Mr. Renna went to the file desk and put together loan papers for Enza. She watched him as he handed the secretary some forms to type. A few minutes later, he returned with a contract.
“Take this home. Look it over. Talk it through with your husband, because I need his signature on the loan. And then let me know how much you need.”
Enza smiled. “I can make a go of it, I know it!”
Renna showed Enza a ledger with a note in the margins. “Does your husband have a brother?”
“Yes. But he’s in Italy.”
“No, a brother here. There’s a safety deposit box in the bank, it’s under C. A. Lazzari.”
“His father was Carlo Lazzari. He worked here about fourteen years ago.”
“Would you like me to check?” Mr. Renna offered.
“Thank you.”
Renna went to check on the information regarding Carlo Lazzari’s accounts. Enza felt queasy, as she always did when the subject of Ciro’s father came up. She thought of the Italian expression, “If you truly love someone, when he is cut, you bleed.” Enza didn’t know if it was simply her empathy for her husband that made her anxious about his father, or the unanswered questions that surrounded his disappearance and death. After a few minutes, Renna returned to his desk.
“Well, the accounts are closed,” Renna explained. “But there’s an unclaimed safety deposit box.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin to look for a key,” Enza said.
“We keep them here.” Renna pulled a small silver key from his pocket and gave it to her. “I can show you to the vault.”
“Should I wait for my husband?” Enza looked down at the key in her gloved hand.
“You’re a signatory on all of your husband’s accounts, including the business. You are authorized to open the box if you’d like.”
Enza followed Mr. Renna through a steel gate to a large room with a marble floor. The walls were lined with small steel boxes, etched with numbers. Mr. Renna excused himself and went back out into the main floor of the bank.
Enza looked for Box 419. When she found it, she lifted the key to the lock. Her hand shook, though she hadn’t thought she was nervous. She turned the key in the lock and looked inside. There was one sealed envelope inside. She removed it. It was a plain white business envelope, with neither an addressee nor a return address, slightly yellowed with age.
Enza removed a hairpin from her chignon, carefully opened the seal, and pulled out a document. It read:
Burt-Sellers Mining Corporation
Hibbing, Minnesota
100 shares of common stock
Carlo A. Lazzari
Enza folded the stock certificate and returned to Mr. Renna’s desk. “I don’t mean to bother you,” she said, “but can you tell me what this is?”
Mr. Renna unfolded the stock certificate. His face broke into a wide grin. “Mrs. Lazzari, this is your lucky day. This stock is now worth a dollar a share. That is, if you sell it today. You can hold on to it, and watch it grow, if that’s your preference.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There are many safety deposit boxes in this bank with unclaimed stock certificates. After the mining disaster in 1904, Burt-Sellers almost went under. They couldn’t afford to make a cash settlement to each family, but reparation was clearly required. So they issued stock. Some of the men that died left no survivors. Others had provided no information for contacting their survivors. But each of them had a box in this bank. It was lucky that we thought to check today. We didn’t catch it when your husband and Mr. Latini came in for the loan. I guess you’d call this fate,” Renna said kindly.
On the trolley ride back to Chisholm, Enza guardedly peeked into the envelope over and over again, scarcely able to take in this stroke of luck. When the trolley pulled into the station, she ran down West Lake Street and burst into the shop. Ciro was buffing a pair of work boots on the brushes. She ran to him and flipped the switch of the machine off.
“Ciro, you are not going to believe it. I went to talk to the bank about my shoe business, and Mr. Renna found a safety deposit box in your father’s name. Since I’m a signatory, he let me open it. Look!” She handed Ciro the envelope. “Your father left you stock.” He sat down on the work stool and opened it as she prattled on with the details. “Honey, it’s worth a hundred dollars.”