'He wanted to make it look like a car accident.'
Sarah frowned. She picked her fork up, twirled some spaghetti onto it, then stuck it into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. 'I don't think you should threaten Jacob,' she said.
'I wasn't threatening him. I was trying to wake him up.'
She shook her head. 'If Jacob can think about plotting with you against Lou, then it'll be just as easy for him to plot with Lou against us.'
'Jacob's not going to plot against us,' I said, as if the idea were absurd.
'How can you be sure?'
'He's my brother, Sarah. That counts for something.'
'But who's he closer to, you or Lou? Lou's more of a brother to him than you are.'
I considered that. It was true, of course. 'You're saying Jacob would try to kill me for the money?'
'I'm saying don't scare him. All you'll end up doing is forcing him into Lou's arms. They don't have families like you. They could just walk in here, shoot you, take the money, and run off.'
'The money's hidden. They don't know where it is.'
'Let's say they came in here with a gun, held it to your head, told you to show them where it was.'
'They'd never do it.'
'Let's say they held the gun to me.' She patted her stomach. 'Held it right here.'
I pushed the spaghetti around my plate with my fork. 'I can't really imagine Jacob doing that, can you?'
'Can you imagine him killing Pederson?'
I didn't answer. Here was another opening; I sensed it beckoning to me, and I hesitated. It would merely be a matter of speaking, no more than a few words, a simple declarative sentence. I sat there for perhaps thirty seconds, staring across at Sarah, trying desperately to survey all the possible consequences, both of speaking and of keeping silent, but they evaded me, hovering just beyond the edge of my vision, so when I finally made my choice, I did it blindly.
'Can you?' she prodded.
'Jacob didn't kill Pederson,' I said, and, as in my office the day before, there was the sudden lightening of confession. I shifted my body in the chair, searched Sarah's face for a reaction.
She stared across the table at me, expressionless. 'You told me--'
I shook my head. 'He knocked him out, and we thought he was dead. But when I picked him up to set him on his snowmobile, he let out a moan, and I had to finish him off myself.'
'You killed him?' she asked.
I nodded, a great wave of relief rolling over my body. 'I killed him.'
Sarah leaned across the table. 'How?'
'I used his scarf. I smothered him.'
She touched her chin with her fingertips, shocked, and for a brief moment her face seemed to open, so that I could look inside and watch my words slowly taking hold. I saw bewilderment there, a quick flicker of fear, and then a glance at me that had something like repulsion in it, a glance that put a distance between us, pushing me away. For an instant she was frightened, but then, as quickly as it had come, it passed; her face closed, and she brought me back.
'Why didn't Jacob do it?' she asked.
'He was already gone. I'd sent him off to meet me at the bridge.'
'You were alone?'
I nodded.
'Why didn't you tell me before?'
I struggled for a truthful answer. 'I thought it might frighten you.'
'Frighten me?'
'Upset you.'
Sarah didn't say anything. She was following some thought inside her head, rearranging things to fit this new scenario, and it gave me a panicky feeling to watch her, as if she were hiding herself from me, pretending to a composure that she didn't really feel.
'Does it?' I asked.
She looked at me for a second, but only halfway, with her eyes and nothing more. Her mind was still somewhere else. 'Does it what?'
'Upset you?'
'It's...,' she started. She had to concentrate to find a word. 'It's done.'
'Done?'
'I don't think I would've wanted you to do it, but now that it's happened, I can understand why.'
'But you wish I hadn't?'
'I don't know,' she said. Then she shook her head. 'I guess not. We would've lost the money. Jacob would've been arrested.'
I thought about this for a second, searching her face for some further reaction. 'Would you've done the same thing? If you'd been there instead of me?'
'Oh, Hank. How could I...'
'I just want to know if it's possible.'
She shut her eyes, as if attempting to imagine herself crouched over Pederson's body, his scarf balled up in her hand. 'Maybe,' she said finally, her voice a whisper. 'Maybe I would've.'
I couldn't believe this, refused to, and yet, even as I did so, sensed that it might be true. She might've killed him just like I had. After all, would I have imagined Jacob knocking Pederson down, kicking him in the chest and head? Or, more to the point, would I have imagined myself smothering the old man with his scarf? No, I thought, of course not.
I saw with a shudder that not only couldn't I predict the actions of those around me, I couldn't even reliably predict my own. It seemed like a bad sign; it seemed to indicate that we'd wandered, mapless, into a new territory. We were as good as lost.
'Jacob doesn't know?' she asked.
I shook my head. 'I told him.'
Sarah winced. 'Why?'
'It seemed like he was falling apart. He was crying. I thought it'd be easier on him if he knew that we shared the blame.'
'He's going to use it against you.'
'Use it against me? How could he use it against me? If one of us is going to get in trouble, we both will.'
'Especially if you threaten him. He'll go to Lou, and they'll use it to plot against us.'
'This is paranoia, Sarah. This isn't real.'
'We're keeping secrets from Jacob, aren't we?'
I nodded.
'And you and Jacob are keeping secrets from Lou?'
I nodded again.
'Then why can't you believe that he and Lou are keeping secrets from us, too?'
I didn't have an answer for that.
LATE IN the evening, around eleven, Sarah's stepmother, Millie, called, long distance from Miami. Sarah's mother and father, like mine, were both dead. Her mother had died when Sarah was very young, her father right after she and I were married.
Millie had become Sarah's stepmother when Sarah was still in her early teens, but they'd never been very close. The last time they'd seen each other was at my father-in-law's funeral. They talked once a month on the phone, though, a ritual that they both participated in seemingly more out of a sense of familial obligation than from any desire to speak with each other.
Sarah had grown up in southern Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky. Millie had been a nurse in the
