Work Text:
Cindy found the coins spread across the kitchen table in orderly little lines that had ceased being orderly near the edge closest to Bart.
The afternoon was warm enough for the back door to stand open behind the screen. Air moved through the kitchen carrying the smell of damp earth, young grass and the first leaves beginning to open along the lane. A dish towel stirred on its hook. Sunlight reached halfway across the floor before stopping beneath the table, where Bart lay with his forelegs extended and his nose pressed close to one of Jennifer’s shoes.
Nicola rested near the stove, though no fire had been lit since morning. She had chosen the familiar place without regard for the weather and lay with her head raised, watching the room through half-closed eyes.
Jennifer sat at the table with both sleeves pushed above her wrists.
Pennies had been placed in groups of ten. Nickels stood in shorter lines. Dimes lay apart from the larger coins so their size wouldn’t cause confusion. Three quarters rested near an open exercise book, and a single half-dollar occupied the centre of a folded handkerchief as though it required protection from everything around it.
A worn drawstring pouch lay beside Jennifer’s elbow. Its cloth had once been dark blue, but repeated handling had faded the creases and exposed pale threads around the mouth.
Cindy closed the screen carefully behind her.
Bart’s head came up at once.
He struck the underside of the table.
Several coins jumped. One penny rolled across the boards, turned in a slow circle and fell to the floor.
Jennifer caught a line of nickels before they scattered.
Cindy put one shoe over the rolling penny.
“You need to move him.”
“He was asleep.”
“He isn’t now.”
Bart came out from beneath the table and pushed his nose against Cindy’s skirt. His tail struck Jennifer’s chair as she bent to retrieve the coin.
Cindy picked it up first.
She held it between two fingers and looked at the table. “Which group?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You haven’t marked them?”
“I was counting each line.”
Cindy placed the penny away from the others. “Then this one stays out until the total’s checked.”
Bart rose against her knee.
She lowered one hand to his head. “You already caused enough trouble.”
His paws returned to the floor, though his tail continued moving.
Jennifer gathered the nickels into a single pile. “You came early.”
“The sweeping didn’t take long.”
“Your mother let you leave?”
“I finished everything.”
Cindy removed her light coat and hung it on the hook April had shown her months before. She returned to the table, pushed her glasses higher and looked again at the coins.
“Is this April’s money?”
“No.”
“Your father’s?”
“Mine.”
Cindy sat in the chair opposite her.
Jennifer didn’t cover the money or draw the pouch closer. She only began rebuilding the nickel lines, placing five coins in each row.
Cindy watched for several seconds.
“Did you save all this?”
“Over time.”
“For what?”
“A guitar.”
The answer came without ceremony. Jennifer placed the final nickel at the end of a row and checked it with one fingertip.
Cindy looked at her.
Jennifer’s face remained lowered toward the table. Her braid had loosened through the day, leaving several pale strands near her cheek. A dark pencil mark crossed the side of her right hand.
“A new one?” Cindy asked.
“No. There’s a used one at Miller’s.”
“The music shop?”
“The repair shop beside it.”
Cindy knew the window. Radios, lamps, clocks and small appliances stood crowded behind glass beneath cards promising that nearly anything worth owning was worth fixing. Musical instruments appeared only sometimes, usually violins in worn cases or brass pieces brought in from school bands. She had seen a guitar hanging near the rear wall during winter, its body darker around the edges and one section of the finish worn pale beneath the strings.
“The brown one?” she asked.
Jennifer looked up. “You saw it?”
“In the window.”
“It was farther inside when I went.”
“Is it damaged?”
“The bridge was lifting. Mr. Miller fixed it.”
“Does it play?”
“He let me try.”
Cindy waited.
Jennifer’s fingers rested on the nearest penny. “It does.”
Nothing more was added. Jennifer didn’t describe the sound, the feel of the neck or the time she had spent in the shop. She didn’t say how long she had wanted one. The quiet way she touched the coin carried enough of that weight.
Cindy looked toward the exercise book.
A figure had been written at the top of the page.
$22.50
Below it stood several smaller totals, some crossed out and replaced. Jennifer had listed money from hemming, carrying parcels, returning bottles, sweeping a store entrance after closing and helping April finish plain work that could be paid separately. Beside certain amounts were initials or short descriptions.
