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She started going through everything, and there weren’t a lot of handwritten records. There were a lot of things that were typed and printed. None of the typing had any punctuation, and he didn’t use capital letters. There were a couple of correspondences that had pretty atrocious grammar, considering that the computer would take care of most of that for you. Levi spoke fluidly, but that wasn’t how he wrote, that was for sure. She frowned as she looked at a communication with the shipping company where he had made a few homonym errors.
He was behind. On everything to do with paperwork, much more so than he had let on. There were a lot of invoices that weren’t completed. And it wasn’t even him being behind on making payments; it was him needing to collect payments, for meat that had already been shipped and sold.
It was not comprehensively put together, and it was definitely hurting him and his bottom line.
She wondered if he even knew at this point how far behind he was, and what all he had missed.
She started working her way through accounts, and then stopped to take a break, to do a little bit of research on Christmas tree farms and what large companies might be looking to contract out for the next few years. And if not contract out, then would take inventory on from a ranch. Because that would be the best, she figured. Somebody who would agree to buy the trees, in the way that he sold the cows. She could see there might be a little bit of convenience in doing the contracting, because then he wouldn’t have to invoice and manage sales individually, but she also knew that he was particular about maintaining rights to the land, and she could understand that.
She looked over at a file cabinet. He’d said to stick to the computer but...well, there was more to do. And wouldn’t it be helpful to keep on organizing?
She opened up the cabinet and laughed, because the files were just shoved inside in a stack. She moved one and frowned at a Post-it note on the front of it. Not what it said, but the writing. There was a phone number, she was pretty sure that’s what it was, and the fives were backward. And then there was a name, with a backward J and D. Her stomach squeezed tightly. He had obvious hallmarks of someone with dyslexia. She remembered when she had brought the binder, and he hadn’t actually read it. She thought he was being mean, but...
She felt uncomfortable, worse even than she had earlier, and that was saying something. Because she had been just so snotty to him, and she had made so many assumptions.
This was clearly a struggle for him, more than just not wanting to do it, which was what he pretended.
She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, and started putting different types of papers into categories.
She hadn’t even realized that four hours had gone by until he opened the door. “Hey. You hungry?”
“Yes,” she said.
“My sister is bringing a pizza from Mapleton. We do pizza a lot, even though it’s a big drive to get one.”
“Oh, I’d love that. It’s been forever since I’ve had takeout. Well, I had it more with you than I have for ages. That was my favorite thing about being in school, actually, the ease with which we could order food. So different than here.”
“I bet,” he said. He looked around the room. “You survived it.”
“Yeah. It’s... We should come up with the system,” she said.
If he wanted to tell her he was dyslexic, he would. And he hadn’t. So he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. So it probably wasn’t the right thing to do to bring it up. Anyway, maybe she was wrong.
Maybe he was just careless, but nothing about him seemed careless.
She walked out of the office slowly, and brushed past him closer than she meant to. She looked up at him, and she was startled yet again by the clarity of those blue eyes.
He was unknowable. She felt in so many ways like she had gotten to know him in the last few days—that was why the whole thing with his parents had affected her so deeply. She felt like she was wrapped around him somehow. Maybe because their fates were tied together, because his ranch was now connected with the success of hers—even if it wasn’t entirely fair of her to think of it that way because he hadn’t agreed to anything and none of this was his fault—or what, she couldn’t say. But she also felt like she hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of who he was, and more than that, she had never really felt the desire to know another person.
She had grown up with her sisters, and they had always been her best friends. Growing up on Four Corners, there was a rotating cycle of people who came and went, and there was really no point bothering to get to know them all that well. And then there were the original four families. The ones that were always there. And they were their own thing. She had never particularly clicked with any of them.
That was just the truth of it.
At school, she hadn’t really bothered to get to know anyone well because she had been so busy with school. That was what she told herself.
Was that really true? Was she busy with school or did she avoid getting to know people?
Did it all seem pointless because it always felt like they would leave? Except for her sisters, who were the only ones that she could trust?
That was such a weird realization to have standing in his house, about to have pizza with him and his sister. She didn’t know what it was about him that made her reflect on these kinds of things. Except maybe it was that he was different. A new person. And one that intrigued her in a way that no one else really had before. Part of her wanted to run away from that, and part of her wanted to lean in to it because it was just so interesting.
She liked to learn, after all. And this was an academically rigorous exercise. At least, it was a new experience.
Maybe that was all it was.
Except it felt different from that. She felt different from that.
“I mean, if you can. I would be thrilled with it.”
