A Windfall in Herring Cove

The morning the checks arrived; Herring Cove was still shaking off the last stubborn clumps of April snow. The mail carrier-a stoic woman named Gloria-had braced herself against the wind as she trudged up each frozen front walk, doggedly delivering the day's bounty of circulars, utility bills, and, tucked into matching blue envelopes, the checks. By the time she finished her route, word had already begun to slither through the village.
No one could say exactly how the news first broke. Some swore that old Henry Parsons, cracked and cantankerous since his hip replacement, was the first to rip open the envelope and nearly choke on his bran muffin at the sight of so many zeroes. Others said it was the McKinley twins, twelve years old and always on the lookout for new ways to make a mess, who tore through the mail and yelled so loud their mother dropped her mixing bowl.
By eleven, the entire town was buzzing-literally, as over at Marnie's Hair Emporium, the phone was ringing off the hook with customers eager to gossip. Marnie, whose perm rods rattled with the force of her excitement, declared, "If this isn't a prank, I'll eat my own curlers!" She said this to Amos Burch, who had come in for his weekly trim and left with the clippings still stuck to the back of his neck, so deep was his preoccupation with the check.