'It was all right,' I said. I was still thinking.
'You spent all this time at the cemetery?'
I didn't answer her. The room was dark, except for the fire and the little lamp on the table beside her chair. There was a miniature grandfather clock on the mantelpiece and a bearskin rug on the floor before the hearth, both wedding gifts from my parents. The rug was fake, a storybook bear with perfect, glass-marble eyes and white plastic teeth. On the opposite wall was a window-size mirror in a wooden frame. Its surface reflected the room back at me so that I could see myself in it, along with Sarah and the fireplace.
Sarah leaned toward me in her chair. 'What happened to your forehead?'
I touched my bump. 'I banged it.'
'Banged it? On what?'
'Sarah,' I said. 'I'm going to give you a hypothetical situation, okay? Like a game.'
She set her book face-down on the table beside her and picked up the bowl of cereal. 'All right.'
'It's a thing of morals,' I said.
She took a spoonful of cereal, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, getting lipstick on it.
'Let's say you were out walking and you found a bag of money.'
'How much money?'
I pretended to think. 'Four million dollars.'
She nodded.
'Would you keep it, or would you turn it in?'
'It's somebody else's money?'
'Of course.'
'So it'd be stealing to keep it?'
I shrugged. That wasn't the direction I wanted her to move in.
She barely even seemed to think about it. 'I'd turn it in,' she said.
'You'd turn it in?'
'Of course. What would I do with four million dollars? Can you see me bringing home that much money?' She laughed, slurped loudly at another spoonful of cereal.
'But imagine all the stuff you could do with four million dollars. You could start a whole new life.'
'It's stealing, Hank. I'd end up getting caught.'
'What if you were sure you wouldn't get caught?'
'How could I be sure of that?'
'Maybe you knew no one was looking for it.'
'But how would I explain my change in lifestyle? My fancy clothes, my trips to the Caribbean, my jewelry, my minks? People would start asking questions.'
'You'd move away. You'd go somewhere where people didn't know you.'
She shook her head. 'I'd always be worried about getting caught. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.' She stared down at her fingernails. They were painted bright red, the same color as Jacob's jacket. She wiped at the lipstick on her hand. 'No. I'd turn it in.'
I didn't say anything. Sarah lifted her cereal bowl to her mouth and sipped the milk from it. She watched me over its rim.
'You'd take it?' she asked, her face half hidden by the bowl.
I shrugged. I bent over and untied one of my shoes.
She set the cereal bowl down. 'It seems to me like it'd be an awful lot of trouble.'
'Let's say you got rid of the problem of getting caught.' I made a cutting motion with my hand. 'There's absolutely no way it'll happen.'
She frowned. 'Whose money is it?'
'What do you mean? It's yours.'
'But who am I stealing it from?'
'A drug dealer. A bank robber.'
'If it were a bank robber, it'd be the bank's money.'
'All right, then it's a drug dealer.'
'Oh, Hank,' Sarah said. 'You just want me to say I'd take it.'
'But isn't it conceivable that you might?'
'I'm sure that in some situations I'd think twice before turning it in.'
I didn't know what to say to that. It wasn't at all what I had hoped for.
She glanced toward me. 'Why're you asking me this?'
I decided suddenly that I'd made a mistake. Hypothetically, I realized, I wouldn't have taken the money either. I got up and walked back toward the hallway.
'Where are you going?' she called after me.
I gave her a little wave with my hand. 'Wait.'
I went to the hall closet and took the bag out from underneath my jacket. I dragged it behind me, across the hallway's tiled floor and into the living room. Sarah had the book open in her lap again, but she closed it when she saw me with the bag.
'What--?' she started.
I brought it right up in front of her, loosened its drawstring, and, with a dramatic flourish, emptied it at her feet.
The money fell into a large pile, packets sliding out across the bearskin rug.
She stared down at it, shocked. She set her book on the table. Her mouth opened, but she didn't say anything.
I stood in front of her, holding the empty bag. 'It's real,' I said.
She continued to stare at it. She looked pained, as if she'd just been struck in the chest.
'It's all right,' I said. I stooped down, like I was going to start putting the money back, but instead I just touched it with my hand. The bills felt cool against my fingertips, their paper soft and worn, like cloth. They were old, their edges a little tattered, and I thought of all the hands they must've passed through already before reaching my own -- millions of different people, in and out of wallets and purses and vaults, so that they could end up here, finally, spread out in a pile across my living-room floor.
'You took it from the feedstore?' she asked.
'No. I found it.'
'But it's somebody's. They have to be looking for it.'
I shook my head. 'Nobody's looking for it.'
She didn't seem to hear me. 'It's four million dollars?'
'Four point four.'
'You found it with Jacob?'
I nodded, and she frowned.
'Where?'
I told her about the fox and Mary Beth, about the hike into the park and our discovery of the plane. When I told her about the bird, she squinted at my forehead, a pained, sympathetic look coming over her face, but she didn't say anything.
After I finished, we sat for a bit in silence. I picked up a packet and held it out toward her. I wanted her to touch it, to see what it felt like, a dense little brick of money, but she wouldn't take it.
'You want to keep it, don't you?' she asked.
I shrugged. 'I guess so. I mean, I don't see why we shouldn't.'
She didn't say anything. She put her hands on her stomach and stared down at it, a distracted look on her face. The baby was kicking.
'If we keep it,' I said, 'we'll never have to worry about money again.'
'We don't have to worry about money now, Hank. You've got a good job. We don't need this.'
I stared into the fire, thinking about that. It was dying down, the flames flickering low. I got up and added another log.
She was right, of course: we couldn't claim -- as Jacob and Lou probably did, and as my parents might've had
