I carried a stranger’s purse out of the ladies’ room at my dad’s plumbing supply and set it on my stepmother’s desk without unzipping it. She went gray and shoved it in a drawer. By ten-fifteen Dad had me in his office over $6,840 and said, “Your mother raised a thief.” Then he unzipped it.
Mom’s name was still on the sign out front in Altoona, and Dad had promised me her half of the business the day he hung it up.
Dawn married him two years after the funeral, and she’d asked about that half at every Easter since.
The purse was sitting on the case of paper towels next to the sink, ten to eight on a Monday.
Cream leather. A gold zipper pull. A long strap tucked under it.
Nobody who buys PVC elbows from us carries a bag like that.
Three women use that bathroom: me, Dawn, and Shalini, who comes in Thursdays to do the books.
And I’d stacked that case of towels there myself Friday at six, right before I locked the back door.
So whoever put it down had been in the building over the weekend.
I didn’t open it.
Mom always said you don’t go in another woman’s purse unless she’s dead or she asked you to.
I carried it by the strap down the hall and laid it on Dawn’s desk, right on top of the timesheets.
“Somebody left this in the ladies’ room,” I said. “On the paper towels.”
Dawn looked at the purse.
Then she looked at me, and the color went out of her face from the forehead down, like a sink draining.
“On the towels,” she said.
“Yeah. Is it yours?”
She picked it up with both hands, pulled open her bottom drawer, dropped it in and shut the drawer with her knee.
“Thanks, Kristine. Go open the counter.”
That was all.
She never asked whose it was.
She didn’t ask anything.
I flipped the sign and unlocked the front door.
Jody was already behind the counter with his coffee, sorting a carton of brass fittings into the bins.
“Your dad’s been on with the bank since seven,” he said. “Twice. You know what that’s about?”
“No.”
“He’s slamming drawers back there. Dawn was in with him before you pulled in.”
I rang up a man for two wax rings and a flapper, and I gave him change for a twenty when he’d handed me a ten.
He gave it back. He was nice about it.
I kept reaching for the hook by the time clock out of habit.
My spare car key had been gone off that hook since Thursday, the one on the green beaded lanyard Mom made me, and I’d emptied my whole car looking for it.
At 10:15 the counter phone buzzed. Line one. Dad’s office.
“Get back here,” he said, and the line went dead.
Dad’s door was never shut.
It was shut.
I knocked and went in, and Dawn was standing by the filing cabinet with her arms folded, and the cream purse was sitting in the middle of Dad’s desk blotter.
Dad didn’t look at me. He looked at the purse.
“Close the door.”
I closed it.
“Friday’s deposit,” he said. “Who counted it?”
“I did. Same as every Friday.”
“How much.”
“Six thousand eight hundred forty. Cash and checks. I zipped it, I put it in the safe, I spun the dial.”
“And Saturday morning Dawn opened that safe to run it to the bank,” he said, “and there was NOTHING in there.”
Dawn didn’t move. “I told him exactly what I saw, Kristine.”
“Then somebody else got in it,” I said. “Three people know that combination, Dad.”
He stood up so fast his chair bounced off the wall.
“Don’t you DARE put this on her.”
“I’m not putting it on anybody. I brought her a purse.”
“You brought her a purse,” he said. “Two days after my money walks out of my own safe. That’s real convenient, Kris.”
“I DIDN’T EVEN OPEN IT.”
He came around the desk.
He’s sixty-eight and he still moves like he’s got a water heater on his shoulder.
“Your mother raised a thief,” he said. “And I’m done paying one.”
I put my hand on the back of the chair and kept it there.
“You’re finished. Leave your keys on the counter on the way out.”
“Dad.”
“And you can forget her half. I’m calling Ekstrom after lunch about the papers.”
Dawn ran one long nail along the edge of the cabinet drawer. She was looking at the carpet.
“Nineteen years,” I said. “I’ve never walked out of here with a roll of TAPE I didn’t pay for.”
“Moses,” Dawn said. “Just let her go home. We don’t need a scene with Jody out there.”
It was the first time she’d looked up at either of us.
“No,” I said. “Open it.”
Dad stared at me.
“You think I put something in there? Then open it. RIGHT NOW. IN FRONT OF ME.”
