A Simple Plan

'Tell me the rest,' Sarah said.

So I did. I told her about shooting Jacob, about driving back to Sonny's and turning out the lights. I told her about calling the police, and how my brother grabbed my ankle. As we pulled up into our driveway, I was describing my interview with the sheriff's deputies. Sarah eased the car into the garage, and we sat there -- the engine off, the air growing cold around us -- until I finished. Amanda continued to cry, her voice sounding merely tired now rather than angry, as it had before. I reached back and unstrapped her from her seat, then handed her to Sarah, who tried unsuccessfully to comfort her while I talked, by bouncing her on her lap, and kissing her on the face.

I told her about going to see Jacob.

'He smiled at me, like he understood,' I said, not believing it. I looked at Sarah to see if she did, but she was making a face at Amanda. 'Like he forgave me.'

'He's probably in shock,' Sarah said. 'He probably doesn't even remember what happened yet.'

'Will he remember later?' I wanted desperately to believe that he wouldn't; I clung to the idea. I wanted him to live and forget -- about the money, the shooting, everything.

'I don't know.'

'If he talks, we probably won't have much warning before they come and get us.'

She nodded, then leaned her head down and kissed Amanda on her forehead. The baby was still crying, but quietly now, in little hiccoughs. Sarah whispered her name.

'We should get the money out of the house,' I said, the words seeming to speed up on me as they came out, a thread of panic stitching them tightly together, squeezing out the spaces between them. 'We should bury it somewhere, or take it--'

'Shhh,' Sarah soothed. 'It's all right, Hank. We're going to be okay.'

'Why don't we just run?' I asked quickly, the idea coming to me as I spoke it.

'Run?'

'We could pack right now. Take the money and disappear.'

She gave me a stern look. 'Running would be a confession. It's how we'd get caught. We've done what we've done; now we just have to wait and hope for the best.'

A car drove by on the street outside; Sarah watched it pass in the rearview mirror. When she spoke again, her voice came out very soft.

'The doctors think he's going to die.'

'But I don't want him to die,' I said, less because it was true than because it made me feel better to say it.

She turned and looked at me full in the face. 'We can survive this, Hank, if we're careful. We just can't allow ourselves to feel guilty over what we've done, not for a single instant. It was an accident, the whole thing. We didn't have a choice.'

'Jacob wasn't an accident.'

'Yes, he was. From the moment Lou went out and got his gun, the whole thing became an accident. It ceased to be our fault.'

She touched Amanda's cheek with her hand, and the baby, finally, fell silent. Without her crying, the car seemed suddenly to fill with space.

'What we've done is horrible,' Sarah said. 'But that doesn't mean we're evil, and it doesn't mean we weren't right to do it. We had to save ourselves. Everything you did, every shot you fired, was in self-defense.'

She turned to look at me, pushing the hair out of her eyes with her hand, waiting for my response. And she was right, I realized. This was what we had to tell ourselves, that what we'd done was understandable, forgivable, that the brutality of our actions had stemmed not from our plans and desires but from the situation in which, through no fault of our own, we'd been trapped. That was the key: we had to envision ourselves not as the perpetrators of this tragedy but simply as two more unfortunates in its extensive cast of victims. It was the only way we'd ever be able to live with what we'd done.

'Okay?' Sarah whispered.

I stared down at Amanda, at the round dome of her head: my baby girl.

'Okay,' I whispered back.

AS WE were climbing from the station wagon, the garage filled suddenly with light. A car had pulled into the driveway. I turned to squint at it.

'It's the police,' Sarah said.

Hearing her say this, I felt my entire body shiver with exhaustion. If I panicked at all, it was purely intellectual. Jacob's spoken, whispered a voice in the back of my mind. They've come to arrest you. The thought flickered and danced through my skull, birdlike, but it didn't sink in, it didn't touch my depths. I was too tired to be moved like that; I was too near the end of what I could do.

The lights went out, and the police car took shape, a shadow in the driveway's darkness. The door opened.

I heard myself moan.

'Shhh,' Sarah said. She reached toward me across the top of the car, her hand stretched out flat against the roof. 'They're just here to tell you he died.'

But she was wrong.

I forced myself down the driveway and found the deputy with the farm boy's face waiting for me by the car.

He'd come by to drop off Jacob's dog.

INSIDE, Sarah heated up the leftover lasagna. I ate it at the kitchen table, and she sat across from me. She put some of the lasagna into a bowl for Mary Beth, but he wouldn't eat any of it. He simply sniffed at it, then turned and walked out of the kitchen, whimpering. As I ate, I could hear him moving about the house.

'He's looking for Jacob, isn't he?' I asked.

Sarah looked up from her own lasagna. 'Shhh, Hank,' she said. 'Don't.'

I picked at my food. The sight of it made me think of my last dinner with my brother. I felt a wave of emotion at this, not so much sadness or guilt but rather some nameless surge of warmth, a tidal sense of movement within my chest. I was tired enough to cry, but I didn't want Sarah to worry.

She got up and took her dish to the sink.

Amanda started to wail again. We both ignored her.

The dog came into the kitchen, whimpering.

I stared at my food for a while; then I rested my head in my hands. When I shut my eyes, I saw the doctor's chart with the diagram of Jacob's body on it.

Sarah was running water in the sink.

There were red circles everywhere.

I WOKE up in the bedroom. I was sore, logy. My body felt leaden, as if it had been sewn to the mattress. I assumed that Sarah must've put me to bed, but I didn't remember. I was naked; my clothes were folded in a pile on a chair across the room.

Judging from the gray light filtering in from behind the shades, I decided it was morning. I didn't feel like turning to see the clock. I wasn't disoriented; I had no trouble remembering what had happened. There was a tender spot on the side of my rib cage, the beginning of a bruise, from where the shotgun had kicked me when I fired it.

Only gradually did I realize that the phone was ringing. I heard Sarah pick it up downstairs, heard the murmur of her voice. I couldn't make out what she was saying.

The dog was still whimpering, though he sounded far away now, like he'd been put out in the yard.

I started to drift off, still tired, but I was pulled back by the sound of Sarah climbing the stairs. Half asleep,