Cindy read only what lay in front of her.
“How much do you have?”
“I thought eighteen dollars and eighty-seven cents.”
“You thought?”
Jennifer looked beneath the table.
Bart had returned to her feet, though he had placed his nose against the underside of the tabletop and appeared ready to rise again.
“He moved everything twice.”
“Then you don’t know.”
“I know nearly.”
“Nearly won’t tell you what’s missing.”
Cindy drew the exercise book toward herself.
Jennifer let it move.
Cindy opened to a clean page. “We start over.”
“I already counted the pennies.”
“Bart counted some of them again.”
“He only moved the ones near the edge.”
“Which ones were those?”
Jennifer looked at the penny lines.
Cindy waited.
“All right,” Jennifer said.
They cleared the table’s centre.
Jennifer put every coin back into the pouch first, even those she believed had already been counted. The cloth sagged when she lifted it. Coins pressed round shapes through the faded blue material and clicked heavily against one another.
Cindy placed the folded handkerchief in the middle of the table.
“Large coins here. Pennies on the paper.”
Jennifer poured the pouch out slowly.
The coins formed a small mixed mound. Several were dark with age and handling. Others had been rubbed nearly smooth along the raised edges. One nickel bore a black mark near the date. A penny had a crescent-shaped scratch across Lincoln’s shoulder. The half-dollar looked comparatively bright, though its rim showed shallow nicks.
Cindy drew three columns in the exercise book.
Coin.
Number.
Value.
Jennifer began with pennies.
She placed them in groups of five rather than ten so that Cindy could check each line before it grew too long. Cindy made a short mark beside every complete group. When they reached fifty, Jennifer stopped and counted again.
“Fifty-three,” she said.
Cindy counted the final three herself. “Fifty-three.”
She wrote the number and value.
$0.53.
Jennifer moved to nickels.
Bart rose between their chairs.
His nose came over the table edge.
Cindy put one hand against his chest before he reached the coins. “No.”
Bart leaned into her palm.
Jennifer stood and brought his lead from the hook near the back door. “I’ll put him by the porch.”
“He’ll think he’s going walking.”
“He thinks that whenever he sees it.”
She fastened the lead to his collar and looped the other end around the heavy leg of the sideboard, leaving him enough room to lie near the open screen but not reach the table.
Bart looked from the door to Jennifer.
“We aren’t going yet.”
He stood waiting.
Jennifer returned to her chair.
Nicola opened her eyes, looked toward the lead and then lowered her head again.
The nickels came to sixty-five cents.
The dimes made two dollars and forty cents.
There were seven quarters rather than three. Four had been hidden beneath the handkerchief’s fold when Cindy arrived. Jennifer placed them in a row and ran one finger over the rims.
“One dollar and seventy-five,” she said.
Cindy wrote it down.
The half-dollar followed.
Then came the bills.
Jennifer had folded them separately inside the bottom of the pouch. The cloth lining had loosened near one seam, and the notes lay in a narrow pocket made by the tear. She drew them out carefully: two one-dollar bills, another folded into quarters, and a five-dollar bill so worn at the centre that Jennifer kept it between two pieces of paper.
Cindy looked at the five.
“Where did that come from?”
“Mrs. Dwyer’s coats.”
“All of it?”
“Three coats, two skirts and a torn lining.”
“You did that work?”
“Mama did the hard parts. I took out the old stitches, matched pieces and finished the plain seams.”
“Did April pay you from what the woman paid her?”
“She said my part was worth that.”
Cindy accepted the explanation.
They counted the bills twice.
Jennifer added the figures in her head. Cindy added them on paper.
Their answers differed.
Jennifer looked at Cindy’s total. “That can’t be right.”
“Why?”
“It’s less than I had before.”
“Then something was counted twice before.”
Cindy went through the columns again.
Fifty-three cents in pennies.
Sixty-five in nickels.
Two dollars and forty in dimes.
One dollar and seventy-five in quarters.
Fifty cents.
Nine dollars in bills.
She wrote each amount beneath the previous one, aligned the decimal points and drew a clean line.
The sum was fourteen dollars and eighty-three cents.
Jennifer stared at it.
