they lived long enough to join us in our present situation -- that the money was something we needed, something we couldn't live without. Our life wasn't a struggle in that way. We were solidly middle class; when we worried about the future, it was not about how we were going to feed ourselves, or pay our bills, or educate our children, it was about how we'd manage to save enough for a larger house, a better car, more complicated appliances. But just because we didn't need the money didn't mean we couldn't want it, couldn't see it as a salvation of a different sort, and put up some struggle to keep it.
I'd gone to college to become a lawyer, only to give it up when I hadn't gotten the grades. Now I was an accountant in the feedstore of my hometown, the same town I'd spent all my childhood vowing to escape. I'd settled for something less than I'd planned on when I was younger and then convinced myself that it was enough. It wasn't, though; I saw that now. There were boundaries on Sarah's and my life, limits to what we could do and where we could go, and the pile of money lying at my feet illuminated them, highlighted the triviality of our aspirations, the bleakness of our dreams. It offered us a chance at something more.
I tried to find a way to communicate this to Sarah.
'My job's never going to amount to much,' I said, pushing at the fire with the poker. 'I'll be manager someday, after Tom Butler dies or retires, but he's not much older than me, so neither of those'll happen very soon, and by the time they do, I'll be an old man myself.'
I'd thought this several times over the previous few years, a gray, depressing probe into the future, but I'd never spoken it out loud before, and I was astonished to hear myself do so now. It was as if someone else had uttered the words; I had to pause a moment to let them sink in.
Sarah nodded, her face calm, expressionless, and I got a further shock from that: she wasn't surprised by what I'd said. She'd already known the extent of my possibilities at the feedstore as well as I had. I waited for her to say something, to protest in some way, but she didn't.
'Think of the life we could give the baby,' I whispered. 'The security, the privilege.'
I glanced over at her, but she wasn't looking at me. She was looking down at the packets. I continued to poke at the fire.
'It's lost money, Sarah. Nobody knows anything about it. It's ours if we want it.'
'But it's stealing. If you get caught, you'll go to jail.'
'Nobody gets hurt by our keeping it. That's what makes it a crime, isn't it? People getting hurt?'
She shook her head. 'It's a crime because it's against the law. It doesn't matter whether anybody gets hurt or not, you'll still get arrested. I'm not going to be left bringing up a child all by myself because you've done something stupid and ended up in jail.'
'But we can do it for the right reasons,' I said. 'We can do it so that something good comes from it.' I was beginning to flounder. I wanted the money, and I wanted her to want it too.
She sighed, as if in disgust. When she spoke again, her voice rose a step. She was becoming angry. 'I'm not worried about the morality of it, Hank. I'm worried about getting caught. That's what's real; the rest is just talk. If you get caught, you'll go to jail. I'd let you keep it if there wasn't that risk, but there is, so I won't.'
I stopped short at this, startled. I'd assumed from the beginning that any reluctance I'd encounter on her part about keeping the money would stem from moral grounds. It had given me a helpless, fatalistic feeling -- I knew that there was no way to argue against something like that -- but now I saw that it was much simpler. She wanted to keep the packets, but she was afraid of getting caught. I should've realized this from the beginning, too. Sarah, above all else, was a pragmatist -- it was the quality I loved best in her -- she dealt with things at their most basic level. For her, a decision to keep the money would be predicated on two simple conditions. The first -- which I'd already dealt with -- was an assurance that no one would be hurt by our actions; the second was that we wouldn't get in any trouble. Everything else, as she'd said, was just talk, a distraction from what mattered.
I told her about my plan.
'The money's the only evidence that we've committed a crime,' I said. 'We can sit on it and see what happens. If someone comes searching for it, we'll just burn it, and that'll be that.'
She pursed her lips. Watching her, I could see that I'd gained a foothold.
'There's no risk,' I said. 'We'll be in complete control.'
'There's always a risk, Hank.'
'But would you do it if you thought there wasn't?'
She didn't answer me.
'Would you?' I pressed.
'You've already left a lot of clues.'
'Clues?'
'Like your tracks in the snow. They lead in from the road, right to the plane, and then back out again.'
'It's supposed to snow tomorrow,' I countered triumphantly. 'They'll be gone by tomorrow night.'
She half-nodded, half-shrugged. 'You touched the pilot.'
I frowned, remembering Jacob asking Carl about the plane. It was starting to seem stupid again, rather than clever.
'If they suspect you for any reason,' Sarah said, 'they'll be able to figure out that you were there. All they need is a single follicle of hair, a half-inch thread from your jacket.'
I lifted my hands in the air, palms up. 'But why would anyone suspect me?'
She answered quickly, though she didn't have to. I knew what she was going to say. 'Because of Jacob and Lou.'
'Jacob's all right,' I said, not sure if I really believed it. 'He'll do whatever I say.'
'And Lou?'
'As long as we have the money, we can control Lou. We'll always be able to threaten that we'll burn it.'
'And after we divide the money?'
'He'll be our risk. He'll be what we have to live with.'
She frowned, her forehead wrinkled in thought.
'It seems like a small price to pay,' I said.
She still didn't say anything.
'We can always burn the money, Sarah. Right up to the very last moment. It seems silly to give it up now, before anything's even gone wrong.'
She was silent, but I could see that she was coming to a decision. I returned the poker to its stand, then went back and crouched down over the packets. Sarah didn't look at me. She was staring at her hands.
'You have to go back to the plane,' she said, 'and return some of it.'
'Return it?' I didn't understand what she meant.
'Just part of it. You'll have to go early tomorrow morning, so when it storms later it'll cover your tracks.'
'We're keeping it?' I asked, a little thrill of excitement running over my body.
She nodded. 'We'll put five hundred thousand back, and keep the rest. That way when they find the plane, they'll assume no one has been there yet.'
'That's an awful lot of money.'
'That's how much we're leaving.'
'It's half a million dollars.'
She nodded. 'It'll bring us down to an even three-way split.'
'So would two hundred thousand.'
'That's not enough. Five hundred is perfect. No one would walk away from that much money. It'll put us beyond suspicion.'
'I don't think--' I started, but she cut me off.
'It's five hundred thousand, Hank. Either that or we give it all back.'
I glanced up at her, surprised at the forcefulness of her tone.
'Greed is what'll get us caught,' she said.
I considered that for a moment; then I acquiesced. 'All right,' I said, 'it's five hundred thousand.'
I counted out fifty packets right then and there, as if afraid she might change her mind. I stacked them up at her feet, like an offering at an altar, and put the rest into the duffel bag. Sarah sat in her chair, watching me work. When the bag was full, I pulled its drawstring tight, closing it, and smiled up at her.
