I nodded.
'And we'll split it up?'
I nodded again. 'Take the twenties,' I said.
He looked down at the money. Then he took it and shoved it into his jacket pocket. He smiled at me. 'Sorry to wake you,' he said. He backed away, two unsteady steps toward the door. I opened it for him, and, when he was out on the porch, shut and locked it behind him.
I watched him through the window, watched him stand there on the front step, take the twenties from his pocket, and slowly inspect them before he set off, weaving a bit, down the driveway to his car.
When he opened the car door, the dome light flashed on for a second, and I saw two people inside. In the front seat was Nancy, smiling up toward him. In the back, lost in shadow, was a second person. At first I assumed it must be Sonny Major. But then, just as Lou shut the door behind him and the light flicked off, I had an instant's tremor of doubt. Sonny Major was a tiny man, smaller than Lou. The man in the rear of the car had looked large, even huge. He'd looked like Jacob.
I watched the car roll down the driveway. They were out on the street before Lou turned on his headlights. I waited there, my feet numb against the cold wooden floor, until the sound of the car's engine faded away and the house, once again, descended into silence.
I tried briefly to think of what I ought to do, but I couldn't come up with anything. All I could think was that things had gotten out of hand. I was in trouble now, and there seemed to be no way out of it.
When I turned to go back to bed, I found Sarah, wrapped in her white terry cloth robe, staring down at me like a ghost from the shadows at the top of the stairs.
WE TALKED right there, on the stairs. I climbed up to her and we sat down beside each other in the darkness, on the next-to-last step, like two children.
'You heard?' I asked.
Sarah nodded. She rested her hand on my knee.
'All of it?'
'Yes.'
'Jacob told Lou about Pederson.'
She nodded again, giving my knee a little squeeze. I put my hand on top of hers.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
I shrugged. 'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'Keep the money. Wait it out.'
She leaned away from me. I could feel her looking at my face. I stared down toward the front door. 'You can't do that,' she said. Her voice, without rising at all, nevertheless had taken on a subtle urgency. 'If you don't give it to him, he'll tell.'
'Then I'll give it to him.'
'You can't. He'll get us caught. He'll start spending it everywhere, attracting attention.'
'All right, then I won't. I'll call his bluff.'
'But he'll tell.'
'There's nothing else I can do, Sarah,' I said, my voice rising with frustration. 'Those are my two options.'
'Burn the money.'
'I can't. Lou'll tell about Pederson. I'll end up getting charged with murder.'
'Blame it on Jacob. If you turn in the money and promise to testify against him, they'll grant you immunity.'
'I can't do that to Jacob.'
'Look what he's done to you, Hank. This is all his fault.'
'I'm not going to do that to my own brother.'
I could hear Sarah's breathing; it was coming fast and shallow. I squeezed her hand.
'I don't think he'll tell,' I said. 'I think if we stand firm, he'll wait till summer.'
'And if he doesn't?'
'Then we're in trouble. That's the risk we take.'
'You can't just sit back and wait for him to turn you in.'
'What do you want me to do? You want me to kill him? Like Jacob said?'
She waved this aside, frowning. 'All I'm saying is that we have to do something. We have to find some way to threaten him.'
'Threaten him?'
'It's a power thing, Hank. We were controlling him by keeping the money, but now he's controlling us. We have to think of a way to regain control.'
'Things'll only get worse if we threaten him. It's like upping the ante; all he'll do is throw in another chip.'
'You're saying you want to give up?'
I took my hand away from hers and rubbed my face with it. All around us, the house was absolutely quiet, as if it were listening. 'I just want to keep doing what we planned,' I said. 'I want to wait till summer.'
'But he'll tell.'
'He won't gain anything by telling. He knows that. The money'll be gone if we go to jail.'
'He'll do it out of spite. He'll do it just because you don't follow his orders.'
I shut my eyes. My body was beginning to ache with fatigue. It wanted to return to sleep.
'I don't think you understand how serious this is, Hank.'
'We should go back to bed,' I said, but Sarah didn't move.
'You're at his mercy now. You'll have to do whatever he tells you.'
'I still have the money. He doesn't know where it is.'
'Your leverage came from the threat of burning it. That's gone now.'
'I shouldn't have told Jacob.'
'You know Lou. He'll use it against you for all it's worth.'
'I can't believe he did this to me.'
'Even if we make it through to the summer and split up the money, he'll always have this to threaten you with. He'll wait ten years, until he's spent his share, then he'll track us down. He'll blackmail us. He'll send you to jail.'
I didn't say anything. I wasn't thinking about Lou; I was thinking about Jacob.
Sarah took my hand again. 'You can't let him do that. You have to take control.'
'But there's nothing we can do. You keep talking about threatening him, but how're we going to do that? We don't have anything to threaten him with.'
She didn't say anything.
'Is there something you want me to do?' I asked. 'Do you have a plan?'
She stared at me, hard, and for a second I thought she was going to say she wanted me to kill him, but she didn't. She just shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'I don't.'
I nodded. I was about to stand up, to head back to the bedroom, when she grabbed my hand and held it to her stomach. The baby was kicking. I felt it beneath my palm, something dark and mysterious, the warm softness of her body pushing up forcefully against my skin. It went on for several seconds.
'It'll be all right,' I whispered, when it was finally finished. 'Trust me. We'll see it through.'
It was the type of thing people always say when they're trapped in untenable situations; I realized that as soon as I began to speak. It was like what my mother had said to me the last time I'd seen her, something both false and brave, an aversion of the eyes and a closing of the ears, a denial of the peril we were in. It was a bad sign, that I felt the need to say it, and I could tell by the way Sarah kept my hand pressed against her belly, her grip tight and insistent, that she knew it, too. We were in trouble; we'd started something dangerous together, full of naive self-confidence and assurance, and now we were watching it slip out of our control.
