Glass offices.
Soft lights.
People speaking in voices low enough to make every cough sound rude.
A small American flag sat near the manager’s desk behind the teller line, tucked between a computer monitor and a stack of brochures.
It was not dramatic.
It was just there.
Ordinary.
That was the part that bothered me later, when I tried to explain it to myself.
The biggest turns in your life do not always announce themselves with thunder.
Sometimes they happen under fluorescent lights while someone else is counting twenties three stations away.
I took a number from the kiosk and sat down.
9:11 a.m.
My ticket read B43.
I watched a woman in a navy coat deposit a check.
I watched an old man in a Bears cap put cash into a white envelope.
I watched a mother bounce a toddler on her hip while trying to sign something without dropping her purse.
Everyone looked like they belonged to a normal Tuesday.
I looked like I was there to erase a ghost.
The debit card in my pocket had been given to me five years earlier, on the day my grandfather was buried.
My grandfather’s name was Robert Donovan, though everyone called him Bob except me.
To me, he was Grandpa.