“Moses,” Dawn said again.
He didn’t answer her.
He pulled the purse toward him and got his thumb on the little gold zipper pull, and it slid off twice.
Then he unzipped it and tipped it over the blotter.
Out slid the bank’s blue deposit bag, slit open along the top.
It was nearly flat.
And under it, clicking on the desk, was my spare car key on its green beaded lanyard.
Dad lifted it by the beads and held it right up in front of my face.
“So go on, Kris,” he said. “Tell me what YOUR key is doing in there.”
The check beside the purse
“That’s the car key I’ve been looking for since Thursday.”
I took the lanyard out of his hand and laid it flat. He’d wound the beads around two fingers. Mom strung those beads while she was sick, and the cord wasn’t made to tow a father.
“Somebody took it off the hook,” I said. “It doesn’t open the safe. It doesn’t open this building.”
“It identifies the purse.”
“No. It identifies my key.”
Dawn moved away from the cabinet.
“Kristine, nobody wants this to get worse.”
Dad put a check beside the purse. My name was on it. Nine hundred twelve dollars and forty-six cents.
Dawn had found time to do my final pay.
I reached for it. Dad put his palm down.
“After we settle this.”
I pulled the chair out and sat. My legs were doing a poor job of pretending they belonged to a woman who could leave whenever she wanted.
“Turn the bag over,” I said.
He picked up the blue bag, shook it once and dropped it. Nothing came out.
“The purse. All the pockets.”
“We’ve looked.”
“You looked without me.”
Dawn put a finger on the check.
“I calculated everything through this morning. You won’t have to come back for anything.”
She’d included the quarter hour during which my father called me a thief. Thorough woman. You couldn’t fault her for loose ends.
I held the purse open while Dad pushed his hand into its pockets. There was nothing else in it.
No wallet. No lipstick. No crumpled receipt for something bought and regretted.
“Whose purse is it?” I said.
Dawn looked at Dad.
He said, “That’s what you’re going to tell us.”
I pushed the check away from her finger.
“Call Shalini.”
“She doesn’t work Mondays.”
“Then she can charge for a Monday.”
Dad leaned across the desk.
“You don’t give orders here anymore.”
Mom’s drawer
The first time Mom made me stay late over money, we were short eleven dollars.
I was twenty-four and certain she could afford eleven dollars. She was certain I could afford to learn subtraction. We expressed these views across the counter for twenty minutes.
“Take it out of my pay,” I said.
“Count the drawer.”
“I counted it.”
“Then you’ll be quicker the second time.”
She brought her office chair out and sat beside me. Her knee hurt, but she wouldn’t go home while I was still there.
Dad stood in the doorway with his coat on.
“Give her the eleven, and let’s eat.”
Mom pointed at the register.
“She’s not buying her way out of a mistake we haven’t found.”
We took the whole drawer out. Two fives and a one were tucked behind it, pushed through the gap when I’d closed it.
Mom spread the bills on the counter.
“There. Your money can stay in your pocket.”
Then she made me put the drawer back myself. She loved me dearly and still expected me to finish a job.
Dad kissed the top of her head.
“That’s why she runs this place,” he said.
I kept that evening in my head longer than the eleven dollars warranted. Years later, when somebody wanted to pay a shortage just to get home, I pulled the drawer out.
Mom’s office desk had become Dawn’s desk.
The bottom drawer still dragged unless you lifted it. Mom kept bank bags in there and the receipts she couldn’t bring herself to throw away. Dawn cleared those out her first week.
“There’s no reason to keep all this,” she’d said.
I stood beside her with a carton, catching Mom’s handwriting before it reached the wastebasket.
Dad said Dawn was helping. She could handle payroll so I could concentrate on the counter. Everybody would have a place.
Dawn was good at offering help while you were carrying something heavy. By the time you set it down, she’d decided where you ought to stand.
The half Dad promised me stayed a promise.
When Ekstrom sent papers for Dad to consider, Dad put them aside. We were busy. Then it was tax time. Then Dawn wanted to know whether it would affect their retirement.
At Easter she could work the word half into a discussion of potatoes.
I wanted Mom’s share. I also wanted Dad to hand it to me without my having to drag it out of him in front of his wife.
So I kept working.
