But his family doesn’t know that.
Duane works at the paper mill on the edge of town. Twelve-hour shifts, rotating. He makes good money. Twenty-six dollars an hour, plus overtime.
But some Saturdays, I make three hundred dollars in tips in a single double. Some Mother’s Days, I make five hundred.
Duane doesn’t like people to know that.
Duane prefers telling everyone that he provides for our household while I merely help with expenses.
I’ve heard him say it. At his mother’s house at Thanksgiving. At the Moose Lodge. At church.
“Lita helps out,” he says. “She’s got her little job at the steakhouse.”
Her little job.
His mother, Dolores, once asked whether the restaurant actually allowed waitresses to keep their tips.
That was at Easter, three years ago. Dolores is seventy-one. She’s lived her whole life in Chillicothe. She calls me “the waitress” when she thinks I can’t hear.
“Do they let you keep that money?” she asked me, at her dining room table, passing the ham. “The tips? Or does the restaurant take it?”
I laughed politely because arguing never seemed worth the trouble.
“We keep it, Dolores,” I said.
“Hm,” she said. And passed me the green beans.
Our arrangement had started simply enough.
When we got married, fourteen years ago, we sat at the kitchen table in our first apartment and figured it out. I’d put my tips in a jar. He’d deposit his paycheck into our joint account at the credit union.
Then, every week, the jar money would go into the joint account too. And we’d pay everything out of there. Mortgage. Groceries. Electric. Car insurance. Ava’s braces. Ava’s softball fees. Ava’s everything.
Ava is sixteen now. A junior at Chillicothe High. She plays shortstop and wants to be a physical therapist.
Every Sunday, Duane counted the jar.
That was his job. He liked doing it. He’d sit at the kitchen table with the jar and sort the bills into stacks and count them and write the total on the whiteboard. Then on Monday, he’d take the money to the credit union and deposit it.
I never questioned it. Why would I? He’s my husband. It’s our money.
But every waitress I know counts her money before she leaves work.
It’s a habit. You learn it your first week. At the end of every shift, you sit down in the back booth with your apron and you count your tips before you leave the building. You write it down. Partly for your taxes, because the IRS wants to know. Partly because if something’s missing, you want to know right away.
I kept a small black notebook in my purse, recording my tips after every shift.
The cheap kind, from the Dollar General. Three for two dollars. Black cover, lined pages.
Date. Shift. Tables. Cash tips. Credit card tips. Total.
Over eleven years, those notebooks had become a detailed history of my earnings.
I’ve filled thirty-four of them. They’re in a shoebox on the top shelf of my closet. Every dollar I’ve earned since the day I started at Gallagher’s.
One Sunday in August, Duane wrote $1,240 on the whiteboard.
I was getting a glass of water. I glanced at it. Something about the number bothered me. I didn’t know why at first.
I went upstairs and got my notebook out of my purse. I added up the week.
My notebook showed I’d contributed $1,280.
Forty dollars.
I thought maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe I’d forgotten to drop one night in the jar. Maybe I’d spent some on gas.
So I checked the week before.
The previous week, he’d recorded $1,190 when I’d actually brought home $1,230.
Forty dollars again.
I sat on the edge of my bed with the notebook in my lap. Then I got up and went into my closet and took down the shoebox.
I checked twenty-two consecutive weeks.
I went back to March. I compared every week in my notebook to every number I could remember Duane writing on the whiteboard. I’d taken pictures of the whiteboard sometimes, on my phone, to send to Ava when she asked about money for softball. I scrolled through my photos and found eleven of them.
Every single one was short by forty dollars.
That added up to eight hundred and eighty dollars.
Chapter Three: Forty Bucks
On Monday evening, I placed my notebook beside the jar.
I didn’t say anything at first. I just set it there. Open. On the counter, next to the jar, where he’d see it when he came in from his shift.
He came in at six-thirty. He hung his jacket on the hook. He went straight to the refrigerator for a beer.
He didn’t notice the notebook.
I waited until he sat down in front of the TV.
“Duane,” I said. “Why does the board say twelve-forty when I put in twelve-eighty?”
He barely glanced up from the television.
“Probably counted wrong.”
“You’ve counted exactly forty dollars too little for twenty-two weeks.”
He sighed. The big sigh. The one that means I’m being unreasonable.
“Seriously, Lita? You’re making a big deal over forty bucks?”
“It’s eight hundred and eighty dollars.”
His expression changed.
Just for a second. Something went across his face. Fast. Like a shadow over a field. Then it was gone, and he was frowning at me.
“You’ve been keeping track?”
