The ghosts had expected Lily to make a face like a certain famous painting of a screaming man on a bridge, but she just tilted her head.

  Lily didn’t know that word!

  “What’s accounting?” she asked as she started walking home.

  “It’s where you do the math to figure out how much money you made or lost, and keep track of your business in general.”

  “Wait, what? Losing money?!” Lily said.

  She put her hands on her face and did the Scream pose!

  “That’s right, sometimes in business, you can lose money,” Rich said.

  “You didn’t tell me that!” Lily cried.

  “Well, nothing in business is certain,” Mac admitted.

  Lily crouched down on the sidewalk and clutched her head.

  “Oh no… all my hard earned money…” she moaned.

  “Well, you don’t know if you made or lost money until you do the accounting,” Rich said.

  “I mean, it’s hard to imagine you lost money on a day you completely sold out. Put your chin up, Lily!”

  Lily took a deep breath.

  Right.

  Lily was a good-at-math girl!

  She could already tell she’d at least made some money from all the fries, and the lemonade she had sold.

  And the miners had promised to buy more food tomorrow!

  She let out her breath.

  Okay!

  She didn’t want to go home and worry her Mama and Papa.

  She had to put on a big smile for them!

  Lily stood up and walked the rest of the way home, carrying her money box.

  “I’m home, Mama!” she called as she walked through the door.

  “Welcome back Lily!” her Mama said. “Papa’s resting, okay?”

  “Okay!” Lily answered in a stage whisper.

  “Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you some lunch?”

  “Yeah! Lily’s really hungry!” Her eyes sparkled. She couldn’t wait to eat!

  The last month she’d been too busy doing chores to come home and eat lunch.

  Sally had been worried, but today Lily was back for lunch.

  She was going to go all out and make something delicious!

  “Alright, you go wash up and I’ll make you lunch.”

  Lily scurried off, and Sally whipped up some chicken and rice with veggies.

  It wasn’t the best ingredients. In fact, the ingredients were downright cheap. They needed to save money as much as they could…

  But Lily was a growing girl, and needed good nutrition.

  So she cooked, filling the meal with a mother’s love, and set out a plate just as Lily returned.

  “Thanks, Mama!” Lily beamed, and then she bowed her head and said her prayers to the Gods and Goddesses, just like she always did.

  “This is so yummy!” Lily said between bites, scarfing down the food.

  She must have really worked up an appetite today!

  Sally cleaned up and sat down at the table with her daughter, and asked what she’d been up to.

  “I sold all the Lilyburgers and fries and lemonade!”

  “Wow, really?”

  “Yeah! The miners really liked them. Oh, and they said hi and they hope Papa gets better soon!”

  Sally smiled. “That was really kind of them to say.”

  Even so, Bill had a long road to recovery ahead of him.

  It was hard for him to sit still and heal, knowing the burden it was putting on his family.

  Honestly, Sally thought that he had it the hardest of all.

  She didn’t mind taking care of him.

  He was her husband, of course she wanted to care for him when he needed it.

  The only thing that worried her was Lily.

  She was so young, and soon…

  Soon, she’d probably be on her own.

  Too soon.

  Because at the end of this month…

  Sally dismissed the thoughts of the future.

  She was just going to live in the present, and enjoy the time she had with her precious daughter.

  Lily finished her lunch, and Sally cleaned up.

  “Mama, I can help!”

  “No no, you relax, or go out playing. Mama can handle this much.”

  “Okay!”

  So Sally bustled around their home, tidying up and fetching whatever Bill needed while he rested.

  In the meantime, Lily sat back down at the table with her money box. The ghosts, invisible to Lily’s Mama, joined her.

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  “Alright, time for accounting~” Mac said, trying to be spooky.

  “Mr. Ghost Mac, please…” Lily said.

  “Yeah, Mac, come on. We gotta run the numbers, here. Get serious.”

  “Fine…” Mac said

  Lily took out her money and counted it up.

  It was sad to see how little was left.

  When she counted it with her Papa the other day, she’d had three hundred and four dollars, and sixty-five cents.

  After buying her cart and all the tools and ingredients, she’d only had fifty-one dollars and thirty cents.

  So her total expenses had been two hundred and fifty-three dollars and thirty five cents.

  “That’s so much money…” Lily groaned.

  “Capital expenses are a lot,” Mac admitted.

  “But, you can recover that investment over time, and you get to keep your capital goods,” Rich said.

  “Capital?” Lily asked, unfamiliar with the word.

  “Yeah. Money you can invest is capital, and so is your cart and tools.”

  “The idea is that you use your money, your capital, and make more money with it.”

  “Making money… with money?” Lily said, tilting her head.

  “Yep! That’s the idea behind business in general,” Rich said proudly.

  “We made a lot of money, back when we were alive,” Mac added.

  “Can Lily make a lot of money, too…?”

  “Of course! That’s why Lord Hades sent us!”

  “To help you make a lot of money!”

  Lily breathed a sigh of relief, and then patted her cheeks. She got fired up!

  “Okay! What’s next!”

  She was going to do her best at this ‘accounting’ stuff!

  “Okay, so next is figuring out today’s gross profit.”

  Together, they figured out the material costs for the day, and their total revenue.

  The material costs, all together, were two dollars and ninety-seven cents.

  “Oh, that’s not too much,” Lily said, surprised. She made more than that in a morning, doing chores.

