She enrolled in the ethics course again, the long one this time, two hundred hours, because her lawyer said it was the only thing that might shorten the five-year bar.
She did the modules after her shift, at the kitchen table, with her roommates watching television in the next room.
She stopped dyeing her hair, and the auburn faded to something plainer, and she wore it in a ponytail every day.
I saw her once, by accident, at the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon.
She was in the checkout line ahead of me, buying bread and eggs and a single sad rotisserie chicken, and she was counting her cash twice.
She did not see me, and I did not speak, and I watched her count the bills with the care of someone who has learned what money costs.
The cashier was slow, and the line was long, and Kristin waited without complaint, and that small patience told me more than any apology could.
I left my cart and walked out, because I did not want her to see me and think I was checking on her.
I thought about her all the way home, and I did not enjoy the thinking.
The clinic’s season was building toward its peak, and the coordinator’s projections said we would serve our two-thousandth family before Thanksgiving.
Two thousand families, from a church basement and a storefront and a video of a slap, and the number sat in my chest like a warm stone.
The volunteers planned a celebration for the two-thousandth family, with a cake from the bakery that had once been Kristin’s client.
The bakery owner, who had canceled in the first week, now donated pastries every Saturday, and she said it was the best marketing she had ever done.
The morning show called again, wanting a follow-up, and the coordinator scheduled it for the week of the milestone.
Everything was rising, and the rising felt earned, and I guarded the feeling the way I used to guard a client’s refund.
Then, on a Tuesday, an envelope arrived at the storefront, addressed to me in careful handwriting I recognized from engagement letters.
The coordinator brought it to my table, and her face was serious, and she said it had come in the morning mail.
I opened it, and inside was a single page, and the page was from Kristin Mathis.
It was not typed, and it was not on letterhead, and it was not written by a lawyer.
“Ms. Shockey,” it began, and the handwriting was shaky in the first line and steadier by the third.
“I am writing because the hearing is over and the excuses are over, and I need you to know that I know what I did.”
“I pushed you as a joke, and I laughed, and I have watched that video enough times to hate the girl in it.”
“I blamed the IRS for my mistakes, and I blamed my clients for asking questions, and I blamed everyone except the person in the mirror.”
“I am working in a warehouse, and I am taking the long ethics course, and I am not asking you to forgive me.”
“I am asking you to know that I understand the ledger now, and mine does not balance, and that is my fault.”
It was signed with her full name, in ink, with no smirk and no laughter and no “haha” anywhere on the page.
I read it twice, and I folded it, and I put it in my purse.
The coordinator asked what it said, and I told her it was private, and she nodded and went back to work.
That night, I sat on my porch with the letter in my lap, and the sky went the color of weak coffee, and I thought about ledgers.
A ledger is not a punishment, I have always believed. It is a record, and a record can be the beginning of a correction.
I picked up my pen, and I took out a sheet of my good stationery, and I began to write.
CHAPTER 10 — THE SEASON THE LEDGER BALANCED
I wrote back to Kristin Mathis on my good stationery, with the good pen, and I kept the letter short, because some things should not be decorated.
I told her I had read her letter twice, and I believed it, and belief is a currency I do not spend lightly.
I told her forgiveness was not mine to grant on behalf of the florist, or the taco truck couple, or the eleven clients who had paid her penalties.
I told her the ledger she owed was not to me, and it would not be balanced with words, but with years.
