The Grumpy CFO's Temporary Problem

5. Prologue -- Gretchen

Prologue -- Gretchen

“Gretchen, do you have a minute?”

I looked up to see my neighbor Jan waving to me from her porch.

She was in her early seventies, but still active and spry.

And a little wacky. Today Jan was wearing leopard print tights with pink cowboy boots and an oversized white tee shirt with the Wonder Woman logo printed across the chest. Her gray hair was in pigtails on either side of her head, and her red lipstick was so bright I could see it across the yard.

She was awesome.

“How are you doing Jan?” I asked as I walked over.

“Fine, fine. Did you just come from work?”

Her eyes took in my black dress pants, sensible shoes, and the white button down blouse that mostly hid the sleeve of tattoos I had going down my right arm from shoulder to wrist. I was the chief financial officer at a nonprofit here in Seattle, so I had to dress like a grown-up.

Besides, I’d left my wild child days behind me long ago, other than the light purple color I still kept in my hair.

It was my one indulgence, and honestly I’d been dying my hair for so long I scarcely remembered what the real color was anyway.

“Yes.”

“How’s the new gig anyway?”

I smiled. “I love it there. There’s a lot of clean-up to do from that situation with the former CFO, but I love my new team, and all of my colleagues are great too.”

The ‘situation’ involved the former CFO who’d been skimming money off grants by way of fake invoices for years, taking advantage of the lack of appropriate internal controls the nonprofit’s accounting team had in place.

The CFO was busted during a state audit and was currently serving a prison term for fraud and theft.

“Plus it’s nice to be doing something that impacts people’s lives, you know?”

I’d worked as a finance manager at the county office for many years and while the pay and benefits were good, I’d just felt like another cog in a bureaucratic wheel there.

At the nonprofit I was part of a team of committed people who were working their asses off every day to help women and children move out of poverty. I loved it.

Jan and I chatted for a few more minutes before my neighbor got around to the reason she called me over.

“Listen honey, next week I’m going out of town. I’ll be gone for a month, and I was hoping you would keep an eye on my house. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d also appreciate it if you could grab my mail, cut the grass, and water my plants. I’ll pay you.”

I gave her an exasperated look. “You’ll do no such thing. Remember that time I had my appendix out? You cleaned my house, brought me food every day, reorganized my cabinets, and watched movies with me when I was bored. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me a damned thing, that’s what neighbors do.”

That was the nice thing about this neighborhood. Everyone was friendly and watched out for each other.

“All right then, no money will change hands,” I said. “But you are welcome to buy me a small souvenir if you’d like. Or send me a postcard. Where are you going anyway?”

“I’m going with some ladies from my Zumba class on one of those river cruises through Europe. It’s a whole month. We stop in multiple ports which gives us lots of time to sightsee – and check out the local silver fox population.”

I laughed. My neighbor had a much more active dating life than I did, despite the fact that she was more than thirty years older than me.

“Okay that sounds fun. When will you be gone?”

I input the dates into the calendar on my phone so I wouldn’t forget, promising to take care of everything while she was gone. We’d exchanged keys years ago.

“I’ll have email since the ship has Wi-Fi but I’m not getting an international data plan,” Jan told me.

“The phone company charges an arm and a leg for that, damn billionaires trying to stick it to the little guy. But you can email me if anything comes up. I’ll check my email once a day just in case. ”

“Sounds good, and you email me if you need anything, and send me pictures, okay?”

“Will do, honey. Thank you.”