Threading the Needle by Marie Bostwick Page B

to his, so close he must have felt the heat of my breath.
    â€œLoans?” I spat, pushing deep into Fletcher’s personal space and forcing him to back away. “The kind of loans your bank bought up in bundles without a second thought because there was money to be made off them and the opportunity was just too good to pass up?
    â€œPeople losing their homes because they’ve lost their jobs is a terrible thing. My husband obviously added to the misery of a lot of people and that’s why he’s in prison, paying for his crimes. Of course, I don’t understand all the ins and outs of what he did or how he did it. After all, I’m no financial expert. Not like you, Mr. Fletcher.
    â€œI wonder . . . a couple of years ago when you were raking in record profits, did you stop to think that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to make a loan to newlyweds with twenty thousand dollars in credit card debt who were both working for minimum wage? Did you stop to wonder why the paperwork on the loan application for a man who makes a living changing oil and rotating tires listed his income as a hundred thousand a year? Did you ask yourself what would happen when the two teachers who could well afford the five and a half percent teaser rate for their newer, bigger house woke up one morning and found the rate had adjusted to nine?”
    I glared into his piggy little eyes, daring him to answer. He opened and closed his mouth, a strand of saliva strung between his upper and lower lips stretching and shrinking, but no sound was forthcoming. I was too angry and too loud. Tellers and customers stared, some with grim smiles on their faces. I lowered my voice. But not by much.
    â€œYou know what they say, Mr. Fletcher, money is the root of all evil. And there are plenty of people guilty of perpetrating that evil. But not all of them are behind bars.” I reached out and pushed the dumbstruck banker out of my path with a sweeping gesture.
    A man waiting in the teller line clapped and called out, “Damn straight!”
    A couple more patrons joined in as I stormed out of the bank. Their applause filled me with a sense of righteous indignation—right up until the moment I went through the door and was hit by a blast of chilly autumn air and the realization that before the sun went down, everybody in town would know that Madelyn Beecher Baron, New Bern’s most infamous prodigal daughter, had returned.

10
    Madelyn
    I stood on the street feeling stupid. And angry with myself. By tomorrow half of New Bern would know about my run-in with Aaron Fletcher. A quarter of them would claim to have witnessed it personally. I could have kicked myself. Instead, I kicked a pebble and watched it skitter down the sidewalk in the direction of the Green.
    As I’d walked to the bank earlier, I’d noticed a bit of a bustle on the west end of the Green, near the church. There had been more than the usual number of cars parked nearby and quite a number of people setting up tables and tents, plus two men stringing long lengths of rope between trees. In summer, New Bern plays host to all kinds of events, everything from al fresco concerts and 10K runs to craft fairs and poetry readings. It was a bit late in the season for it, but I supposed this was just another one of those.
    But this event was larger than New Bern’s usual community function, much larger, with all kinds of different areas for crafts, and food, and carnival games. It took up the entire western half of the Green and spilled over onto the grounds of the church. The fair didn’t appear to be quite ready for business—people were still scurrying about setting up tables—but a crowd had already gathered. A few fair-goers wandered past the booths, but most were gathered near the trees, looking at rows of colorful quilts hung on ropes like freshly laundered rainbows.
    My pipe-dream plans for the day—hiring contractors to begin remodeling Beecher