The difference was small enough to count three times and large enough to spoil the afternoon. In October I sat at the workroom table with the cash tin open and my tally beside it. Hugh had stopped in after work to help carry a rail we had bought secondhand. Celia was finishing a cuff, the machine making its steady clatter behind me.
I counted again. The money still failed to reach the number in my book. I checked beneath the tray and inside the envelope where I kept receipts until I entered them. Nothing appeared. My mind went straight from an incomplete total to a missing sum, and from there to the only other person who worked in the room.
"Did you take money out?" I asked.
Celia stopped her machine. "For the binding. You said to."
"There isn't a receipt."
"I haven't given it to you yet."
I should have stopped there. Instead I turned the book around so she could see the figures, as though the ruling itself settled what had happened. "This is what should be here. This is what is here. Hugh has just watched me count it."
Hugh said my name quietly. I heard it as interference. Celia pushed back her chair and took her bag from the hook. She did not hurry, which made me more certain she was trying to establish control over the moment. Even while she searched the small inside pocket, I was judging how she searched.
She put a folded slip beside my hand. The supplier had written the purchase in pencil, with the total underneath and a line acknowledging payment. I remembered the morning then: a delivery had arrived with binding that would not do, and I had told Celia to get the proper material before we lost the day.
"You said use the tin," she said.
I subtracted the receipt from my tally. The remainder matched exactly. There was no missing cash. There had never been missing cash, only a purchase I had authorized and failed to enter. I wrote the expense on the next line, underlined the corrected balance, and closed the book.
"That accounts for it," I said.
"It accounts for the money." Celia stayed standing. "What accounts for how you asked?"
"I had to ask. I can't leave a difference unexplained."
"You could have asked whether I'd bought the binding. You asked whether I'd taken money, and then you brought your husband into it."
Hugh said, "I wasn't checking you, Celia."
"I know you weren't." She looked at me. "I don't think she knows the difference."
The room was suddenly so quiet that I could hear traffic beyond the closed window. I wanted to put the afternoon back on its ordinary footing. There were cuffs waiting, and a customer due before closing. I told Celia she could leave receipts in the envelope immediately from now on. It sounded like a solution until I saw her face.
"I was still working on the order that needed the binding," she said. "I hadn't finished being useful before you decided I needed accounting for."
I said I hadn't accused her of anything. Hugh looked down at the rail brackets in his hand. Celia folded her receipt along its old crease and then unfolded it again, smoothing it flat for the book. She asked for a copy before she went home. I made one, irritated by the implication that my records might not protect her.
After she left, Hugh helped me lift the rail. We worked without speaking until it was level. Then he asked why it was so difficult to say I had been wrong. I told him I had corrected the figures in front of everyone. He tightened the last screw and said the figures were not what Celia had asked me to correct.
I took the book home that evening as usual. On the bus I opened it to the new line and checked the arithmetic once more. It was faultless now. I ran my finger down the column and found no place to enter the rest of what had happened, so I left it out.