The Friday before the purse, Dad stood over me while I finished the deposit. The blue bag’s zipper stuck near the corner.
“Buy new ones,” I said.
“That one’s got another year.”
I worked it shut with the little pliers we kept by the register. Dad put his coat on and left me to lock up.
Earlier that week, Dawn had been clearing the wall around the time clock.
“This isn’t everybody’s kitchen,” she’d said.
My spare key hung there because whoever parked behind my car could move it. Mom’s beads made it easy to find.
By Thursday afternoon, the hook was empty.
Now those beads lay beside a check I wasn’t allowed to take.
Dad pushed the chair toward the desk with his knee.
“Are you going to tell me where my money is?”
The empty blue bag
“Did you open the safe yourself Saturday?”
Dad put both hands on the desk.
“Dawn opened it.”
“But did you look?”
“She told me it was empty.”
Dawn made a little sound through her nose.
“We’ve been through this, Moses.”
“We haven’t,” I said. “You two have.”
Dad went around me to the safe. It sat against the wall behind his chair, where Mom could reach it without getting up.
He turned the dial, opened the door and pulled out the things inside.
A bank bag. The change envelope. Nothing with Friday’s deposit.
“There.”
“Did you look there Saturday?”
“No. I believed my wife.”
I wanted to ask whether believing his daughter required a subscription. Instead I pointed at the blue bag on the desk.
“That zipper was stuck Friday. You were there.”
“So?”
“So somebody cut it instead of opening it.”
Dawn folded her arms again.
“And?”
I didn’t have an answer that would make him move his hand off my check.
The bag being cut proved somebody wanted inside it. Dad had decided who. Every question I asked was another minute he had to spend listening to a thief argue about her technique.
“Call the bank again,” I said.
“They don’t have the deposit.”
“Ask whether it could have gone in without the bag.”
“I asked that.”
“Put them on speaker.”
He slapped the desk.
“I know how to talk to a bank.”
Dawn stepped between us, although we were separated by enough furniture to furnish a waiting room.
“She needs a minute,” she said to Dad. “Let her get her coat. We’ll discuss the rest when she’s calmer.”
I was sitting down. Dad was standing over me with his hand on my wages. But I was the one who needed calming.
“What’s the rest?”
Dawn looked at the check.
“How you make this right.”
“Say it.”
“Kristine.”
“Say what you want me to do.”
She took a breath through her nose.
“Your father has a business to protect. There has to be an accounting. We can’t pretend six thousand dollars just disappeared.”
“Six thousand eight hundred forty.”
“I know the amount.”
“Then use it.”
Dad pulled a pad toward him.
“Enough. You were last in the safe Friday. Your key was in that purse. You carried it in this morning.”
“I carried it to her.”
“After leaving it in the bathroom.”
“I found it in the bathroom.”
He wrote something on the pad.
I leaned forward. He turned it away.
“What are you writing?”
“What you just told me.”
“Then turn it around.”
Dawn touched his shoulder.
“Moses, don’t get pulled into an argument over every word.”
He kept writing.
I could see my name upside down. Under it, the amount.
My father used a ruler to underline numbers on order forms. He’d complain about a supplier’s mistake until somebody sent a corrected copy.
Now he was writing down that I’d stolen money, and he wouldn’t let me read the sentence.
“I want Jody in here.”
“No,” Dawn said.
Dad stopped writing.
“Why?”
“Because he saw me bring the purse down the hall.”
Dawn took her hand off Dad’s shoulder.
“He saw you carrying it,” she said.
She opened the office door herself.
Jody’s coffee
Jody came in holding the coffee he’d been drinking before I opened the store.
It had to be cold by then. He held it anyway.
Dad pointed at the chair beside mine.
“Tell us about the purse.”
Jody stayed standing.
“What about it?”
“When you saw Kris with it.”
He looked at me, then at Dawn.
“I was coming in the back. She had it on her arm.”
“By the strap,” I said. “I was taking it to Dawn.”
“Right.”
“Did you see me come out of the bathroom?”
“No.”
Dad put his pen down.
“Did you see her bring it in from her car?”
“No. I came through the back door. She was in the hall.”
Dawn tilted her head.
“But she was carrying it like her own bag.”
Jody rubbed his thumb over the lid.
