“It leaves you twenty-nine hours to wash and wrap eighty-eight thousand pennies,” he said.

He drew his raincoat tight across his waist.

“A regular school lunch runs three dollars and twenty cents.

Multiply that by twenty-three kids over four months and you can see the problem.

If even one penny is still loose in a bucket at the stroke of twelve, I can’t take it.”

“I’ll have them wrapped,” I said.

“I hope you do, Becky,” Vance said.

“Because once those collection notices go out, the county tacks a forty-five-dollar administrative fee onto every single family account.”