“That’s because it riles the guests, should they chance to overhear us,” said Jasper.
“I see.”
Austin let the idea of the missing guest swirl around inside of him to settle at the bottom of a distant place in his mind. What might or might not have happened the year before only mattered in that the ranch had let its previous accountant go and had now hired him. He was going to do right by the ranch and move on from the mess his life had developed into.
Whether that mess had started from the first moment Mona laid eyes on him, or whether he’d caused it to happen by not pushing back against the man she’d wanted him to be, he would find out in time. In the meantime, he wanted to move on, so he needed to make himself move on.
10
Austin
Austin concentrated on his meal, on the conversation that eased its way between his table companions, on the general hubbub of the dining hall, sounds of voices rising and falling, chinked in between by sounds of cutlery against china. A laugh. A louder voice. A softer one.
“You okay?” asked Clay.
Austin looked up, feeling bleary-eyed. “I’m okay,” he said, though he wished he could feel more conviction at the thought. “Maybe it’s the altitude.”
“It might be,” said Jasper. “Drink more water, that’ll settle you.”
The meal finished and everyone shuffled out, except for Clay, who’d been relegated to the back kitchen to help prep food for dinner. Austin responded to Clay’s mock-sad wave goodbye with a small smile, pleased that Clay could keep his sense of humor, even as he was still being sent to the back of the room.
Leland met Austin at the doorway to the dining hall and took him to meet Maddy in her office by the gravel parking lot. He liked her straight away, liked her firm handshake and the no-nonsense way she greeted him, though the overstuffed filing cabinets behind her desk gave him some pause.
“I’m glad to have the help,” she said, flipping her grey-and-white braid over her shoulder. “Leland here had it in his mind we needed an accountant, and if it’ll save him staying up till midnight, then I’ll agree.” As she paused, the screen door opened and in walked Ellis, who went behind the desk to stand beside her, looking at Austin as though he suspected Austin might set fire to the place if he, Ellis, weren’t there to stop him. “I expect you’ll want to change everything, even though I prefer real paper folders to fake ones.”
In any other circumstance, a corporate meeting, or following a lecture from the CEO, Austin would have presented his best smile, his mildest patter and, talking in accountant-speak, said anything necessary to detract from the fact that he was, essentially, about to poke into financial records that were, very likely, in a disarray and whose investigation might reveal less-than-sterling accounting efforts.
During his interview, Leland had alluded to there currently being three bookkeeping efforts: Leland’s, on behalf of the ranch, the store’s accounts, and Maddy’s office and petty cash account. That all three should be straightened out and probably combined in some way would have typically been his automatic response.
But in this case, perhaps something else, some other answer, was needed. This kind of guest ranch was a million dollar a year business, to be sure, and while this one had fallen on some hard times, they’d kept it going, so they’d all been doing something right.
“Well,” said Austin, realizing that the three of them were waiting for an answer. “I figure I might want to check Leland’s math and straighten out the books, but mostly, I just want to streamline everything to make it easier to keep track—”
“You’ll probably want to put everything on the cloud, too,” said Maddy. Her scowl, fierce and sudden, told Austin a great deal about how she felt about that. “I do know what the cloud is, by the way,” she added.
“I’m sure that you do,” said Austin. “And while the cloud is a marvelous tool, not everything belongs there. Your computer looks new, and it looks like you have a good backup system—”
“That’s Ellis’ doing,” said Maddy, pointing at Ellis with her thumb, over her shoulder, as though the two of them were good pals from way back “He set me up this way and I like the way he did it.”
“I’ve no doubt about that,” said Austin. “My goal here is to set up the accounting for the ranch in a way that is workable. Some things might need to be accessed by you, Maddy, and Leland, and the store. Other accounts might just be for your office, or the store, or Leland’s office. I won’t be making any changes, large or small, without consulting you. Does that sound like something you can work with?”
It was important that he win her over, and his irritation at Leland not alerting him to this fact warred with his desperate hope he’d done it right, that he’d addressed her concerns so she’d be willing to work with him. Sometimes office admins were hard wins indeed, and Maddy did not seem at all like an easy win.
“Yes,” said Maddy with a lift of her chin.
Maybe she’d been worried that he’d steamroll right over her, and in any other circumstance, maybe he would have. But the ranch was already, in his mind, its own world and seemed to demand from him a different way of looking at things.
“Reckon you and Maddy can set up a time to meet,” said Leland. “Meanwhile, why don’t you and I walk to my office and start going over the ledgers.”
“Ledgers?” asked Austin as they walked out of Maddy’s office, down the wooden steps, and into the sunshine. “You mean handwritten ledgers?”
“The very same,” said Leland. “That’s how accountants have always kept the books around here.”
Austin didn’t let himself shudder at this, or at the idea of what a brisk office fire might have done to years of records. He hadn’t been there then, but he was here now. As they walked up the road to the barn where Leland’s office was, he took a deep breath of the clear, Wyoming mountain air, and reminded himself he was in a different place, a different world.
The ranch ran on its own timeline, had its own rules. What’s more, when they got to Leland’s office and Leland pulled out a small pile of ledgers, he flipped the top one open to reveal tidy, square lettering, row after row of accounts and amounts.
The next ledger, which Leland placed in Austin’s hands, contained more of the same, only with different handwriting, a different style of writing the numbers. Each ledger was like that, and though some were a little messier than others, each displayed an earnest desire to track how the money flowed.
