AN: I like to give a little reminder of what happened in the previous chapter. It will only be a line or two, but it helps refresh your memory =)
DISCLAIMER: Seriously? Why on Earth would Stephenie Meyer be on Fanfiction? Exactly, I am not her nor do I own anything but the plot.
"I am here to inform you of a …" he hesitated, seemingly struggling with the words "…predicament. You see, you records show that you have been writing out your checks, but they have somehow managed to never actually reach anywhere. The money is withdrawn from your bank account, but never is transferred anywhere."
When he finished Jacob was shocked. He looked over at Kate, who had heard the whole thing, to see that her face mirrored his horrified expression. What would this mean for the soup kitchen? It helped so many each day, where would they go? They had never received any mail or phone calls telling them that they were late on payments, he always made sure that everything was sent out well before the deadlines. His mind was so clouded with all of these thoughts that it was hard for him to come up with a complete thought.
"What exactly does that mean? For the soup kitchen, I mean." Jacob asked hesitantly, almost not wanting to know the answer.
"Well, we have a few options. No one wants to see this place close, so we've spoken to the companies who are missing their money and they have extended the date, so our first option is to raise the money somehow. The second option is to find out who could possibly have embezzled the money and intercepted the mail. And the last is that you sell the place now and try to pay of the debt with the profit made from that. However, this leaves us with the problem of closing, which as I had mentioned earlier, no one wants."
Jacob was still in shock. He couldn't believe that someone would actually do this to him. That someone would steal money from an organization that tried to do everything for the people of the town. That someone could be so cruel and malicious.
"This is a lot to take in right now." Jacob mumbled under his breath, "Mr. … I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"Oh I'm sorry, my name is Seth Clearwater."
"Mr. Clearwater –"
"Please, call me Seth"
Alright then, Jacob thought to himself. "Seth, I'm very sorry, but you can imagine how very overwhelming this is. I don't even have the slightest clue as to who it could have been." His world felt like it was slipping away and he couldn't control it. It was like a being on a really high roller coaster and not being able to contain the scream that emerges with the first drop.
Kate looked over at her best friend. She could see what Seth couldn't, the worry lines that plagued his forehead, how he was furrowing his eyebrows more and more by the second, how he pinched the bridge of his nose when he was concentrating or frustrated (in this case he was both), and how he was biting his lip so much that Kate was surprised it didn't have a hole through it yet. It worried her greatly and she did not like that she could not do anything to help. She watched as the bearer of bad news opened his mouth to speak again.
"Trust me Jacob, I may not understand, but I do sympathize." His words sounded honest, maybe he wasn't such a bad guy, maybe was actually a good guy who just stuck with the job of telling people the bad news. "I want to help in anyway I can, you just need to tell me which option you want to proceed with and we can try to work things out."
"Would it be alright if I took a few hours to think about it first?" Jacob asked. He was feeling so hopeless right now and it impaired any judgment he had.
"Absolutely," Seth held out his hand, "Here is my number so you can reach me." It was only then that I realized his business card was in his hand. He paused for a moment, "And here is the folder of all the bills that went unpaid." After I took it, he nodded his head and left.
It took me a moment to be able to move from the spot in which it had seemed like I was glued. I looked over at Kate who was staring worriedly at me. I tried to offer a smile, but it must have looked more like a frown because her eyebrows knitted even further together.
"What are we going to do?" Kate asked.
"I guess we are going to have to hold some sort of fundraiser. There's no way we can let this place close."
"But how on earth are we going to raise this much money in only a few weeks?" She had taken the folder from me and was looking over each bill. The stack seemed like it would never end. "If we had a few months, maybe, just maybe we could manage to scrape this up, but in only a few weeks?"
"We'll have to figure out something, but who on earth could have taken all that money and intercepted the mail like that. It has to be someone who works here and has access to it. We know it wasn't us, but other than that, who is really capable of getting into the accounts?" Jacob started thinking aloud. "Maybe it was someone we don't know who just picked a random organization to steal from. Maybe we're not the only ones! I wonder if Seth would know if this happened to anyone else."
Kate seemed to have a light bulb go off above her head, "I know! We could send out another check and this time, because we are aware of what is going on, we could track it and see where it is actually. I bet we could get the authorities in on it too! Oh and…" Kate rambled on and Jacob started tuning her crazy idea out. She was nothing if not creative. "Jacob! Are you even listening to me?"
Oh no, he thought, she caught me! "Um, yeah, write a new check and track it."
"Not that part, the rest of it. I said I bet that Seth would know how to, or at least we could try and see if he knows. He must have some sort of clue as to how to go about it…" She trailed off and left the train of thought waiting for termination. She looked like she was plotting some sort of scheme. He knew her well enough to know that it would probably fail epically, but he didn't have the heart to tell her that.
"I'll call Seth and see what he thinks," Jacob told her. Kate just nodded and paid minimal attention as Jacob left, too wrapped up in her thoughts to even notice as he walked away.