The Eight Year Ledger novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Room 114

Kristen lays her ledger open in front of Todd, and he warns her she'll be the one blamed for the fund.

I sat at the kitchen table with the statement open and didn't move for an hour.

I wrote the eleven charges into the back of this year's ledger, one per line.

Date. Amount. Room 114.

Then I went down the front of the ledger and found each date.

Every one of them was a night Todd had been on an overnight shift.

Eleven out of fourteen.

I underlined the other three in pencil and left them for later.

At five to midnight, headlights swung across the kitchen wall.

A little white car sat at the curb with its engine running.

Todd got out of the passenger side.

The little white car pulled away before he reached the porch.

He came in through the garage like always, and stopped when he saw me.

"You're up," he said.

"I'm up."

He put his phone on the counter, face down.

Then he took a beer out of the fridge, opened it, and didn't drink it.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Can I just tell you what happened?"

"Sure."

"It's not an affair. I need you to hear that first."

I waited.

"Kelsey's going through a really hard time. Her landlord's selling, she's got student loans, she's alone out here. She needed somebody to talk to."

"In room 114."

"Her apartment has thin walls. She didn't want the neighbors hearing her cry."

"On the third grade's card."

He blinked.

It was very small.

If I hadn't spent eight years watching him tell stories at barbecues, I'd have missed it.

"I don't know anything about a card," he said.

I turned the ledger around and slid it across the table.

The page for March was open. His handwriting wasn't in it anywhere. Mine was on every line.

"March sixth," I said. "You told me you had a hail claim in Delaware County. Overnight."

"I did have a hail claim."

"Lakeview Inn charged the field trip fund one hundred and forty dollars that night."

"Kristen."

"March twentieth. You said a fire claim in Sunbury. Overnight."

"That was a real fire."

"One hundred forty."

I turned the page.

"April third. April seventeenth. May first."

"Would you stop reading me numbers?"

"Give me one true sentence," I said. "Just one. Then I'll close the book."

He looked at the ledger.

He looked at me.

Then he did the thing he did when a client wanted to cancel a policy.

He pulled out the chair across from me and sat down slowly.

"Babe," he said. "Listen to me. I'm going to help you."

"Help me with what?"

"With the fund." He tapped the statement. "Whose name is on the treasurer line?"

"Mine."

"Who signs the disbursement forms?"

"I do."

"Who keeps the PTA checkbook in her desk drawer, right over there?"

I didn't look at the desk.

I didn't need to.

"So if somebody at the district starts asking where eighteen thousand dollars went," he said gently, "who do you think they're going to ask?"

"I didn't sign those forms."

"I know that. You know that."

He spread his hands.

"But I'm the vice president of the school board. You're the wife who just found out about my emotional connection with a coworker."

He let that sit.

"You see how that looks? Upset woman. Money missing."

"Emotional connection," I said.

"I'm trying to protect you here."

"You're trying to scare me."

"I'm trying to get you to think."

He stood up and picked up his beer.

"Nobody needs to make anything public. You fix the books, I talk to a couple of people, this goes away."

He smiled at me over the bottle.

"We go to Gabe's soccer game on Saturday like a normal family."

"Thirty-two parents saw your text tonight."

"And you told them it was spam."

"She told them it was spam."

"Same thing." He smiled. "People believe what's easier."

He went upstairs.

I heard the shower run.

I sat at the table and wrote one more line in the ledger.

October 16. Todd home 11:55 p.m., dropped off by a white car. Said: "Whose name is on the treasurer line?"

Then I took the PTA checkbook out of my desk drawer.

I flipped through the checks.

The book started at check 1031.

The last stub I'd filled out was 1046, for the fun run T-shirts.

Check 1047 was gone.

Its stub was blank.

I put the checkbook in my purse and slept on the couch with my purse under my head.

At six in the morning my phone buzzed itself off the coffee table.

It was the third-grade parents' group chat.

Somebody had posted a photo of the smart board, the two banners white and huge across Ms. Talley's cartoon owl.

Under it there were already forty-one messages.

Oh my god.

Poor Kristen.

Did you see her face? She didn't even blink.

I would have thrown a chair.

Is that Todd Todd? Board Todd?

And then, at 5:52 a.m., from a mother whose son was in Gabe's reading group:

Wait. Isn't she the treasurer?

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