“I had more.”
“You thought you did.”
“I wrote eighteen eighty-seven.”
Cindy turned back to the earlier page.
Several amounts had been carried from older totals. One line showed three dollars and fifteen cents added after the shop sweeping. Another showed two dollars for a series of errands completed for a neighbour recovering from illness. A third had been copied from a loose scrap of paper and marked with a question.
Cindy compared the entries against the coins.
“Did you spend any?”
“Only thirty cents for thread. Mama said it came from the money because it was for work I was paid to do.”
“That’s written here.”
“Yes.”
“Did your father borrow any?”
“No.”
“Did you put something somewhere else?”
Jennifer looked toward the dresser.
“There may be coins in the small jar.”
She brought down a glass jar from the upper shelf. Three pennies, a nickel and two dimes lay at the bottom beneath several buttons and a key that didn’t belong to any current lock.
Cindy separated them.
“Twenty-eight cents.”
Jennifer added the amount mentally. “Fifteen eleven.”
Cindy wrote it.
They searched the pouch lining and found a dime caught near the split seam. A quarter had slipped beneath the table leg where Bart’s first blow had sent it. Cindy saw its edge in the shadow and retrieved it with the ruler from her school satchel.
The total reached fifteen dollars and forty-six cents.
Jennifer still looked dissatisfied.
“There should be more.”
Cindy read the earlier totals line by line. “This says you had four dollars and sixty-eight cents in pennies and nickels.”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Last autumn.”
“You don’t have that many now.”
“I changed them at the grocer for bills.”
“Which bills?”
“The five.”
Cindy looked at the entry for Mrs. Dwyer’s coats. “You counted the five dollars twice.”
Jennifer leaned closer.
Cindy put one finger beside the autumn amount. “You had four sixty-eight. Then you added thirty-two cents from bottles and changed the five dollars at the grocer.”
“Yes.”
“Then you wrote five dollars here as though it was new.”
Jennifer followed the columns.
The five-dollar bill appeared first as the result of exchanging smaller coins. Later it appeared again after the mending entry because Jennifer had placed it with the money earned from the coats and remembered the denomination rather than the source.
Jennifer sat back.
“That’s nearly all the difference.”
“Most of it.”
Cindy checked the remaining crossed totals and found another duplication of a quarter. The same coin had been included once under errands and again beneath a note concerning a parcel carried from the station.
When every entry had been reviewed, the correct amount remained fifteen dollars and twenty-one cents. The extra twenty-five cents had to be removed from the latest total, while the dime found in the pouch seam and quarter beneath the table had already been added.
Cindy wrote the final figure on a fresh line.
$15.21.
Jennifer looked at the guitar price.
“How much is left?” Cindy asked.
“Seven dollars and twenty-nine cents.”
Cindy calculated it on the page before nodding.
Jennifer touched the five-dollar bill. “I thought it was less than four.”
“You have the right amount now.”
“It’s worse.”
“It’s accurate.”
Jennifer’s mouth tightened, not at Cindy but at the distance between the two figures.
Cindy looked at the coins.
Her family had money set aside for food, coal, rent, church obligations and the needs that appeared without warning. There were no unused dollars waiting in a drawer. The coins Eun-jung gave her for market errands were counted before Cindy left and counted again when she returned. Even the smallest change had a destination.
Cindy didn’t reach for her own purse.
She turned the exercise book so Jennifer could read the page properly.
“You know what you still need.”
Jennifer looked at the written total.
“Yes.”
“Is the guitar staying at the shop?”
“Mr. Miller said it hadn’t had much interest.”
“That isn’t the same as staying.”
“No.”
“Did he say he’d hold it?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have enough.”
Cindy considered this. “Would he hold it when you’re closer?”
“Maybe.”
Jennifer began returning the coins to the drawstring pouch. She put the bills in first, still protected between folded paper, then the half-dollar and quarters. Cindy passed her each coin group only after checking it against the written amount.
The pennies went in last.
When the scratched penny reached Jennifer’s hand, Cindy stopped her.
“That’s the one Bart knocked down.”
“Yes.”
“It may have been counted twice before we started.”
“We emptied everything.”
“I know. I’m marking it for next time.”