  She counted up all the money in her money box, and found that she had seventy-one dollars exactly.

  She did the math, lining up the numbers to subtract…

  “So today we made… nineteen dollars and seventy cents?!”

  Lily was shocked!

  That was more than she made in a whole day of chores, and it was just after lunchtime!

  Well, it was mid-afternoon, since she ate lunch later than normal, but still!

  And that had been way less work!

  “Yep, that sounds about right. Now you still have to make sure that lines up with all the sales you did today,” Rich said.

  Lily struggled a little to remember all the sales.

  “In the future, you should probably write down each sale in a ledger. That way it’s easier to keep track of everything.”

  “Yeah, especially going forward…”

  Eventually, they got it figured out, and the accounting was a success!

  Lily had sold ten french fries, ten lemonades, seven cheeseburgers, and three Lilyburgers without cheese.

  So her total revenue was nineteen dollars and seventy cents.

  And her gross profits, the revenue minus the material costs, was sixteen dollars and seventy-three cents.

  “Now, don’t forget, you need to order more ingredients for tomorrow.”

  “Yep, and you should probably plan on selling even more food.”

  “How much more?” Lily asked.

  “Triple,” Rich said. But Mac smacked him in the arm.

  “Nope, double.”

  “Huh?!” Lily exclaimed.

  Double was a lot more! And triple…

  Triple would be more than forty-five dollars worth of profit!

  “Why not triple?” Rich asked.

  “Because, first of all, Lily needs more practice setting up and making the food,” Mac said.

  Lily nodded. “Yeah, it took me a while this morning.”

  “And second, the market’s still developing. Tomorrow’s only the second day. Better to leave some customers wanting rather than buy too many ingredients and not sell everything. We didn’t have any waste today, but it’s too early to be taking risks like that.”

  “Waste? Risk?”

  Lily didn’t like the sound of that!

  “Hmm… You’ve got a point, Mac.”

  The WcDonalds brothers explained waste and risk to Lily and she paled.

  “Well, it’s not so bad. It’s food, and you can just bring it home and eat it for dinner. You only lose out on the material costs, if it’s not too much waste.”

  “Oh…”

  Lily hadn’t thought of that.

  Now that she was thinking about how much food ingredients cost, she wondered how much their meals at home cost.

  If she was going to pay for her parents’ retirement, she needed to think about their food, too!

  “Okay!” Lily said, bringing an end to the discussion. “We need to go order twice as much ingredients for tomorrow!”

  So she set out once again, and this time, she ordered twice as many buns and twice as much meat.

  She still had enough cheese, pickles, and ketchup for the Lilyburgers.

  She also bought fresh oil and twice as many potatoes for the french fries, and twice as many lemons and twice as much sugar, and she had to buy another big pitcher for the lemonade. That cost three dollars, which she was sad about at first.

  “Lily, think about it. Today you made four dollars and fifty cents on lemonade by itself. So if you spend a dollar on twice as much ingredients, and three dollars on another pitcher, that’s only four dollars. You still have fifty cents of today’s lemonade profits left over.”

  Lily’s head spun.

  There was so much to think about!

  Business could be really complicated!

  “And, thinking about tomorrow, if you sell all the lemonade again, you’ll make nine dollars gross profit. So spending another three dollars today let’s you make another four and a half tomorrow, and every day going forward.”

  “Uh, okay…” Lily said to the ghost nobody else could see or hear.

  Unfortunately, nobody would deliver the goods to her cart in the morning. Mornings were simply too busy, and hiring someone to do the deliveries would cost too much.

  Instead, Lily took the oil, potatoes, lemons, and sugar to the cart that day, putting them in a storage cubby on the bottom.

  The ground beef and buns she would pick up in the morning, when they were fresh.

  If she sold out again tomorrow, she’d have to think about buying more cheese and ketchup.

  It wasn’t even sunset yet, but Lily was wiped out!

  “Good job today, Lily!” Rich said.

  “Yeah, today was a great first day!” Mac encouraged.

  Still, Lily slumped home, tired. It was only at the front door that she stirred herself up and put on a smile for her Mama and Papa.

  “I’m home again!” she called out as she walked through the door.

  “Oh, you’re back early,” Mama answered.

  “Yeah!” Lily smiled, and went to wash up without being told.

  “Do you want to help with dinner tonight?” Mama asked.

  “Yeah! Lily wants to help!” Lily answered, excited.

  Together, Lily and her Mama took apart a chicken and made chicken stock for soup for another day, and made a casserole with veggies and cheese and potatoes and the chicken they just cut up.

  “Ooh, this is super yummy!” Papa said, eating his dinner.

  “Lily helped!” Lily beamed.

  “You did a good job!” He carefully patted her head, being careful to only move his arm and keep his back still. “You’ll be as good a cook as your Mama some day!”

  “Yeah! Lily’s going to keep practicing!”

  Bill and Sally cherished this moment, wishing it would last forever, though they knew it couldn’t.

  Lily, on the other hand, simply put aside worries about the future. After her busy day, she was over it! She just wanted to relax.

  That night, she said her prayers, thanked the God of Business for his help today and asked for his help again tomorrow, and again asked the Goddess of Healing to help her Papa. Then she conked right out, totally unaware of how busy tomorrow would be!

  Throughout their village, mining men’s tummies rumbled.