Which was itself already fairly complicated.
He ran the chapter the way she had run the administrative department of that hardware company in Phoenix.
With the understanding that the job was to make it possible for everything else to work.
And that required constant attention to about forty different things simultaneously.
A willingness to deal with problems before they became crises.
And a particular kind of loneliness that came with being the person everyone else looked to when they didn’t know what to do.
She recognized that loneliness.
She knew what it felt like from the inside.
She didn’t mention this to him.
But sometimes when she looked up from her work and he was across the room, not looking at her and clearly thinking about something that wasn’t going well, she recognized the particular quality of that not-looking.
And she understood it.
Some forms of understanding didn’t need to be spoken to be real.
By the end of the third week, she had the office organized.
It was not an incremental improvement.
It was a transformation.
There was a system.
A real system.
Labeled and logical.
Built around how the chapter actually operated rather than around some abstract ideal of organization.
The financial records were reconstructed, current, and cross-referenced.
The missing entries had been accounted for.
All but three.
Those three were something else.
She had set them aside in a separate folder that she had not yet shown Jack because she wasn’t finished looking.
When Jack saw the office, he stood in the doorway for a long time without saying anything.
“The sticky note system,” he finally said.
“I kept the stickies,” Evelyn replied.
“The relevant ones.”
“They’re filed by date in the folder marked ‘Legacy Notes.’”
“Legacy Notes.”
He looked at the label.
“It seemed more respectful than ‘things we should have filed properly,’” she said.
Jack walked into the office.
He looked at the shelves.
Ran a finger along the labels.
Opened a drawer.
The drawer was organized too.
He closed it again.
Then he sat down in the chair across from her desk.
“The three items in the separate folder,” he said.
She had known he’d find it.
She hadn’t hidden it.
“Yes.”
“I saw you’d set it aside.”
“I wanted to look more before I said anything.”
“And?”
She took a breath.
“Someone was moving money.”
Jack remained still.
“Not a lot at any one time.”
“But consistently.”
“Over about nine months.”
“Always in small amounts.”
“Always to an external account that’s not documented in any of the records.”
She looked at the folder.
“I have always right before a larger expected expense that would explain the outflow if someone wasn’t looking carefully.”
Jack’s expression did not change.
But she saw the attention sharpen.
“It’s possible there’s a documentation issue,” she said carefully.
“An account I don’t know about that was being used for something legitimate.”
“If so, you can show me the documentation.”
“I’ll reconcile it.”
“And it’s done.”
“And if I can’t show you that documentation?”
Jack asked.
“Then you have a problem that predates me.”
She closed the folder.
“And we should talk about what you want to do with it.”
The silence lasted about ten seconds.
“Who else have you told about this?”