Cindy drew a tiny crescent beside the penny total in the book and described the mark in two words.
Scratched penny.
Jennifer put it into the pouch.
“You don’t need to list every coin.”
“You need to know whether one moves.”
“Bart can move more than one.”
“Then keep him tied next time.”
The dog heard his name and rose near the screen.
Jennifer drew the pouch strings tight. “He’s been waiting.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
She untied him.
Bart came straight to the table and put his nose where the coins had been.
Cindy closed the exercise book over the written total. “They’re gone.”
He smelled the handkerchief and then Jennifer’s fingers. Finding nothing edible, he moved to Cindy and pressed his head beneath her hand.
She stroked him absently while looking at the pouch.
Jennifer placed it in the shallow kitchen drawer where April kept string, sealing wax, chalk and receipts worth saving. The blue cloth disappeared beneath two folded papers when the drawer closed.
Cindy stayed for the usual walk.
They went by the mill lane because the spring ground near the field remained too soft. Bart carried a stick most of the way. Nicola moved close to Jennifer whenever a cart passed, then returned to the outside verge where the first green shoots had begun pushing between last year’s dead grass.
Neither girl spoke much about the money.
At the usual corner, Cindy asked one question.
“What kind is it?”
“The guitar?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know the maker.”
“What does it look like?”
Jennifer held Bart’s lead shorter as he turned toward the road. “Dark brown around the edge. Lighter in the middle. There’s a scratch below the bridge.”
“Does it have a case?”
“No.”
Cindy looked at the stick in Bart’s mouth. “Then you’ll need one.”
“I can wrap it.”
“That won’t protect it.”
“A case costs more.”
They continued.
The matter remained there for several days.
Cindy didn’t ask people whether they had work for Jennifer. She didn’t speak of the guitar at school, carry the total through the neighbourhood or make the remaining seven dollars into a public concern. The sum belonged to Jennifer’s table and Jennifer’s pouch. Cindy treated it with the same care she gave any private thing entrusted to her sight.
Attention changed, though.
She began noticing small needs that had always existed around her.
At school, one girl’s book satchel split along the bottom seam. The tear had been mended twice with coarse thread, but the material surrounding the stitches had weakened. One arithmetic book slipped through far enough for its corner to strike the floor.
The girl’s mother came at the end of the afternoon to speak with the teacher. She lifted the satchel, examined the damage and said she would have to find another before the books were ruined.
Cindy heard from two desks away.
She finished packing her own books before approaching.
“I know someone who can reinforce that,” she said.
The woman looked at her. “Your mother?”
“She sews, but I meant Jennifer.”
The teacher turned from the blackboard. “The small blonde girl from the lane?”
“Yes.”
The woman looked again at the split satchel. “Can she work leather?”
“It isn’t leather.”
The outer fabric had been made to resemble it, but the torn edge exposed layers of canvas and stiffened backing.
Cindy touched only the loose flap, not taking the bag from the woman’s hands.
“She can put strong cloth beneath it and stitch through both layers. The straps may need reinforcing too.”
“How much would she ask?”
“I don’t know.”
“You sent me to her.”
“I know what she can do. I don’t set her price.”
The woman considered the bag.
Cindy gave directions to the pale green house and said April would likely want to see the damage before any promise was made. She didn’t mention the guitar.
Two evenings later, Jennifer and April repaired the satchel together.
Jennifer removed the failing stitches, cut two layers of canvas from an old work apron and fitted them inside the bottom so the reinforcement wouldn’t show from the outside. April helped with the thickest seam. Jennifer secured the strap ends with crossed rows of thread and added a narrow patch where one buckle had begun tearing through.
The woman paid seventy-five cents.
Jennifer brought the coins to the kitchen table while Cindy was there the following afternoon.
Bart remained tied before counting began.
Cindy opened the exercise book and added the new amount.
$15.96.
“Did you tell her about the guitar?” Jennifer asked.
“No.”
“How did she know to come?”
“Her daughter’s satchel tore.”
“You thought of me.”
“I’d seen you mend the cloth bag April uses for buttons.”
Jennifer folded the coins into the pouch.
Cindy looked at the remaining amount and subtracted again.
Six dollars and fifty-four cents.
