Page 35 of The Usual Family Mayhem

“I know you’ve been operating the same way for years. I wasn’t trying to interfere, just help.” The words ran together as I raced to explain before they could pummel me with their special Sunday purses. “You’re super successful and all, but the sticky note method made my eye twitch.”

Still nothing.

Disappointment swamped the room. I waded in knee-deep without moving an inch. “I can erase the board and put everything back. I kept all the sticky notes. They are more or less on the same part of the desk.”

Celia cleared her throat.

The panicked screaming in my head grew louder. “Or we can pretend this never happened and go have lunch.”

Celia nodded. “This is very good.”

The crashing sound vibrating through me stopped. “It is?”

She scanned the whiteboard. “This is a complete system with safeguards.”

Approval? I didn’t expect that. I actually didn’t expect to get lost on an organization tangent or be found in their workspace. The goal had been to snoop and run, and I blew that.

“Implementing this would cut down on the frenetic search for information that Mags and I do whenever the assistants aren’t here to answer questions.”

No yelling... so far.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I stayed quiet. The urge to fill the void poked at me. Clamping my mouth shut and repeatingshut upa thousand times in my mind helped. I needed Gram to talk. Any signal would do. Her unreadable expression slowly chipped away at my resolve.

“This is unexpected,” Gram said.

Finally. But the comment didn’t say all that much. Any minute she’d commit to an emotion and spill it.

“I’m intrigued by the part where we send out special-occasion reminders and get people to order when they might otherwise have forgotten the occasion or holiday or done something else to celebrate.” Gram nodded. “How did you come up with this?”

No anger in her tone. Maybe a bit of surprise. She wasn’t alone in that. I was dumfounded. “We use something like this at work. This is a modified version. Honestly, I tried to thinkof the smoothest way to put all of this together without needing a pile of sticky notes.”

“Maybe your job isn’t so terrible after all,” Celia said.

No. It was. It totally sucked. “The computer ledger you have for deliveries is great but it’s not thorough enough to cover the work not yet completed and keep track of bids and events you’re trying to book.”

I’d done more thinking in the last two hours than I had in months at my new job. Then I remembered. The job. Micah coming to town. I needed to tell them. Yeah, I should tell them.

Gram’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know about the ledger?”

Oh, shit.What had I said?

“What?” That was a stall. My brain needed a second to rewind and figure out how I messed up so I could fix it.

Gram returned to her previous staring. “As you pointed out, the ledger is on the computer. It’s not on display in here. So how do you know about it?”

All good points. Wish I had a good response.

“I figured you had some sort of computer program to track things. You know, for taxes and stuff.” Words flowed out of me. Not sure if they were the right words. They sounded more like a jumble of random thoughts.

“Basically, yes. The business accountant correlates all the information for our general ledger. The computer spreadsheet Mags is referring to mostly deals with accounts receivable. It’s a way for us to keep everything straight. But, as your suggested system highlights, there might be a more efficient way to combine data.”

A huge thank-you to Celia for the semi-assist. “Okay. Sure. A ledger is a different thing.”

I acted like I knew the definition of “ledger” and what one was used for. I would have guessed a ledger and a spreadsheet were the same thing. Now I had no idea what I was talking about except that my proposed system didn’t have anything to do with my previous snooping, poison, or dead husbands.

“I didn’t actually redo anything. Moved some notes, but that’s not a big deal.” I hoped that was true.

Gram and Celia looked at each other. They hadn’t said much, though Celia sounded more open to the idea of me digging around in their business paperwork than Gram did.

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