The card terminal at the Oakhaven Grain Elevator counter chirped twice and printed a thin strip of pink paper into the metal tray.

Mark jabbed the glass screen with his thumb, pressing against the counter edge until his knuckle went white, then slid the black plastic card back into his leather billfold.

“System glitch,” Mark said with a smooth laugh, nodding at the clerk behind the wire cage.

“The regional bank updated their server overnight, so card processing is down across the whole county.”

The clerk tore off the pink rejection slip, balled it up, and tossed it into the wire wastebasket beside the grain scale.

I stepped closer to the edge of the wooden counter and adjusted the leather band of my silver wristwatch against my skin.

“That card draws straight from our main household checking account, Mark,” I said, keeping my voice low and even.

“I deposited three independent bookkeeping checks at the drive-through window on Friday afternoon.”

“Computer servers don’t care about Friday afternoon deposits, Nora,” Mark said, turning his shoulders toward the double glass doors.

“We’ll let the head teller sort out the transaction glitch tomorrow morning.”

He tossed his key ring into the air and caught it in his palm, the tiny brass lockbox key catching the yellow fluorescent light from the ceiling fixtures.

The question wasn’t whether our small-town bank branch had suffered a computer glitch on a quiet Tuesday morning.

The question was why eight hundred dollars of seasonal tractor maintenance money was missing from an account I managed down to the penny every single week.

By noon, Mark was sitting at our kitchen table under the fluorescent ceiling light with a red pen and a forty-two-dollar grocery receipt from the market on Main Street.

He drew a heavy red circle around the third line item and set the plastic pen down on the Formica with a sharp click.

“Two jars of peanut butter,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

“Why couldn’t you wait for the manufacturer coupons in the Sunday paper?”

Our ten-year-old son, Ben, sat nearby at the corner of the counter, pulling his feet back under his wooden stool so the tear in his canvas track shoe stayed hidden in the shadow of the table leg.