She wrote it neatly without circling the number or making it appear larger than the line above.
The next opportunity arrived from Jennifer’s own street.
An elderly neighbour needed several hems shortened after receiving clothes from a sister in Pennsylvania. April had too much work to take all of it before the woman’s church gathering. Jennifer offered to complete two plain cotton skirts under April’s inspection.
Cindy happened to be present while the woman stood near the kitchen stove, one skirt pinned to the proper length.
Jennifer worked carefully. She didn’t rush because of the guitar or count the expected payment before the thread had been secured. She removed every old stitch that would show beneath the new hem, pressed the fold and made the line even.
The payment added one dollar.
A week later, a shopkeeper gave her twenty cents for cleaning old labels from a stack of jars and sorting those without cracks. Brandon paid her nothing for carrying wood or clearing the yard because those belonged to the family’s common work. Jennifer didn’t ask him to change that arrangement.
Cindy approved without saying so.
The written total climbed in small, uneven steps.
Sixteen dollars and ninety-six cents.
Seventeen dollars and sixteen.
Seventeen dollars and forty-one.
The last amount included a quarter Jennifer found in a coat pocket before the garment was returned to its owner. She didn’t add it until April had asked the woman whether it was hers. The woman said she had forgotten it and told Jennifer to keep it with the payment.
Cindy wrote a note beside the quarter.
Returned, then given.
Jennifer looked at the words. “That’s too much.”
“It tells you where it came from.”
“I remember.”
“You remembered the five-dollar bill too.”
Jennifer allowed the note to remain.
At school, the spring term brought cleaning.
Old maps were taken down, cupboards emptied and stacks of damaged material inspected before being discarded. Cardboard that had warped, split or taken water along one edge could no longer support classroom displays. The teacher placed it in a pile beside the stove for burning.
Cindy examined the sheets while carrying exercise books to the cupboard.
Most were useless. One had softened until the layers separated beneath her fingers. Another was stained with ink and cracked through the centre. Beneath them lay two broad pieces damaged only along one side.
“May I take these?” she asked.
The teacher looked over. “What for?”
“Stiffening.”
“What are you making?”
“Nothing yet.”
The teacher waved one hand toward the pile. “Take what’s clean. The rest is going into the stove.”
Cindy cut away the softened edges with the classroom scissors. She didn’t carry home whole sheets merely because they were free. The sound sections were trimmed into four pieces, each broad enough to line the side of a simple case or reinforce a cover. She tied them together with scrap cord.
When she arrived at Jennifer’s house, she placed the cardboard near the kitchen wall rather than presenting it with ceremony.
Jennifer looked at it. “What’s that?”
“Clean pieces from school.”
“For lessons?”
“For the guitar case.”
Jennifer turned from the basin where she had been washing two cups. “There isn’t a case.”
“I know.”
“You said it needs one.”
“It does.”
“I can’t buy one.”
Cindy touched the edge of the top sheet. “The cardboard can go between cloth layers. Not at the hinges.”
Jennifer dried her hands.
She lifted one piece and tested its stiffness. “It may bend.”
“Not if the grain runs this way.”
Cindy took it from her and showed the direction.
Jennifer pressed lightly. The sheet flexed without folding.
“What would cover it?”
“Canvas. Or old carpet cloth.”
“That would be heavy.”
“Not carpet itself. The backing from a worn piece.”
Jennifer looked toward April’s work cupboard.
Cindy noticed and added, “It isn’t worth anything. The teacher was burning it.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t bring it as money.”
Jennifer set the cardboard down. “I know.”
They stored the pieces flat beneath the sideboard where Bart couldn’t chew the corners.
No case was begun.
There was no instrument to measure, and April wouldn’t cut usable cloth before knowing the shape required. The cardboard waited without creating an obligation for the guitar to appear.
Cindy brought no more discarded material simply because it might someday prove useful. She turned down a torn box from the grocer because grease had soaked through one panel. She left a broad piece of millboard at school after finding mould beneath the paper. Attention didn’t make everything valuable.
The coin pouch continued filling.
