The Eight Year Ledger novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: The Bus Company

The hearing was set for Thursday morning.

My lawyer told me to do nothing until then.

"No posts. No confrontations. No receipts held up in public."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever you do when you're not being filmed."

So I did the books.

On Wednesday the district's copies finally came, in a fat envelope with a rubber band around it.

Every disbursement form since last August. Every bank statement. Every cleared check, front and back.

I took the envelope to the kitchen table and opened this year's ledger beside it.

Gabe was at school.

Ms. Talley had been out sick since the fun run, the office said.

A substitute had 3B.

I liked her already. I'd never met her.

I went through the statements from the beginning, one line at a time.

Bake sale deposit. Fun run deposit. The pledge drive in three batches.

T-shirts, check 1046, to the print shop on Schrock Road. That one was mine. The seven in the date was crossed.

Then, on the October statement, two days before the conference, a line I'd never written down.

Check 1047. Twelve thousand dollars even.

I sat back.

The blank stub in my checkbook.

The eleven motel charges had come to fifteen hundred and forty dollars.

They had been an insult.

This was the trip.

I found the copy of the cleared check in the stack.

PAY TO THE ORDER OF: Tri-County Charter Lines LLC.

Memo: Transportation deposit, 3rd grade trip.

Signed Kristen Whitford, Treasurer. A good signature. Better than mine.

Under it, on the second line the bank needed for anything over five thousand dollars, a second signature.

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