Duane nodded, satisfied. He went back to the living room and turned on the Browns game.

I stood at the kitchen counter for a while, looking at the jar.

It’s a big glass jar. The kind you buy pickles in at Sam’s Club. We’d been using it for eleven years. It sat on the counter next to the coffee maker, and every night when I came home I dropped my tips in it.

Every Sunday night, Duane counted it. And wrote the total on the little whiteboard stuck to the side of the refrigerator with magnets.

What Duane didn’t know was that I’d been recording every dollar I earned for eleven years.

Every shift. Every tip. Every single night.

And for the past twenty-two weeks, exactly forty dollars had disappeared from that jar every single Sunday.

I didn’t say anything that night. I went upstairs and took a shower and got into bed and lay there in the dark, listening to the Browns lose through the floor.

But in my purse, on the dresser, there was a small black notebook.

And it was full of numbers.

Chapter Two: The Black Notebooks

My name is Carlotta Reyes Kowalski. Everyone calls me Lita.

I’m thirty-nine. I was born in Toledo to a Puerto Rican mother and a Polish father, and I grew up in a house where money was always tight and always counted. My mother cleaned offices downtown. My father worked at the Jeep plant. They kept their money in an envelope in a kitchen drawer, and every Friday night they sat at the table and counted it together.

Together. That’s the part I remember.

I’ve worked as a waitress at the same steakhouse in Chillicothe, Ohio, for eleven years.

Gallagher’s. A family place with red leather booths and white tablecloths and a salad bar with a sneeze guard that’s been there since 1987. People come for the prime rib on Saturdays. Anniversary dinners. Prom dates. Retirement parties. Funeral lunches.

I’m good at it. I’ll say that plainly. I remember names. I remember who wants extra horseradish and who’s allergic to shellfish and whose husband just died. I’ve got regulars who won’t sit in anybody else’s section.

On a busy Saturday, I sometimes earn more in tips than Duane makes during an entire shift at the plant.