The Credit My Boss Took at My Retirement

Chapter 8

Kyle Dunn came to my house the Thursday evening before the route ride.

He knocked at the front door, which nobody does in Harlow, and stood on my porch holding his leather notebook to his chest like a schoolboy come to confess.

“Mrs. Lindgren, I’m sorry. I don’t have a right to be here.”

“Come in, Kyle. And it’s Gail.”

He sat on the edge of the couch. Dale brought him iced tea and then, with a tact I have never given him credit for, went out to the shed and shut the door.

Kyle took a folded sheet from the notebook and set it on the coffee table. It was a printed slide with the Reinholt logo, and across the top it read, “Standing Order Program, architected by the current management team, B. Tolliver and K. Dunn.”

Near the bottom was a line. “Payment terms, net 30.”

“Brad told me to put it that way,” Kyle said miserably. “It’s what the buyer’s analysts expect. I told him the terms are half at delivery and half at the check. He said nobody at Plains Valley would understand that.”

“Net thirty would break every dairy on that route by Christmas.”

“I know.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I’m not the person who built this, Mrs. Lindgren. I built a spreadsheet. A good one, I think. But I typed your cards into it. I typed your handwriting. I had to ask the drivers what the little marks in the margin meant.”

“The little marks mean the dog bites,” I said. He laughed once and then put his head in his hands.

“He made me stand there at your party and take a toast for something I didn’t do. I wanted to walk out. I’ve got a loan and a lease. I was a coward, and I’ve felt sick for almost two weeks.”

I looked at that boy a long moment. A younger me might have told him he deserved it. But I had been young once myself, with a daughter to put through school and a boss I could not afford to cross.

“How long did you know what he was telling the buyer?”

“Since the first week of September. I saw the draft deck. I didn’t know about the file room until after. I thought it was going to be scanned.” His voice cracked. “Dee told me it was gone.”

Through the open kitchen door he could see the six boxes against my wall. He stared. His mouth worked.

“Oh,” he said, very quietly. “Oh, thank God.”

I did not tell him how they got there. That was Dee’s to tell.

“I’m not asking you to do anything, Kyle. You have a lease.”

“I’ll tell them. If the man asks, I’ll tell him the terms are wrong.”

“You tell the truth when you’re asked,” I said. “Not a bit louder than that. It’s all anybody should have to do.”

He nodded, and then he said, “Is it true the little marks mean the dog bites?”

“Only at the Brandt place. The rest are mostly gates.”