It seems I’m being credited for forty dollars a week, but I only give twenty. I think someone else’s donations are ending up on my sheet.” I expected her to type something into her computer, apologize for the glitch, and tell me a revised copy would be in the mail.

Instead, the line went completely dead. She was quiet for so long that I pulled the phone away from my ear to see if the call had dropped. “Sarah? Are you still there?” “I’m here, Naura,” she finally said. Her voice sounded tight, completely stripped of its usual upbeat customer-service tone.

She paused again, taking a deep breath. “Naura, I can’t really explain this over the phone. Are you free right now? Could you come down to the church office for a few minutes?” My heart gave a little nervous flutter. Had I done something wrong?

Was the church in financial trouble? I told her I would be right there, grabbed my coat, and drove the ten minutes to the church campus. When I walked into her small, windowless office, the atmosphere was thick. Sarah had pushed her computer keyboard out of the way.

She looked at me with a soft, almost sorrowful expression and gestured for me to close the door and take a seat. “There’s no computer error, Naura,” she said quietly. “Your statement is mathematically correct based on what is deposited under your name.” “But I only put in twenty dollars,” I protested, pulling the giving statement out of my purse and sliding it across her desk.

“I know exactly what I give, Sarah. I fold the bill myself.” Sarah didn’t look at the paper. Instead, she reached down to the bottom drawer of her wooden desk—a drawer I noticed had a physical key lock on it.

She unlocked it and pulled out an old, heavy, green accounting ledger.

It looked like something out of the 1980s, completely out of place in our modern, digitized office. She opened the heavy cover and flipped toward the back, finding a very specific page. She turned the book around so I could read it. The page had no church header on it.

It just had a handwritten list of eight names. As I scanned the list, my stomach dropped. Margaret. Helen. Betty. Shirley. Me. Every single name on that page belonged to a widow in our congregation. Next to my name, I saw a column of dates.

Beside each date was the amount ⁠$20.00⁠. But right next to that, in a different column, written in neat red ink, was another ⁠$20.00⁠. Beside the red number were the initials: ‘matched, D.B.’ I looked at the other names. Helen, who I knew struggled to pay for her medications, had a weekly entry of five dollars.

Next to it, in red ink: matched, D.B. Margaret gave fifty dollars a month. Next to it: matched, D.B. “What is this?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.