Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
He opened the folder, revealing the neat stacks of paper certificates inside, each one printed with green borders and the face of a president. These were the Series EE savings bonds he had purchased during his thirty years at the grain elevator, buying one every month from his paycheck.
“Vince told the whole town I was losing my mind,” I said, pausing before the words came out. “He said it right there in the diner, in front of the boys from the township road crew.”
George did not look up from the folder. “Vince does not pay our taxes, and he does not keep our books. What he says in the diner does not change what is written on these papers.”
“He was so eager to call it a fake,” I said. “He did not even want to look at the picture.”
“Vince is not a man who looks closely at things,” George said, his fingers flipping through the crisp pages of the certificates. “He never was. He looks for the easiest way out of a room.”