Jennifer took work when it was offered and suitable. She didn’t wander from house to house looking for payment or allow ordinary neighbourly help to become a transaction. When an older man dropped kindling in the road, she helped gather it and accepted his thanks. When a shopkeeper asked her to carry three wrapped parcels to a house on her route, she accepted the dime he offered because the task belonged to his business rather than a chance difficulty.
Cindy recorded the dime.
She didn’t record the kindling.
By the middle of April the amount had reached nineteen dollars and twelve cents.
The guitar still hung in the repair shop.
Cindy checked without appearing to check. When her mother sent her for lamp wicks, she passed Miller’s window on the return route. The guitar stood at the rear, partly hidden behind a floor lamp. Its strings caught the light. A small paper tag hung from one tuning peg.
She didn’t enter.
That afternoon she told Jennifer only, “It’s still there.”
Jennifer looked up from buttoning her cardigan. “You saw it?”
“Yes.”
“Was anybody looking at it?”
“Not when I passed.”
Jennifer fastened the final button.
They took the dogs out.
The next week brought rain. Walks shortened, roads softened and the girls spent more time indoors. Jennifer began reinforcing another work bag for a neighbour employed near the railway. The material was thick enough to blunt an ordinary needle. Brandon made a small awl from a broken tool and showed her how to pierce the holes without widening them.
Cindy watched Jennifer work at the kitchen table.
She didn’t take over or hurry the process. She kept Bart away from the lengths of waxed thread and turned pages in her own book while Jennifer stitched.
The repaired bag earned a dollar and twenty-five cents.
The total rose to twenty dollars and thirty-seven cents.
“Two thirteen,” Jennifer said.
Cindy checked. “Yes.”
A secondhand guitar at twenty-two dollars and fifty cents no longer seemed distant enough to be imaginary. It had become a specific absence, narrow enough that each coin altered its shape.
Jennifer asked Mr. Miller whether he would hold it.
She went with April, not Cindy.
When she returned, she took the pouch from the kitchen drawer but didn’t open it.
“He’ll keep it until the end of the month,” she said.
Cindy stood near the window with Nicola’s head resting against her skirt. “Did you give him anything?”
“Fifty cents.”
“As part of the price?”
“Yes.”
Cindy opened the record.
Jennifer placed two quarters on the table only long enough for their removal to be written properly.
The money remaining in the pouch became nineteen dollars and eighty-seven cents, but the amount still owed on the guitar fell to one dollar and sixty-three.
Cindy made both figures clear so they wouldn’t be confused.
Jennifer looked at the page.
“Now the pouch looks farther away.”
“The shop has fifty cents of it.”
“Yes.”
“It still counts.”
Jennifer closed the exercise book.
Several days later, April gave Jennifer sixty cents for finishing a set of buttonholes on two children’s shirts after demonstrating the first. Jennifer completed them slowly, measuring each opening against its button and reinforcing the ends so the cloth wouldn’t tear.
Twenty-one dollars and forty-seven cents had now been committed to the guitar: twenty dollars and ninety-seven still in hand, including later earnings, and the fifty cents already left with Mr. Miller.
One dollar and three cents remained.
Cindy didn’t begin searching drawers for pennies.
She didn’t suggest that Jennifer sell anything she already owned or ask April to increase payment for household work. She returned to her lessons, walks and ordinary errands. The guitar remained present in the record without taking over every hour between the girls.
Near the end of April, a neighbour brought a bundle of curtains whose lower edges had frayed. April accepted the larger job and gave Jennifer the simplest panel to prepare. Jennifer trimmed loose threads, turned the narrow hem and completed the stitching beneath April’s eye.
The woman paid Jennifer fifty cents.
Fifty-three remained.
Three days later, Brandon sent Jennifer to return an unused coil of wire to the hardware shop. The shopkeeper refunded more than expected because the price had been entered wrongly at purchase. Brandon took the proper household amount and left Jennifer a nickel for making the second trip.
Forty-eight remained.
Jennifer earned twenty cents carrying written notices to four houses for a woman organizing a church collection.
Twenty-eight.
A jar of buttons brought from an attic contained several pieces April couldn’t use but a local tailor wanted. The jar’s owner told Jennifer she could sell the unusable extras if she sorted and cleaned the rest. The tailor paid twenty cents for two metal fasteners and a matched set of dark coat buttons.
Eight cents.
