“Do you have a job?”
“No.”
“Then why would I?”
He looked almost disappointed.
Adeline opened the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The next morning, she arrived before Coulter.
The side door was unlocked because Eli had already come through it.
Adeline found him eating a breakfast burrito on an overturned bucket.
“Morning.”
Eli stared.
“You work here now?”
“No.”
“Does Coulter know?”
“Probably not.”
“What are you doing?”
Adeline lifted a box of file folders she had bought at the hardware store.
“Making him angry.”
Eli nodded seriously.
“Okay.”
She began with the desk.
The office had become a geological record of avoidance.
Unopened envelopes.
Receipts.
Parts catalogs.
Customer slips.
Insurance notices.
Old warranty forms.
Coffee rings.
A dead calculator.
A birthday card from four years earlier still sealed in plastic.
Adeline touched nothing she could not identify.
She created piles.
Current bills.
Paid bills.
Customer balances.
Taxes.
Vendor statements.
Bank notices.
Unknown.
She labeled each.
When Coulter arrived at 7:42, he stopped in the doorway.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“My office exploded.”
“It was already exploded.”
“You reorganized it.”
“I sorted it.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
“No.”
He removed his coat.
“So why?”
Adeline looked up.
“Because yesterday you told me you can’t afford an employee.”
“I’m checking whether that’s actually true.”
Coulter stared.
“You can’t just walk into a business and audit it.”
“I’m not auditing.”
“What do you call that?”
“Basic triage.”
“This isn’t a hospital.”
“Businesses bleed too.”
Eli nearly choked on his burrito trying not to laugh.
Coulter turned toward him.
“Don’t you have school?”
“Not until ten.”
“Go early.”
Eli disappeared.
Coulter looked back at Adeline.
“You’re stubborn.”
“So are you.”
“I own the place.”
“And look how that’s going.”
He should have thrown her out.
He considered it.
Instead, he said:
“Don’t throw anything away.”
Adeline nodded.
“I wasn’t going to.”
By noon, she found thirty-seven unpaid customer invoices totaling $18,420.
Some were recent.
Several were more than a year old.
Two customers had died.
Three had moved.
Most simply had never received a second bill.
Coulter looked at the total.
“That can’t be right.”
“It’s right.”
“They owe me eighteen thousand dollars?”
“Technically.”
“How much will actually be collected?”
“Maybe twelve.”
He stared.
Adeline continued.
“You’re also paying two suppliers above their current public commercial rates.”
“How much?”
“About nine percent on average.”
“They’ve supplied us for years.”
“That doesn’t mean the price stayed fair.”
“They give me terms.”
“Thirty days.”
“Which you routinely miss because your paperwork is buried.”
Coulter rubbed his forehead.
“How long are you planning to do this?”
“Until you tell me to stop.”
“Stop.”
Adeline nodded.
She closed the ledger.
Coulter looked at it.
Then at her.