The School Book My Brother Had Forgotten To Throw Away

I called Celia before I touched my toast.

"My father's name is on these refunds."

"I saw that," she said. "Was he still doing some office work?"

For a moment, I could only hear the fridge running.

"He died November seventh."

Her voice changed.

"Bring the packet tomorrow. Nine o'clock. My office behind the library."

"Mason will say it's an old stamp."

"Then we'll ask why an old stamp approved new cash."

I wrote down what she said. I needed words that stayed still.

At eight the next morning, Mason came to our duplex. Nora was eating cereal at the kitchen counter.

He put a key envelope on the table.

"I need these back by six."

"Our lease runs through December."

"This was a family arrangement."

I took our lease from the drawer where I kept school forms. His name was on it. So was mine. The rent receipts were clipped behind it.

"You asked me to sign it," I said. "You said good records kept family from fighting."

He pushed the empty envelope into his pocket.

"Fine. But don't expect favors."

"Was calling me a thief in front of my child a favor?"

He glanced at Nora.

"Go get dressed, honey."

"You don't get to call her that right now."

He lowered his voice.

"June, you answer phones. You don't understand how the books work. Let me handle this. Sign the statement, and I'll release your last check. Seven hundred forty dollars."

"Money I already earned."

"I'm trying to keep this from getting bigger."

"Then stop making it bigger."

He left without touching the lease.

At Celia's office, I laid Dad's funeral card beside the refund packet. I hated using his face that way.

Celia read both dates twice.

"This raises a serious question," she said. "It doesn't tell us who took the cash."

"I know."

"Do you have the cancellation records?"

I looked down at my hands.

In April, the hospital had started a free shuttle from Calder. Twenty-six of our booked rides were no longer needed. Each booking had been priced at two hundred forty dollars for the long round trip.

I had canceled them and sent the credit slips to Mason. He handled billing. The fund should never have been charged.

"The computer copies are at work," I said. "I'm locked out now."

"Any paper?"

"We had a three-sheet form. White for billing, yellow for dispatch, blue for the route book."

"Where's the route book?"

"Mason cleared the old shelves last week. He said the accountant wanted less clutter."

Celia stopped writing.

"Which accountant?"

"He didn't say."

She put a clean sheet in front of me.

"Write what you remember. Only what you saw or did yourself. Leave room where you aren't sure."

For two hours, I wrote dates, shift times, and who had taken each call. I left more empty spaces than I liked.

At noon, Celia told me the fund was holding new payments to Mercer Family Rides while it checked the records. Another service would cover the hospital trips.

"No one misses an appointment over this," she said.

I nearly cried at that. I had been so busy wondering how to save myself that I had pictured our regular riders waiting on porches.

When I picked Nora up from school, her teacher asked if we needed help. I said we might. Saying it hurt, but less than lying.

Nora waited until we reached the car.

"Are you looking for Grandpa's blue papers?"

I kept my hand on the door handle.

"How do you know about those?"

"For my community project. The book about getting people home."

I remembered Dad helping her make the cover before he got sick. A yellow van. A crooked road. Two cotton clouds.

She had kept adding pages after he died.

"Uncle Mason said I could have the thin copies when he cleaned," she said. "The ones with numbers, because they didn't have people's names."

"Where are they?"

"In my bag. I didn't glue them. You said never glue a real paper."

At our kitchen table, she unzipped a plastic pocket inside her project book.

Blue slips slid across the wood.

I sorted them by booking number while she counted aloud.

Twenty-six.

Across each one, I had written CANCELED. CREDIT FUND.

And across the last sheet, in my brother's sharp block letters, were five words.

HOLD ALL CREDITS UNTIL MAY.