The final amount became almost absurdly small beside the original seven dollars and twenty-nine. It was less than the price of several ordinary things, yet neither girl treated it as finished before it existed.
Jennifer found three pennies beneath the porch while sweeping winter dirt from between the boards. She carried them to Brandon.
“Are these ours?”
He looked at the coins. “Probably fell from my pocket.”
Jennifer held them out.
Brandon took one.
“The other two may have come from anybody.”
Jennifer placed two pennies in the pouch only after he said she could.
Six cents remained.
Cindy learned the figure on a Thursday afternoon.
She read it, closed the record and went home without offering to supply it.
The next week, Eun-jung sent her with a small wrapped packet for April: dried greens prepared with seasoning, enough to accompany a meal but not enough to burden another household with repayment. The packet had been tied with ordinary kitchen string. Cindy carried it carefully through the yard while Bart tried to investigate the smell.
Jennifer was away.
Brandon stood near the kitchen wall moving a narrow table.
Cindy stopped inside the back door.
The room looked subtly wrong.
Nothing important had been removed. The chairs remained around the kitchen table. April’s sewing basket stood closed near the window. Nicola lay beside the stove, watching Brandon shift the small table several inches to the left.
Bart had been tied near the porch.
He pulled toward the cleared section of wall, interested because furniture had moved and dust had been exposed beneath it.
“Stay there,” Brandon said.
Bart continued leaning.
Cindy hung her coat on the familiar hook. “Is April home?”
“Gone into town.”
“With Jennifer?”
“Yes.”
Brandon lifted the table again and carried it nearer the window. The legs scraped briefly before he set it down.
Cindy placed the food packet on the kitchen table.
Her eyes went to the shallow drawer.
It hadn’t been closed fully. A strip of sealing wax and two folded receipts were visible through the gap.
The blue drawstring pouch was gone.
Cindy didn’t open the drawer to confirm it.
Brandon took a broom from behind the door and swept the narrow space he had cleared near the wall. Dust, two dead flies and a small piece of thread came out from beneath the former position of the table. He gathered them into the pan and emptied it into the stove scuttle.
Cindy looked at the wall.
“Will the table stay there?”
“For now.”
“What’s going here?”
Brandon measured the open section with his hand, then looked down at Bart.
“Something that ought not be knocked over.”
Bart wagged at the attention.
Brandon moved a straight-backed chair into the cleared space, considered it and moved it away again. He crouched to inspect the baseboard and pressed one thumb against a small split in the wood.
“He can reach anything low,” Cindy said.
“I know.”
“He stood against the table when the coins were there.”
“I heard.”
Brandon glanced toward her. “More than once, I expect.”
“Yes.”
He brought a narrow wooden crate from the shed and placed it upright against the wall. The top reached higher than the side table had, though Bart could still have put his front paws against it.
Cindy watched him measure the height against the dog.
“That won’t be enough.”
“No.”
Brandon took the crate away.
Nicola rose from the stove and came to Cindy. She smelled the packet on the table before pressing her shoulder against the girl’s leg.
Cindy rested one hand on the grey dog’s back.
“Did they walk?”
Brandon swept the final dust from the wall. “April thought they might take the long way home.”
Cindy looked toward the window.
The afternoon was mild and clear. Sunlight rested along the yard fence. No figure had yet appeared on the lane.
She didn’t ask where in town they had gone.
Brandon brought two short lengths of wood from his workbench and held them against the wall at waist height. He marked their positions with a pencil, one slightly higher than the other, then erased the first line and began again.
Cindy understood that whatever would stand there couldn’t merely be placed on the floor.
“It needs support at the neck,” she said.
Brandon looked toward her.
Cindy touched the side of her own throat to show the height she meant. “And something lower so the body doesn’t hit the wall.”
Brandon considered the marks.
“You’ve thought about it.”
“Only now.”
He moved the upper mark several inches.
Bart sat near the porch, the lead stretched before him. His attention shifted from Brandon’s pencil to the empty wall and then to Cindy, as though somebody would eventually explain what new possession the household intended to deny him.
Cindy looked once more toward the partly open drawer.
The pouch remained absent.
She stroked Nicola’s shoulder and stood quietly while Brandon measured the cleared space again.