“Julian would not have touched it,” he said.
“He might have moved it while he was looking for the leak,” I said.
“There was no leak,” my father said, his voice dropping. He turned his silver ring around his finger, twice. “He said he just wanted to be sure.”
I stood up and cleared the plates. The kitchen was cold, the radiator in the corner giving off a faint, dry hiss that did not reach the table. I had been working seventy hours a week at the Detroit field office, and the exhaustion felt like sand behind my eyelids.
“I will look in the study before I leave,” I said.
“It is not there,” he said. “I only write in it at this table.”
He stood up, his knees making a dry, cracking sound as he straightened. He was seventy-six, but his frame had begun to lean forward, as if he were constantly walking into a winter wind.
“I need to balance the account before Tuesday,” he said.
“We have time,” I said.
“The bank does not wait, Sarah,” he said.
He walked toward the hallway, his steps slow and deliberate on the linoleum. He had lived in this house for forty-three years, and he knew every squeaking board by heart.
I wiped the table with a damp cloth, the smell of cold water rising from the wood. The blue ledger was a small thing, but it was the only record he trusted. He did not use computers, and he did not keep his receipts in a drawer.
“I will call Julian on my way back to the apartment,” I said.
“Do not bother him,” my father said from the hallway. “He has enough on his mind with the business.”
I did not answer him. I knew Julian’s landscaping business was struggling, though he had not asked me for money since the winter before last.
