The Promise

Chapter 6

I slept in a lumpy, but warm, bed that night with many other homeless guests. The shelter had rules, which I followed, and I was up, showered, and out by 8 a.m. as directed. The rules were what kept Houser away. "If I want to sleep the day away, I will." His words, not mine.

Sadie was happy to see me the next morning. Maybe I was more reliable than the average homeless person. It was nice to start out the day with her smile.

"You ever going to shave off that fuzz?" Sadie asked. I could see her eyes on my chin. The mirror told me it added a few years to my look, but I was getting used to it. Amber would have hated it. Oddly, that's why I finally decided not to shave it. It reminded me she was gone, and I didn't want to forget. I was worse off without her and my scraggly beard was proof.

"Someday," I answered with a smile.

"It makes you look old." Sadie turned and started walking toward the kitchen. I followed, liking my beard a little less.

I went to work on last year's financials. It took me all day to audit the financials and reconcile everything to the tax return. I questioned Sadie about a single large donation entry marked Charity Ball. She produced a paper ledger with the handwritten names of all the donors and the amounts they gave. The Kitchen put on the ball every February. It was the biggest fundraiser of the year. I tallied the donations and they mirrored the entry. It was a pretty successful event, generating a little over $35,000 in donations.

"I notice you don't take a salary." It struck me as odd. She spent seven days a week here and there were no disbursements to her name. In fact, there was no payroll at all.

"I don't need the money," Sadie said nonchalantly.

"Independently wealthy?" I was grinning.

"I don't know, Frank." Sadie emphasized my phony name. "Am I?" We were still in the trade story for story mode. I wasn't willing to give up mine and she was stubbornly holding on to hers as leverage.

"I'll just make up a story then," I said, tongue-in-cheek.

"Make it a good one." Sadie laughed and returned to her work. I liked her laugh. She didn't laugh enough. Neither did I.

I found only one entry without supporting documentation. It was for fifteen dollars and was expensed as window cleaning. Hardly material, but I followed up anyway. Sadie had given a young boy the money to clean the windows. He obviously didn't have a business that could generate a receipt. He was homeless with his mother and just wanted to help. Sadie allowed it and paid him out of petty cash. I assured Sadie it wasn't going to be a problem.

I now knew the words to "Sugar Magnolia" by heart. I really wanted to ask Sadie why she played that song every day. I knew it would cost me my past so I just sat with Houser and tried to quell my interest. It was Jell-O night, so Houser passed me his. He didn't say I owed him and didn't draw attention to it in any way. We were like an old married couple. We knew what each other liked and just simply traded food. Amber and I used to raid each other's salads at restaurants. I would go for her onions and she for my olives. We would do it in the middle of a conversation, without breaking thought. It was a simple thing. I was fond of the memory.

"You have any family?" I asked. I wondered why I never asked the question before. I was so busy hiding my past, I never thought about his. He simply nodded and went on eating. I could tell he really didn't want to go into it. There was no eye contact, and his gritty smile wasn't evident. I dropped the subject and knew we would be better friends because of it.

I spent the next day on the two-years-back books. There was absolutely nothing wrong with them. I couldn't even find simple addition errors. Sadie was as stringent with her accounting as she was with her kitchen. I pulled the IRS letter out of the desk again and reread it. It used harsher language than I had seen in past audits. Something of the Kitchen's size was usually handled by mail. Here they were demanding an on-site audit with veiled threats hidden inside their demands. The two tax returns I reviewed didn't seem to warrant any kind of review. Nothing in them should have raised any flags. The letter was certainly not indicative of a random audit.