Bandit by Molly Brodak

open. She walked straight in and said hello.
    People in black jackets and black FBI hats swarmed her, wanted to know who she was, what she knew, if she knew of any money anywhere, any guns. She was alone, fifteen years old. They were the ones to tell her what happened. They kept her in the dining room, away from the rest of the condo, which they were ripping apart.
    They showed her photos of him from the bank security cameras. At first she didn’t recognize him. The photos were grainy and he had on sunglasses and a moustache. “Is this your dad?”
    She looked, carefully. They flipped through more photos. At the sight of one, she sighed.
    “That’s my hat. My U of M hat. I was wondering where that was.” She slumped in the chair, crying, now certain. A dad wearing his daughter’s hat during a bank robbery: a photo of this happening. My sister felt some relief too in that moment, seeing the photo, knowing something about him for certain.
    The agent told her to call someone and pack a bag.
    Mom and I weren’t there. She didn’t know we’d gone camping. She kept calling and hanging up, the clicks recorded on our answering machine for us to find later.
    Eventually she called Grandpa, and he came to get her. As soon as they got back to Grandpa’s house, Dad called.
    I asked her about this call recently. What did he possibly have to say for himself in that phone call?
    “He wanted to know what happened. Not to me, but to his stuff. He kept asking if they went through his stuff, if they looked in his room. I said yes, obviously, Dad. He was annoyed with that only, said they had no right to do that or that it was illegal or something. I asked him if he did this, what they said he did, the robberies. He said no. Mistaken identity. I said, ‘I saw the photo of you, Dad, wearing
my
hat while robbing a bank.’ Not me, he said. He was totally calm on the phone. He dismissed it all in a funny way, like it was all a big joke,” she told me.
    Mom drove us to Grandma and Grandpa’s house while I asked questions. She said she knew he’d lost his job at GM a few months earlier and she’d been wondering where he’d beengetting his money. He’d lost his job over a car. Dad gave my sister a red Corvette in the spring as an early fifteenth-birthday present. She’d been driving it to school on her learner’s permit and was pulled over on a trip home. They didn’t tell her why, just put her in the back of the cop car and took her to the station. They called Mom to explain: the car was stolen, come pick up your daughter.
    It was a company car; Dad took it off the lot at the Tech Center without permission. It was reported stolen and Dad was fired. He’d been attempting to appear busy for two months.
    My sister said she noticed he was around a lot. He’d pick her up from school unexpectedly. Take her out to eat almost every night. He bought a cell phone for himself. He bought a new watch for himself. No job, but looser with money than ever before. And now that the ill-gotten Corvette was gone, he bought her a car: a used blue Pontiac Firebird. He’d just dropped it off to have the windows tinted.
    That night we sat with my grandparents and just talked, asked each other questions until there was nothing else to say. In the dark living room it would go quiet for a while, and Grandpa would ask, “But why would he do this?” and Mom would say, “Because he needed money!” and the room would go quiet again. Then Grandpa would ask the question again.
    My sister sat quietly. She didn’t look stunned. She looked angry. She chewed her fingernails and said nothing, just boiled, apart from us.
    We found out more when the story was reported on the late news. They said he had robbed banks all summer, elevenin all, and the FBI had been tracking him for a while, staking out banks, hoping to catch him at one.
    First he’d rent a car. Then drive to a hotel. He’d take the license plate off the rental, and switch it with any nicer-looking