Part 3 — The Frozen Account
The federal agent had a gentle voice on the speaker, and he said it twice so that everyone at the table could hear.
“Mrs. Odessa, the money never left the country. It is sitting in an account at a bank in Atlanta, and we have frozen it. Thirty-eight thousand, one hundred fifteen dollars.”
My daughter Renita let out a sound like a held breath.
“The man who wrote you is not a soldier. The photograph belongs to a real sergeant who has never heard of you. We have found eleven other women. You are the one who kept receipts.”
Nadine took my hand across the ham platter. Curtis had put down the carving knife and sat with his hands between his knees.
I had been called a fool at that table, and the paper in my Folgers can turned out to be the thread that unraveled the whole thing.
The agent explained what would happen. The account was frozen by court order, and the money would be returned through a process the government calls remission. It would take some months. In my case, because the receipts were all in order, it would take less.
Then Renita asked the question I had been waiting for her to ask. She asked Curtis about the nine machines.
He admitted it right there in front of her cousin and the ham. He had a problem with the casinos, and the ten days he handled my money had been the worst ten days of it. He said he had been telling himself he would put it back.
I did not call the sheriff on my own son-in-law. I told him that the six thousand, two hundred forty dollars would be repaid to me at five hundred a month, and that he would attend the Georgia gambling helpline meeting on Tuesday nights.
He nodded and looked at his plate.
In February, a cashiers check for the thirty-eight thousand arrived by certified mail. I sat in Earls truck in the carport and held it for an hour before I took it inside.
I put it into a credit union account with my daughter listed as a witness, not as an owner. She cried about that, and I told her that was how it should be.
In March I spoke at the senior center in Valdosta about the fourteen receipts. Forty-one women took notes.
That night I poured two cups of coffee, drank mine, and watered the geraniums with his. For once I did not feel like a woman talking to herself.