“I guess. I didn’t think anything about it.”
I looked down at my arm.
There are only so many ways to carry a purse. You can use the strap or put it on your head. I’d chosen the incriminating one.
“Jody. You heard me say somebody left it.”
“Afterward, yeah.”
“At her desk.”
“Yeah.”
Dawn turned to Dad.
“That’s what I told you.”
It wasn’t what she’d told him in front of me. But Jody had supplied her with on her arm, and she was taking it home.
Dad asked him whether I’d seemed upset that morning.
Jody’s coffee lid made a clicking sound under his thumb.
“She was distracted.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.”
“The money,” Dawn said.
“My key,” I said.
Nobody moved.
Jody had worked that counter with me long enough to know which customers needed a hand loading and which ones just liked having an audience. We’d covered each other’s lunches. He’d carried Mom’s chair to my car after she died.
I waited for him to tell Dad that this was ridiculous.
Instead he said, “If there’s some way to square it up, Kris, maybe you should.”
That did more damage than Dad’s shouting.
“Square what up?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
“No. Finish it.”
He looked at the floor.
“I’ve got somebody waiting.”
Dad waved him toward the door.
I stood up with him.
“Can I get my coat?”
Dawn moved aside so quickly the answer was plain.
At the counter, Jody put his coffee down and grabbed a box for the customer. He didn’t look at me while he wrote the sale.
I took my coat off its peg. My name was still on a strip of tape above it.
A customer at the far end lifted a fitting.
“Kris, is this the one I need?”
Before I could answer, Dawn came out of the hall.
“Jody will help you. Kristine isn’t working here anymore.”
He lowered the fitting.
I put my coat back on the peg.
Dawn’s mouth opened.
“I’m making a call,” I said.
“You can do that outside.”
I took my phone from my pocket.
The customer turned away. He’d come for a fitting and got the family discount on humiliation.
Jody kept his eyes on the order form.
I called Shalini.
Dawn went back down the hall before she answered.
The call beside the time clock
Shalini answered with, “Is the printer doing that thing again?”
“No.”
I put my hand over my other ear. A truck was backing toward the loading door, and I didn’t want to repeat this.
“Dad says I took Friday’s deposit. He’s fired me.”
She didn’t answer straightaway.
“Where are you?”
“By the time clock.”
“Where’s your father?”
“In his office with Dawn.”
“Put me on speaker.”
Dawn appeared in the hall.
“She’s not on the schedule today, Kristine.”
Shalini heard her.
“Neither was this.”
I held the phone between us.
Dad came out and took it from my hand.
“We’ve got it under control,” he said.
“Then tell me what happened.”
He gave her the version he liked. Missing deposit. My purse. My key.
“Not my purse,” I said.
He turned his shoulder.
Shalini asked whether the total was from Friday’s closing sheet.
“Yes.”
“And you’ve counted what’s here?”
“The bag’s empty.”
“What about the checks?”
“Missing.”
“All of them?”
“That’s what missing means.”
Shalini had done our books long enough to let that pass without rewarding it.
“I’ll come over,” she said.
Dad started to object.
“If you want the books right, I need to know what I’m entering.”
He handed the phone back.
Dawn waited until I ended the call.
“Now you’ve involved somebody else.”
“She’s the bookkeeper.”
“She’s going to have to charge us.”
I nearly offered to put it on my tab. Apparently I had one now, and it was large.
Instead I walked back to Dad’s office.
My key was gone from the blotter.
“Where is it?”
Dad pointed at his top drawer.
“That’s staying here.”
“It’s my car key.”
“It’s part of this.”
I held out my hand.
He didn’t open the drawer.
For a minute I was eight years old and he’d taken something away until I behaved. Then Dawn came in behind me and shut the door.
I was forty-three. The wages on the desk wouldn’t cover a month of my bills. My mother’s beads were in his drawer, and the business I’d expected to spend my life running had become somewhere I needed permission to stand.
Dawn sat in the other chair.
“Moses and I want to resolve this inside the family.”
“I thought you wanted me gone.”
“We want you to understand how serious it is.”
Dad slid the pad toward me.
He’d written that I accepted responsibility for the missing deposit.
Under that, he’d written that my final wages would go toward repayment.
