“Because I sold the stores, Dorothy,” I said, and I gave the mother of Greg a smile. Her name is Dorothy Kraft, and she wore the fur coat as if it had been poured on her. “In September, Big Sioux Bait and Tackle was bought by a national outdoor company. All four stores. Four million eight hundred thousand dollars.” I pointed to the page. “That is the contract. And the other page is the Treasury statement.” The boutique had gone quiet. The candles flickered in their forty dollar jars. Jennifer, still on her little stool with her glass of champagne, set it down on the shelf with exaggerated care, like a girl in a play who had forgotten the next line.
Dorothy Kraft took off her glasses and cleaned them on the fur, a slow, deliberate act. “Jennifer,” she said, “you told us this shop was financed by the savings of your own. You said you had saved for ten years.” Jennifer said, “I did.” Dorothy said, “From what?” Jennifer said, “From my work.” Her voice rose a little at the end, the way a girls voice does when she is not sure she will be believed. Greg put down the champagne bottle. He is a thin, anxious man who sells insurance, and he looked at his wife for a long moment. “Jen,” he said, “where did the money come from?”
I answered for her, gently. “Twenty two savings bonds, Greg. Series EE. My husband Walt bought one every year on our anniversary, for thirty five years, and I gave them to my daughter two years ago for safekeeping, because she said I would lose them.” I smoothed the statement flat. “They were redeemed, all twenty two, by Jennifer Anderson Kraft, under the power of attorney that I signed after my hip surgery. Thirty eight thousand six hundred and forty dollars.” My voice thinned. “Bond L 5583 was the one he bought the year she was born. It had her name printed on the front.”
A bond statement left on a desk in a boutique back room brought a fur coated mother to a ribbon cutting and gave one bait shop owner the afternoon to bring her daughter back to the ledger.
Jennifer sat down on the stool as though her knees had been cut. For a moment she looked exactly as she had at six, in the kitchen of the old house on Twelfth Street, with a stolen box of my chocolates and a smear across her chin. “Mom,” she said, “I was going to put it back.” I said, “With what, Jenny?” She had no answer. She was crying now, quietly, and Greg, who had backed away to the wall, was staring at the floor. “The shop was losing money from the first week,” she said. “I needed to pay the rent. I did not want anyone to see that I had failed.”
Dorothy Kraft put a hand on the arm of her son. “Greg,” she said, quietly, “did you know?” Greg shook his head. “I swear it, Mother. I thought it was the inheritance.” He turned to me, and I saw that his eyes were wet. “Phyllis, I would never have let her. I am so sorry.” I said, “I believe you, Greg.” And I did. It is a strange comfort, to know that a stranger is innocent, when your own blood is not. Dorothy let out a long breath, and the room let out its breath with her, and somebody at the back began, awkwardly, to pick up a fallen napkin.
I stood in the middle of that white shop, in my best blue dress, and I spoke the way I had once spoken to a roomful of customers on the morning of a flood. “Everyone, I am sorry for the scene. This is a family matter, and I would ask you to forgive it.” I looked at my daughter. “Jennifer, this is what I will do. I will not report this to the police. I will not ask for the bonds back, because they are spent. But the boutique will repay me thirty eight thousand six hundred dollars, a little each month, over six years. And I will keep the books.”
“You,” said Jennifer, wiping her face. “You will keep the books?” I said, “I kept the books of four stores for forty years, Jenny. I can keep the books of one boutique.” A shaky laugh escaped her. “Mom, I do not know the first thing about inventory.” I said, “Neither did I in 1977. Your father and I learned with a shoebox and a pencil.” I reached out and took her hand, which was cold and damp. “Come to my kitchen on Mondays. I will show you how to read a ledger. And I will tell you which of your candles will never sell.”
She came the first Monday with a notebook. She sat at my table with her pen poised, her hair pulled back, and I saw her father in the line of her jaw. We spent three hours on the numbers. The shop, it turned out, was not hopeless. Her pricing was wrong, her hours were wrong, and the candles were far too dear. But the sweaters she had imported from Norway sold out in a day, and a nearby bridal party had asked about a custom order. “Jenny,” I said, “you have a good eye. You only lacked a ledger.” She looked at me, stunned and shining. “Mom, you are telling me I am good?”
I said, “I have always known it, dear. I only did not know how to say it without sounding like a person selling worms.” She burst out laughing, then crying, then laughing again, and fell across the table into my arms, and the notebook slid to the floor. By spring, the boutique had turned a small profit. By fall, she had repaid the first six thousand. She framed the Treasury statement and hung it in the back room, over her desk. Not as a shame. As a reminder. Beside it, in a smaller frame, hung a faded photograph of her father, holding a nightcrawler.
On the first Mothers Day after the opening, Jennifer came to my door with a small paper bag. Inside was a single Series EE bond, newly bought, in my name, for twenty five dollars. “It is the first,” she said, “of twenty two. I will buy one on every anniversary of the opening, until I have put them all back.” I turned the bond over in my hand. The paper was crisp and green. The date was printed in black. I did not say anything for a while. Then I went to the drawer and found a pen, and wrote the date on the back, the way Walt always had, and we sat down together to tea.
