By Sarah Banks

The portrait of Benjamin Franklin stared up at Amelia as she placed the stack of one-hundred-dollar bills into the currency validator. She pressed a green button, and the machine whirred as the bills disappeared, one by one, into the black, square-shaped box.

“I’m almost finished, Mrs. Davis. Just running the bills through this machine to make sure I have the count right.”

Amelia didn’t mention that the currency validator also detected counterfeit bills as she looked up at the middle-aged woman, a regular customer at the bank whose eyes crinkled when she smiled. She wore an oval-shaped diamond on her left ring finger. Withdrawing this sum of money was uncommon, so Amelia focused on counting and authenticating it.

“Thank you, Amelia. I’m just glad everyone here is so thorough.”

“Of course.”

Amelia smiled as Mrs. Davis’s phone rang.

“I’m going to go over there to take this.” She fished the cell phone out of her purse and stepped toward the empty bank lobby.

Amelia nodded, then looked back down at the currency validator. The machine hummed, steadily sorting the bills Mrs. Davis had withdrawn from her savings account before spitting one into a side compartment. Amelia frowned and grabbed the bill. She pulled a counterfeit-detection marker out of a cup and drew a line near Benjamin Franklin’s hair. Instead of fading to the yellow streak that reflected a genuine bill, the line settled into a dark, inky shade.

Amelia furrowed her brow and suppressed a sigh as she pulled a different marker from the cup. She drew a line on the opposite side of the bill, and the slash immediately turned black. The bill was counterfeit.

Dammit.

A customer must have slipped the phony bill into one of the deposits she had accepted yesterday. During the afternoon rush, Amelia had neglected to check some of the small deposits for counterfeits.

She looked over at Mrs. Davis. The woman talked on her phone with her back to Amelia.

If Amelia kept the bill, the bank would force her to absorb the loss and assign the shortage to her drawer. While the bank would overlook a teller who misplaced twenty dollars from time to time, a large deficit would register a ping on the company’s radar. She sighed and tapped her foot in rapid beats.

Amelia had narrowly made last month’s car payment after buying her daughter a bicycle for her birthday. This month, she’d dipped into her savings account to pull together enough money to replace her house’s old heating unit.

She imagined passing the counterfeit back to Mrs. Davis. Amelia pictured the woman using the fake bill to purchase a larger diamond for her ring. Maybe Mrs. Davis would use the money to pay a suspect surgeon to perform an eyelift instead. The jeweler or the physician would unknowingly accept the fake bill and then attempt to deposit the money at a bank.

Amelia’s gaze wandered toward the teller window adjacent to the wall. She eyed the keys dangling from the lock in the drawer. Where was Pam? Probably in the break room on her phone. Amelia had warned her about wandering off and leaving the money in her drawer unattended. She looked at the empty hallway leading toward the break room and felt a nervous tingle settle in her stomach.

She was staring at Pam’s drawer when a voice jolted her from her thoughts.

“Counterfeit bill, huh?”

Jamie, the bank manager, peered over Amelia’s shoulder.

“Good thing you ran it through the machine. Is that a deposit or withdrawal?”

“Withdrawal.”

“Yikes. So you’ll have to take it as a loss against your drawer.” Jamie crossed her arms. “Be careful. I know we get busy, but you need to take the time to check every deposit for counterfeits. Even the small ones.”

Amelia nodded and handed the bill to her manager.

“I’ll take care of reporting it,” said Jamie.

As she walked away, Amelia opened her drawer and removed a fresh one-hundred-dollar bill to replace the counterfeit. She ran her fingers over Benjamin Franklin’s portrait. A glossy sheen covered the crisp paper. She popped the top off the counterfeit-detection marker to check the bill’s validity and looked over at Mrs. Davis. The woman had her back to Amelia as she placed her phone into her purse. Amelia’s hand shook as the tip of the marker hovered over the bill, but before Mrs. Davis turned around, Amelia put the top back on the pen. She laid the new bill on top of the stack of money.

“I have your withdrawal ready, Mrs. Davis. Sorry for taking so long.”

“No problem at all. I know you’re just doing your job.”

“Yes, ma’am. Those machines are really helpful.” 

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep Ronnie around until our daughter has her baby in October.” She eyed the portrait of Benjamin Franklin. “Even pay cash for his treatments.”

Amelia ran her fingers over the money, then looked at Mrs. Davis. “I understand. We’d both do anything to help our families.”

Amelia passed the bundle of bills across the counter.

“I guess I’ll see you next month,” Mrs. Davis said.

Amelia smiled and nodded as Mrs. Davis perched a pair of sunglasses on her nose. She turned around and walked out of the bank as Amelia pushed the currency validator back into the corner of her station.

*    *    *

Sarah Banks is a nurse living in Mississippi. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appears or is forthcoming in Fiction on the Web and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her poetry appears in Rust & Moth, Thimble Literary Magazine, Autumn Sky Poetry, Lit Shark Magazine, and elsewhere. Sarah enjoys traveling and working in her garden.