There was another sentence about having no further claim on the business.
I read it twice.
The second time, I put my finger under no further claim.
Dawn leaned forward.
“That just means we can all move on.”
I pushed the pad back.
She caught it before it reached Dad.
“You haven’t read the whole thing.”
“I read the price.”
The line for my name
Dad took the pad from her.
“There’s no price. You can’t steal from a place and expect to own it.”
“I didn’t steal.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep saying I did.”
Dawn stood and moved behind his chair.
He looked tired. I hated that I could still tell. There was a place beside his nose he rubbed when an order was late or his knee hurt, and his finger went there.
I almost offered to make him coffee.
That’s the part I don’t enjoy admitting. He’d called me a thief, and some well-trained corner of me still wanted to get the man a beverage.
“Write down what I actually said,” I told him.
“I’m giving you a way to keep this between us.”
“You told Jody.”
“He works here.”
“You told a customer.”
Dawn lifted her hand.
“I told him you weren’t working. Would you prefer I let you keep making sales while this was hanging over us?”
I looked at Dad.
He didn’t correct her.
“Call Ekstrom now,” I said. “Read him what you want me to sign.”
“We’ll handle the papers after lunch.”
“With me here.”
“You’re not making conditions.”
Dawn put the pad in front of me again and set Dad’s pen across it.
“You can refuse. But then your father has to decide what to do next.”
“What are you asking him to do?”
“I’m asking you to spare him that.”
She could make a threat sound like she was reminding you to take an umbrella.
The pen rolled toward my wrist. I picked it up.
Dad sat back.
Dawn stopped moving.
I crossed out the sentence about repayment. Then I crossed out the sentence about the business.
Dad reached for the pad.
“Don’t.”
I wrote underneath: I did not take the deposit. I found the purse and gave it to Dawn unopened.
I signed that.
Dawn pulled the paper toward herself.
“This doesn’t help.”
“It helps me.”
Dad tore the sheet off the pad. For a second I thought he would tear it in half, and I was ready to come over the desk for a piece of paper with my own name on it.
He put it beside the purse instead.
“Fine. Then we’re done.”
I took my store key off my ring.
It was difficult. The split in the ring kept slipping under my thumbnail. Neither of them offered to help, which was fortunate. I couldn’t have survived being helped kindly through my own firing.
I laid the key on his pad.
Dad looked at it.
He didn’t take back one word.
“You can collect the rest of your things later,” Dawn said. “I’ll pack them.”
“No.”
“There’s no need to keep everyone here all day.”
“You’re not packing my things.”
Dad stood.
“Go home, Kris.”
I stood too.
From the counter came the sound of Jody laughing at something a customer said. Business was carrying on. Somebody needed a coupling. Somebody had forgotten the size. I could have gone out there and answered without looking in the bin.
Dad held the door open.
I walked past him to get my coat.
Dawn followed me, close enough that I could hear her shoes stop when mine stopped.
At the peg, Jody said, “Shalini’s here.”
She came through the front door carrying the bag she brought every Thursday.
Dad started toward her.
“We don’t need to make a production of this.”
Shalini looked at my coat, then at the key ring in my hand.
“Have you finished counting?”
Dawn said, “There’s nothing to count.”
I pulled one sleeve of my coat on.
Dad stayed by the office door. He didn’t ask me to stay.
I took the sleeve off again.
“Then it won’t take long,” I said.
The bottom drawer
Shalini put her bag on the counter.
Dawn stood beside it.
“You understand this isn’t a regular bookkeeping visit.”
“I understand I’m here to account for a missing deposit.”
Dad pointed down the hall.
“We can talk in my office.”
I stayed where I was.
I wanted to leave so badly my hand was still inside my coat pocket, holding my everyday car key. I could get in the car. I could sit somewhere nobody knew that my father thought I’d stolen from him.
Then I could spend the afternoon finding enough money to last until another job paid me.
The check was still on his desk.
“Before you take my wages,” I said, “we count.”
Dad turned.
“We counted the safe.”
“And the purse?”
“We emptied it.”
“After it spent more than two hours in Dawn’s drawer.”
Dawn’s head came around.
“Be careful, Kristine.”
I took my hand out of my pocket.
