MORE MONEY PROBLEMS
SARAH
No matter how Sarah massaged the numbers on the farm software’s spreadsheet, the digits stayed red.
Her savings account was still wiped out by the hackers. Her credit cards were closed.
They needed to be ready to leave when the White Russian bratva found them.
This was herhome,darn it. This was herfarm.It needed to operate, or else it wouldfail.
With this week’s delivery of fertilizer as mandated in the contract with Bow-Daniels-MidWest, plus a bag of chicken feed and some dog food for Remi, and then there was the electric bill and Sarah’s minimum-plan cell phone charges, not to mention a small bag of cat food for Muffintop and the coffee was running low, all of that meant the spreadsheet’s ever-increasing red numbers represented money that Sarah did not have.
Blaze had handed her the money he’d had left over from their trip, but it wasn’t nearly enough to run a business.
Her last deposit had been a week ago, when a person on SnipSnap had needed to ask the tarot deck whether the guy in her algebra class would ever like her or not. Of course, Sarah had assured the girl that the guy knew that she existed but was holding back until the right time, earning her a ten-dollar tip on top of the twenty-five bucks for the reading.
If only she’d gone directly to the bank with the fifteen thousand in cash Blaze had forked up a week ago for scaring the daylights out of her, she wouldn’t be in this pickle.
But she’d been lazy.
And the bank probably would have been suspicious about where she’d gotten such a large sum in cash, and then the IRS or the ATF would have shown up and asked questions for which she wouldn’t have had answers.
But now she was in trouble.
So Sarah had to double down.
With HowNow the Brown Cow home, Sarah could refill the roadside stand with fresh milk after tomorrow morning’s milking, but it would probably be a few days until the people from Cedar Rapids and Iowa City came looking for their farm-fresh finds. They usually showed up from Thursday to Saturday, stocking their larders for the weekend. She should have time to make sweet butter before they started poking around.
Yet, no matter how she added up or subtracted from what she owed, the farm would need a supplementary loan before harvest. The numbers just did not add up this year.
And paying back a loan meant the farm would have less operating money next year, and even less because of the bank interest.
If she didn’t bring in some money soon, the situation was going to become dire.
Maybe after Blaze left the farm, she could go down to the Kalona Auction Barn and see if they needed help behind the desk or with the livestock. She could still do her farm chores in the morning and the tarot card flimflamming at night.
Otherwise, when the debt from the farm reached a critical point, the bank was going to repossess the land and sell it for far less than it was worth.
She would lose her parents’ legacy.
And she would destroy the dream they’d worked their whole lives to pass on to her.
She just—couldn’t keep it going.
Someone else probably could have saved the farm. Someonebetter.Someone with more knowledge or experience, or maybe who’d been more diligent about the chores and upkeep.
Sarah had tried so hard, but the farm was failing anyway.
Failing the farm was failingthem.
Knots filled her whole body, from where her hand cramped around the mouse to her shoulders brushing her earlobes.
Blaze called out, “What’s wrong?”
It was rude to allow a guest to worry about her problems.
Sarah tapped the power button underneath the screen. “I was just looking at some farm details. I’ve been gone for a few days, but the farm never sleeps.”
