The teller counted it out and slid the bills across, and Claire put them in her wallet and stood a second with her hand on the strap of her purse.

“That fee,” she said.

“Does it come out of the account or off the top of a withdrawal?”

“Out of the account.

It’s already done.”

In the car, she took out the spiral notebook and wrote two hundred in the column.

Two hundred and twelve dollars left to her name until Friday, and the gas tank under a quarter.

She called the hotel from the bank parking lot.