“That purse went from the bathroom to your desk. You put it in the bottom drawer. Then it came to Dad’s office.”
“And?”
“Count the drawer.”
Shalini looked at Dad.
“That’s reasonable.”
Dawn laughed once.
“Is it? We search my desk because she doesn’t like what’s in her purse?”
“Not my purse.”
Dad held up his hand.
“Nobody’s searching anybody.”
“Then give me my check,” I said. “And don’t write that I owe you money you haven’t looked for.”
He glanced toward the counter. Jody stood at the register, close enough to hear every word.
I nearly called him over. Then I let him decide where he wanted to be.
He turned the front sign to closed and locked the door.
Dawn pointed at him.
“We’re open.”
“We’ve got nobody in here,” he said.
There was one person in that building who could have sent me outside and ended the counting. Dad stood in the hall while we waited for him.
He rubbed beside his nose.
“Open the drawer, Dawn.”
She stared at him.
“After what she’s done, you’re asking me?”
“Just open it.”
“No. I won’t have her going through my personal things.”
“The purse was in there,” Shalini said.
“My desk is not hers to pick apart.”
Dad went into his office and came back with the ring of spare keys we used when somebody locked a cabinet by mistake.
I’d used that ring on Dawn’s desk before, to put payroll envelopes away when she left early. He held it out to her.
Dawn didn’t take it.
“Moses. Let’s speak privately.”
“Open the drawer.”
Her hand went to the pocket of her skirt.
She took out her own key.
I stepped back so she couldn’t say I crowded her. She unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled.
It stuck.
She pulled again.
“Lift it,” I said.
She lifted the handle.
Under the folder she’d laid across the drawer, the corners of several checks showed beside a stack of bills.
Six thousand eight hundred forty
Nobody touched the money.
Dawn pushed the folder back over it.
“That’s for payroll.”
Shalini put her hand on the drawer handle.
“Payroll is by check.”
“We keep cash.”
“Not like that.”
Dad moved beside Dawn.
“Take it out.”
She looked at me.
“This is exactly what she wanted. Everybody standing here treating me like some criminal.”
He reached into the drawer himself.
Dawn caught his wrist.
“Moses.”
He looked at her hand until she took it away.
He put the folder on her desk. Then the money. The checks were held together with the rubber band I put around them Friday.
The top one had a torn corner. A customer had ripped it out of his checkbook like he was starting a lawn mower.
I reached toward it, then stopped.
“Shalini. You count.”
She drew Dawn’s chair out and sat.
Dawn stayed standing over her.
“That money was going to the bank.”
Dad said, “You told me there wasn’t any money.”
“There wasn’t any in the safe when you asked me.”
“Because?”
Dawn looked toward the hall.
Shalini laid the checks side by side. I stood close enough to see the dates and amounts. All Friday’s checks. Every one I could remember from counting them with Dad waiting for me to finish.
“The cash first,” I said.
Shalini counted it once. Then she counted it again.
Dawn held the edge of the desk.
“We’re making an enormous thing out of something that could have been handled quietly.”
Dad didn’t answer.
Shalini added the checks, wrote the amount on the pad beside Dawn’s keyboard and turned it toward him.
“Six thousand eight hundred forty dollars.”
The forty sounded particularly good.
I wanted to pick the whole bundle up and throw it at her. Cash would fly nicely. Checks, less so. I’d have been on my knees collecting evidence of my own temper.
I kept my hands at my sides.
Dad looked at the money.
“All of it?”
“All of it,” Shalini said.
Dawn pulled the folder toward herself.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?” Dad said.
“When we could have a conversation without everybody jumping in.”
He pointed at the purse through the open office door.
“Did you take this out of that?”
She didn’t answer.
“Dawn.”
“Yes. This morning.”
Jody leaned against the doorframe.
Dad’s hand stayed extended.
“When she brought it to you?”
“Yes.”
“And you brought me an empty bag.”
“It was cut when I brought it to you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Dawn’s mouth worked. Then she put both palms on the desk.
“I took the deposit out Saturday to go to the bank. The zipper wouldn’t work. I cut it. I put everything in my purse, and then I left the purse in the bathroom.”
Dad sat on the chair by the wall.
“Your purse.”
“Yes, my purse. I forgot it. People forget things.”
