mackey.”

“Welcome, stranger,” Doug Mackey said. “You couldn’t have a better guide to Mt. Pleasant than Patricia Campbell.”

“We have a slightly delicate situation,” Patricia said, lowering her voice.

“That’s why they let me have a door on my office,” Doug said.

He led them into his office decorated in Lowcountry sportsman. His windows looked out over Shem Creek; his chairs were made of burgundy leather. The framed prints were of things you could eat: birds, fish, deer.

“James needs to open a bank account, but his ID has been stolen,” Patricia said. “What are his options? He’d like to get it done today.”

Doug leaned forward, pressing his belly into the edge of the desk, and grinned.

“Darlin’, that’s no problem a’tall. You can be the cosigner. You’d be responsible for any overdrafts and have full access, but it’s a good way to start while he waits for his license. Those people at the DMV move like they get paid by the hour.”

“Does it show up on our statement at all?” Patricia asked, thinking about how she’d explain this to Carter.

“Nah,” Doug said. “I mean, not unless he starts writing bad checks all over town.”

They all looked at each other for a moment, then laughed nervously.

“Let me get those forms,” Doug said, leaving the room.

Patricia couldn’t believe she’d solved this problem so easily. She felt relaxed and complacent, like she’d eaten a huge meal. Doug came back in and bent over the paperwork.

“Where are you from?” Doug asked, not looking up from his forms.

“Vermont,” James Harris said.

“And what kind of initial deposit will you be making?” Doug asked.

Patricia hesitated, then said, “This.”

She unfolded a two-thousand-dollar check and pushed it across Doug’s desk. They’d decided depositing cash right away was a bad idea, especially given how seedy James Harris looked today. He’d already reimbursed her in cash, and it burned inside her purse. Her face burned, too. Her lips felt numb. She’d never written a check this big before.

“Excellent,” Doug said, not hesitating for a second.

“Excuse me,” James said. “How do you feel about cash deposits?”

“I feel good about them,” Doug said, not looking up as he exhaled on a notary’s stamp and smacked it across the bottom of the paperwork.

“I do a fair amount of landscaping,” James Harris said, and Patricia almost gasped. He couldn’t even go outside. “And a lot of my clients like to pay in cash.”

“As long as it’s under ten thousand we don’t bat an eye,” Doug said. “We like money around here. It’s not like you’re used to up north where they make you jump through hoops while singing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ to do with what’s yours.”

“That sounds fine,” James Harris said with a smile.

Patricia looked at his strong white teeth, gleaming and wet. The ease with which he’d lied made her doubt everything she’d done for him that morning and, for the briefest of moments, she felt like she’d gotten in over her head. On the ride home, James Harris’s gratitude and praise came nonstop, even as he got weaker, and she ultimately had to let him lean on her to walk from the van to his front door. She helped him onto his bed, helped him take off his boots, and then he took her hand.

“I have never had someone help me like this,” he said. “In my entire life, you are the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re an angel sent to me in my time of need.”

He reminded her of Carter when they’d first gotten married, back when the slightest effort on her part—making coffee in the morning, baking a pecan pie for dessert—had elicited endless hymns of praise. His enthusiasm disarmed her so much that when he asked her what they were reading for book club that month, well, she couldn’t help it: she invited him to join.

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

June 1993

CHAPTER 9

May had spun faster and faster, racing toward the finish line of school being out, and final exams, and report cards, and Korey was always studying at someone’s house, getting picked up, dropped off, sleeping over, and Patricia had to fix snacks for Blue’s homeroom end-of-the-year party, and teacher evaluations were due, and library fines had to be paid before report cards would be issued, and then on May 28 it all slammed to a stop. The kids were given summer reading lists, Albemarle Academy locked its doors, and June settled over the Old Village.

The days dawned noonday hot, and gas tanks hissed when you took off their caps. The sunlight fell hard and sharp, and insects roared in the bushes, only taking a break in the dead hour between three and four in the morning. Windows came down and doors shut tight. Every house became a hermetically sealed space station, central air hovering around a chilly sixty-eight, the ice maker rattling all day until around seven o’clock in the evening when it started making a grinding sound and just spat a few chips of watery ice into glasses, and physical exertion seemed like too much effort, and even thinking hard became exhausting.

Patricia really and truly meant to tell the book club that she’d invited James Harris to their next meeting, but the heat sucked the determination from her bones, and by the time the sun went down every day she barely had enough willpower left to cook supper, and she kept putting it off and putting it off, and finally it was the day of book club and she thought, Well, maybe it’s better this way.

Everyone settled into her living room with their glasses of wine, and water, and iced tea, blotting the backs of their necks with Kleenex, fanning their faces, slowly reviving in the air conditioning, and Patricia thought this would be the perfect time to say something.

“Are you all right?” Grace asked. “You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin.”

“I just remembered the cheese tray,” Patricia said, and went to the kitchen.

Mrs. Greene stood by the sink washing Miss Mary’s supper dishes.

“I’m going to give Miss Mary a bath before bed,” she said. “Just to cool her down some.”

“Of course,” Patricia said, taking her cheese tray out of the fridge and stripping the Saran Wrap from it. She balled it up and then stopped, wondering if she could use it again. She decided she could and left it beside the sink.