Chapter Twenty-Six, Part One

Inventory began the next day. And since Sophie still showed reluctance to go to school, Robert made a deal with her. If she would help him with the inventory, she wouldn’t have to go to school until Monday. This arrangement guaranteed him a trustworthy partner for the rest of the week, and appeased Sophie, who no doubt hoped she could change his mind about sending her to school. Robert hoped she would find working at the store to be so boring or distasteful that school would be a welcome change, but that remained to be seen. And so they both walked into the store bright and early, full of optimism and Robert’s home-made pancakes.

If Norma was uneasy about this new development, she gave no sign and merely directed their attention to the file cabinet where the bills of lading were kept.

“We’ll deal with that later,” Robert told Sophie after the Norma had gone back out into the store. “What I want you to do is go down each of the aisles I assign to you, and write down how many of each item you see.” He took her school tablet, the one she had been drawing horses in the day before, and turned to a fresh page. Then he marked off columns with a pen and ruler. “All you have to do is write down what the item is, and how many.”

They did the first few together, so Robert could feel confident that Sophie understood and was being accurate, then he left her in the beverage aisle and started on the canned goods.

The work was tedious. Although it wasn’t a big store by any stretch, they also didn’t need to keep a large supply of any but the most commonly used items. Beyond that, there appeared to be little consistency in what Robert’s brother stocked. It was impossible to tell if this was because of the difficulty in getting supplies of any kind, or whether Arthur had simply followed whatever whim captured his imagination, but Robert found himself exasperated by the proliferation of odd items in small quantities: one can of sauerkraut, two jars of Greek olives, a jar of capers, and two dusty jars of vegemite, as if anyone in Castaño would even know what that was, let alone want to eat it. Robert shook his head and kept writing.

From time to time, customers would happen upon him. They frowned as they tried to place his face, then cried out in recognition and insisted on talking to him. Robert wasn’t opposed to these meetings, and at one level he welcomed getting reacquainted with the town, since these people were his customers and might be for the rest of his life. But he did wish they didn’t have to go on at such length, as if sixteen years of absence could be caught up right then and there in the middle of the store. His only consolation was that Sophie had it worse, since no one knew who she was and she had to explain. If he overheard the conversation in time, Robert would hurry over and help. But that took him away from his inventory, and if the conversation went on too long, it could take him several minutes to figure out where he left off. It was frustrating, and by noon he was out of sorts and craving a sandwich.

He found Sophie among the household goods, counting sponges. “Wrap that up, then let’s take a break.”

“Twelve,” Sophie said, and wrote it down. “I’m sorry I’m so slow. It’s just there’s so much here.”

“It’s better to be accurate than to be fast,” Robert assured her. “Let’s go home and I’ll make us some lunch.” He started toward the back of the store and Sophie fell in behind him.

“Can we go to the diner instead?”

“Why would we want to do that when we’ve got a whole kitchen full of groceries?”

Sophie sighed as if he were being very tedious.

“We have to be careful with our money. This store doesn’t make much of a profit.”

They stepped outside and Sophie looked around before speaking. “Everyone says we’re rich. I bet we can afford to eat at the diner every day.”

“Believe me, you’d get tired of it.” Robert shot her a look. “And who says we’re rich?”

“The ladies at the store.”

“The ones shopping or the ones working there?”

“Some of each. Are we rich?”

Robert considered. He hadn’t had a chance to count how much gold and silver he had, but he’d had enough time without Sophie underfoot to check that the safe and the tiny key that opened it were where they had always been. The safe looked full to him, but looks could be deceiving. Nevertheless, his daughter was still too young to be entrusted with information about the family fortune, if it was even a fortune any more. For all he knew, his brother could have spent all the precious metals or moved them to a place he didn’t know about, and refilled the bags in the safe with USS iron dimes.

“To some people it might look like we’re rich,” he said diplomatically. “We live in a big house that on the outside still looks okay. No one but us knows that it’s falling apart on the inside and we only live in one small apartment. And then there’s the store. Whenever you have a store, people think you’re rich.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s because we can take whatever we want without having to pay.”

“But we do pay. We just pay when things get delivered instead of having to pay when we take something home. In some ways we’re poorer than other people because we have to buy beans, rice and flour for the whole town and then hope people pay us back before it goes bad. Everyone else just buys the amount they need.”

Sophie thought about this. “So it’s like at Northwind when Eli and Sabine used to say they were land rich but cash poor. We’re store rich but cash poor.”

Robert laughed, “That’s a good way of putting it.”