“You told me it was gone.”
“Because it was gone. It wasn’t in the safe.”
“You took it out.”
“I’ve just said that.”
I let her keep talking.
Saturday, she said, Dad started asking before she’d finished looking. She told him the safe was empty. He got angry. By Monday morning he’d called the bank and decided somebody took the deposit.
Then I walked in carrying the purse.
“And you found the money,” Dad said.
“I was going to put it back.”
“But you didn’t.”
“He was already upset,” she said to Shalini, as if Shalini had been absent for the useful part and could still be recruited.
I pointed at my father’s office.
“My key.”
Dawn looked down.
“I took it off the hook Thursday. I told you not to leave your personal things there. I put it in my bag to give you.”
“Then why leave it in there this morning?”
She pushed the folder so hard it struck the keyboard.
“I didn’t think everything through.”
Dad stood.
“You let me fire her.”
“I told you to let her go home.”
My father put a hand over his mouth.
Dad’s open door
Dawn turned to him.
“You were the one who said she took it. You were the one who brought up the business. Don’t stand there putting every word in my mouth.”
Dad lowered his hand.
“I asked you what was in the purse.”
“And I showed you.”
“You took the money out first.”
“Because I was going to put it where it belonged.”
“You left the key.”
“I didn’t think the key mattered until you said it did.”
“Then you knew.”
She looked at me.
“Kristine could have gone home. We could have sorted this out without turning it into a trial.”
Jody moved away from the doorway.
“She tried to get me to say it was Kris’s purse.”
Dawn swung toward him.
“You said that yourself.”
“I said she had it on her arm.”
“Because she did.”
“Taking it to you.”
His face was red. Mine probably was too. I appreciated his contribution, late as the delivery happened to be.
Shalini put the money into the uncut bank bag from Dad’s safe. She left it open on the desk between us.
Dad looked at me.
“Kris.”
I shook my head.
He stopped.
Dawn started gathering the folder and the loose papers around it.
“I need everyone out of my office.”
Dad put his hand on the folder.
“Leave it.”
“Moses, we have payroll to finish.”
“Shalini will finish it.”
“You can’t seriously mean that.”
“Your keys.”
Dawn looked at the key still in the drawer lock.
“Over a mistake?”
Dad said, “You had the money while I was calling her a thief.”
She turned to me.
“You know I wasn’t keeping it.”
“You kept it through my firing.”
Her eyes filled. She wiped beneath one with the side of a finger, carefully, then faced Dad again.
“After everything I’ve done in here. For you.”
He held out his hand.
She pulled the key from the lock and dropped it into his palm. Then she took the store key off her ring and put that beside it.
She didn’t make him struggle with the split the way I’d struggled. She had a little tool on her ring for that. Even then, I resented the efficiency.
Dad went into his office.
I followed him, with the others behind me.
He took my lanyard out of the drawer and laid it beside my check.
Then he picked up the sheet he’d wanted me to sign.
He read it.
Nobody rescued him from the reading.
Dawn stood by the cabinet, back where she’d been when I came in at ten-fifteen. This time she kept looking at the door.
Dad put the paper down.
“Kristine didn’t take the deposit,” he said.
Jody looked straight at him.
Dad went on.
“I accused her. I fired her. I was wrong.”
Dawn shifted her weight.
He looked at me.
“What I said about your mother.”
I waited.
“I can’t take that back.”
“No.”
His face folded. He put both hands on the desk and cried.
I cried too, which annoyed me. I’d been doing reasonably well with anger. Tears made my nose run, and there was no dignified way to deal with that while your stepmother stood three feet away.
Shalini handed me a tissue from Dad’s desk.
He pushed my store key toward me.
“Come back, Kris.”
I didn’t pick it up.
Dawn looked at the key.
Then she looked at me, and her eyes narrowed.
Dad said, “Please.”
I wiped my nose.
“Call Ekstrom.”
The counter with my name on it
Dad reached for the phone.
Dawn stepped toward him.
“We need to talk before you do anything with the business.”
He stopped with his hand over the receiver.
I put on my coat.
That got his attention better than anything I’d said all morning.
“I’ll work somewhere else,” I told him. “You can keep all of it. But I’m not coming back under another promise.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
“I already did. You fired me.”
