The Woman Who Only Did the Books

He read it again. I watched his lips move on the big number.

“There’s ten thousand in the checking,” he said.

“There’s ten thousand in the checking because every other dollar this store ever made, your father and your brother and I turned back into bolts and paint and bearings, so that when a man pulls up at half past six in the morning, we have it.” I heard my voice start to rise, and I brought it back down. “The checkbook is not the store, Gary. The store is the store.”

He took off his glasses. He looked old, all at once. He is only fifty-five.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“I know you didn’t.”

“I looked at the balance and I thought, that’s it, that’s what all those years come to, and I thought five thousand was me being decent.” He put his hand flat on the page. “I never looked at one thing you did back there. Not in twenty-one years. Dad said you were the best thing that ever happened to this place, and I said yes, sure, and I never once looked.”

Ozzie closed the cash drawer very softly.

“That’s not all of it, though,” I said. “Is it? You didn’t want me out over money. You thought there wasn’t any money.”

He did not say anything for a long time. The rain came on harder.

“I can’t walk in the front,” he said at last. “That’s why I come in the alley. I come in the front and I hear him. He’d be right there, where you’re standing, giving somebody a hard time about the Vikings.” His voice had gone thick, and he was angry at it. “People came in here for Steve. They put up with me. I know that. I’ve always known it. And he’s gone, and I come down the aisle and you’re at that desk with his cup on the shelf, and it’s like he just stepped out for a minute. Every single morning I have to find out all over again that he didn’t.”

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“I thought if you weren’t here, it would quit,” he said. “I didn’t think I could run this place next to my brother’s widow. That’s the truth. It’s a sorry truth, but that’s it. And then you came out here in his apron.”

I was married to that man’s brother for twenty-two years, and I had never once seen Gary Meyer cry. Not at Harold’s funeral, and not at Steve’s.

I could have said a good deal then. I had earned it. I found I did not want it.

“I hear him too,” I said. “I found his want list in this pocket the first morning and cried all over the nail bins. Ask Ozzie.”

“She did,” Ozzie said. “I had to mop.”

Gary made a sound that was half a laugh.

“I’m not selling,” I said. “Not for five, and not for two hundred and twelve. And I’m not buying you out, either, so don’t offer. This was Harold’s, and he cut it in two for a reason, and my half is staying where Steve left it.”

“I can’t promise I’ll like it.”

“You don’t have to like it, Gary.” I untied the apron strings and tied them again, tighter, to have something to do with my hands. “You have to open on time.”

He looked at me.