Page 27 of Keepsake
“So…” His mother folded her hands. “The revenue side of our balance sheet had a good day today. Let’s spend a minute talking about the expenses. I got our mobile phone bill yesterday. This is the second month in a row when we overran our data plan.” She gave the side-eye to her youngest daughter.
“I can’t help it!” Daphne said. “All my friends communicate on social media. It’s only going to get worse next month when I’m away at the college.”
“No, it’s your Spotify habit,” Dylan said. “Find a wifi signal like the rest of us.”
“Just because you don’t have any friends…”
“Hey now!” Griff thundered, holding up a hand. “No need to make things personal. Maybe our family plan is too limited. Let’s just bump it up to the next level so we can finally stop having this discussion.”
“Now there’s an idea,” Daphne scoffed.
“All right,” Ruth said, making a note on her legal pad. “Fine.” She opened a folder, lifted out two pages and handed them to me. “Lark, honey—I need you to fill these out.”
They were forms I9 and W4. Employment forms. I handed them back to her. “I don’t want to get paid.”
Her eyes widened. “Of course you do, honey. Everyone who works here gets paid.”
“Not true!” Daphne chirped.
“You’re getting paid in college tuition,” Dylan growled. “Lots and lots of it.”
The twins stared daggers at each other, but neither Ruth nor Griff paid them any attention.
“You have to be paid, or our workers’ comp won’t cover you,” Griff pointed out. “We have Audrey on the payroll for this very reason.”
“Well…” I tried to think. “Pay me minimum wage, and then deduct rent. Seriously—strip it down to nothing.”
“Everyone else gets—” Ruth began.
I shook my head. “I’m still getting paid a salary by my nonprofit, guys. The latest check just hit my bank account yesterday. I’m really not here for the money.” That’s when I shut up, because I didn’t want to talk about any of this. Forget my paycheck. I had a trust fund from my grandparents. Money wasn’t my problem. But I wasn’t about to tell them the truth.I came to Vermont to try to feel sane again.
Now there’s a conversation stopper.
“We’ll figure something out,” Griff said, closing the topic for now. “Just fill out the forms, Lark.”
“Last item,” Ruth said, reaching for a cracker. “We still have to decide whether we’re doing the Royalton market this year.”
Griffin tossed a grape into his mouth. “Five markets a week feels like too many. That’s a whole lot of cider production we could be doing instead. A bottle of Shipley’s Best pays us fifteen bucks.”
“We have Lark to help us,” Ruth pointed out, and I felt a stupid little rush of pleasure hearing it. Being helpful to my friends was a balm on my soul.
“True,” Griffin said, his big hands tenting together. “But it still may not make sense as an investment of our time.”
“Well…” I heard myself speak up. “We could put some numbers on the issue.” The work I’d done for the nonprofit in Guatemala often faced questions like this one—how to allocate scarce resources.
“Show me.” Griffin tossed me his legal pad and a pen.
I clicked the pen into action. “So, each fair is three hours, right? And how much driving time do I add on for South Royalton?”
“The drive is forty minutes,” Griffin said. “And loading the truck takes an hour—just to be conservative. Setup is a half-hour. And unloading is at least twenty minutes.”
“So…” I scribbled numbers on the pad. “Five and a half hours, with two people working? That’s eleven man hours. How much cider can you press in eleven man hours?” I looked up to find that everyone was staring at me with a peculiar intensity. “Oh, shit. Have I overstepped? I’m sorry.”
May threw her head back and began to laugh. “Oh my God. We have this same discussion every week, and if you make a math problem out of it, maybe we won’t have to anymore! I could kiss you.”
“Amen,” Griffin said. “I can press a lot of cider in eleven hours. More than two barrels, easily. So that’s…after a few months and some other tweaking, four thousand dollars’ worth of cider.Eventually.”
My pen hovered above the pad. “Even if the man hours for pressing are onlyhalfthe true investment in the finished product, you’d still have to clear two thousand dollars from the Royalton market to break even.”