He took his hand off the phone.
“What do you want?”
“The half you promised. Transferred now. And you don’t get to fire me from it.”
Dawn made a sound that might have become a laugh if anybody had helped her.
“She’s doing this while you’re upset.”
I picked up my check.
Nine hundred twelve dollars and forty-six cents. I folded it into my pocket. Nobody covered it with a hand.
Dad looked at the phone again.
“If I call, will you stay?”
“Call.”
He called Ekstrom with us in the room. He said he wanted the transfer papers prepared, and that the decisions about running the business needed to be shared too.
Dawn walked out before he finished.
The front door opened and closed.
Dad stayed on the phone.
Shalini took the deposit to the bank with Jody. Dad asked them both to count it again before they left. Nobody objected.
The full $6,840.00 went into the business account that afternoon. Nothing was charged against me.
Dawn lost the payroll job that Monday. Dad took her access off the accounts she handled for work, with Shalini beside him. Her store keys stayed in his desk.
I didn’t return to the counter on Tuesday.
Dad covered it.
He called me once about a fitting that had been moved. I told him where it was. Then he asked whether I’d come in.
“When the papers are ready.”
He didn’t argue.
I spent those days at home, looking at other jobs and trying not to reach for the phone every time I remembered something the store needed. Nineteen years had given my brain a parts department. It didn’t close just because I told it to.
When the papers were ready, I read them with Ekstrom. Dad paid for the time it took me to ask the same question two different ways.
Half the ownership went to me. We both had to agree on hiring and firing, on either owner’s pay, and on selling the business.
I signed. Dad signed.
Then I went back.
Jody was at the counter when I came through the door. He put down his pen.
“I owe you an apology.”
“Yes.”
“I should have said more.”
“You should have stopped at what you actually saw.”
He nodded.
“I will.”
The customer who’d been there when Dawn announced my firing came in that afternoon. Dad went to the counter before I could serve him.
“I told people something wrong about my daughter,” he said. “She’s back. Half this place belongs to her.”
The customer looked at me.
“Can you still find that fitting?”
“Some things haven’t changed.”
He slid it across the counter.
My hands worked without permission from anybody in the back office.
Then Dawn came to collect her purse.
The keys in my pocket
She came near closing, after Dad told her I would be there.
Shalini had packed her belongings from the desk into a carton. The cream purse sat on top, its strap tucked inside.
Dawn stopped beside the counter.
“Where’s Moses?”
“Back office.”
“I’d like to speak to him alone.”
“You can ask him.”
She looked past me toward the hall.
Dad came out carrying the carton.
He put it on the counter instead of taking it to her car.
Dawn opened her purse and looked inside. Then she closed it.
I kept my hands flat on the counter.
There was one sentence left.
“You told Jody I brought my own purse in,” I said.
She looked at Dad.
Jody stood at the other end of the counter. Shalini was beside the office doorway.
“You’ve made your point, Kristine.”
“Tell him whose purse it is.”
Dad didn’t move.
Dawn put the strap over her shoulder.
“It’s mine.”
“And the money?”
“I had it.”
Jody nodded once.
She picked up the carton. Dad offered to carry it to the door, and she shook her head.
I went to the time clock and took my coat off the peg. My name was still above it. I’d pressed the tape down that morning where one corner had started to curl.
The green lanyard was in my coat pocket.
I drew it out and put it around my wrist while I checked the back door. I wasn’t putting it on the hook again. Dawn could find something else to tidy.
Dad came down the hall.
“Kris.”
I turned.
He had my store key in his hand, the one I’d left on his pad. We’d been using the spare while the papers were finished.
He set it in my palm.
“Yours.”
I attached it to my ring. My thumbnail still hurt where I’d fought with it Monday.
Dad stood there until I was done.
At the front door, Dawn waited beside her carton.
She looked at the keys.
“This is still your father’s business.”
“Half of it.”
I walked past her with my keys in my pocket.
If this one got to you, send it to somebody who’s spent years being told their turn will come.
Family drama can turn an ordinary day upside down – read about a husband who offered his wife’s bedroom to her sister and a mother who invited a woman her daughter ticketed to supper. For another tense family twist, see what happened when a teacher asked a dad to take his daughter outside.
