3. The Crossed-Out Name

It took her three evenings to find the name again. It appeared on the inside of the back board of the brown ledger for 1994, where the binding had come loose, written in pencil and never crossed out at all.

Below it, in her mother's careful hand, were two words: owed, not paid.

Rita sat with the ledger on her knees until the light went. The tide came in, filled the channels, lifted the small boats off their sides. Somewhere across the water a radio was playing. She thought about debts, and about how the pans would belong to someone else by spring, and about how there was still, it seemed, one account left to settle.