A Simple Plan

Sarah sat there, trying to grasp it.

"You killed him?" she asked. Her face had a strange look to it. It wasn't horror, which was what I'd dreaded most; it was something closer to fear -- apprehension tinged with perplexity -- and beneath it all, just the slightest hint of disapproval, sitting there like a seed, waiting to learn more before it sprouted and grew. Seeing it, I hesitated, and then, without even thinking, so that when I heard myself speak I was astonished by the words, I began to lie again.

"Jacob did it," I said. "He knocked him off his snowmobile and kicked him in the head. Then we took him down to the bridge and made it look like an accident."

My confession lay between us, stillborn, draining blood onto the papers scattered across my desk.

"Jesus," Sarah said.

I nodded, staring down at my hands.

"How could you let him do that?" she asked. She said it, I could tell, not out of admonition but merely from curiosity. I didn't know how to answer her.

"Couldn't you have stopped him?"

I shook my head. "It happened so fast. He just did it, and then it was over."

I glanced up at her, met her eyes. I was relieved by her look; it was calm. There was no horror in it, no grief, simply confusion. She didn't understand what had happened.

"He was tracking the fox," I said. "If Jacob hadn't killed him, he would've found the plane, and seen our tracks around it."

Sarah considered that for a moment. "We can still burn the money," she said.

I shook my head again. I wasn't going to do that. I'd killed for the money; if I were to give it up now, it would mean that I'd done it for nothing. The crime would become senseless, unforgivable. I understood this but knew I couldn't say it to her. I frowned down at my desk, rolled a pencil slowly across its surface beneath the palm of my hand.

"No," I said. "We aren't going to burn the money."

"We're going to get caught," she said. "This might be our last chance." Her voice rose as she spoke, and I glanced toward the door. I held my finger to my lips.

"If we burn it," she whispered, "Jacob'll be all right. There'll be no motive, no reason to connect us with Pederson. But if we wait to get caught, Carl might put things together."

"We're okay," I said calmly. "We're not in any danger. And if it begins to look like we're in danger, we can just burn the money then. It's still the only evidence to show that we've committed a crime."

"But now it's not just stealing, it's murder."

"We're the only ones who know about this, Sarah. Us and Jacob. It's our secret. There's no reason for anyone else to suspect a thing."

"We're going to get caught." She sank backward into her chair, her hands on her stomach.

"No," I said, with more conviction than I felt. "We aren't. No one else is going to know. Not about Pederson, and not about the money."

Sarah didn't say anything. She seemed close to tears, but I could tell that, at least for the moment, I'd held her off. She was going to let things stand as they were; she was going to wait and see what happened. I got up from my chair and moved around the desk to her side. I touched her hair, then bent down and hugged her. It was a graceless movement: she was sitting slouched away from me, her belly protruding between us, and I had to lean over the arm of the chair to reach her, but it had the desired effect. She let her head fall toward my shoulder, reached her arms up around my back.

My phone started to ring. It rang five times and then stopped.

"I promised you, Sarah, didn't I? I promised I wouldn't let us get caught."

She nodded her head against my neck.

"And I won't," I whispered. "I'll talk to Lou about Nancy. It'll be okay. Just wait it out, and it'll be okay."

THAT NIGHT, as the feedstore was closing, I heard Jacob's voice in the lobby, arguing with the cashier. I got up quickly and moved to the doorway of my office.

Jacob was standing at the checkout counter, his jacket zipped up to his throat. He was gazing beseechingly at Cheryl Williams, a squat, thickly rouged older woman who was a part-time cashier. Cheryl was shaking her head.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Mitchell," she said. "I just can't do that. You'll have to go across the street to the bank."

"Come on, Cheryl," Jacob pleaded. "They're closed."

"Then you'll have to wait till the morning."

"I can't wait till the morning," he said, his voice rising. "I need it now."

There was something about how he was standing, some visual clue in the way his feet were positioned beneath the bulk of his body which made me sure suddenly that he'd been drinking.

"Jacob," I said, cutting off Cheryl's reply.

They both turned toward me at the same time, identical expressions of relief on their faces.

"She won't let me cash this," Jacob said. He had a check in his hand, and he waved it at Cheryl.

"We're not a bank," I said. "We don't cash checks."

Cheryl, who'd gone back to counting out for the day, let a smile slip quickly across her face.

"Hank--" Jacob started, but I cut him off.

"Come into my office," I said.

He walked across the lobby to my office, and I shut the door behind him.

"Sit down," I said.

He lowered himself into the same armchair Sarah had sat in earlier that afternoon. It made a creaking noise beneath his weight.

I went to the window and opened the blinds. The sun was nearly set. Lights were coming on in the town. The church and cemetery were already submerged in darkness.

"You've been drinking," I said, not turning from the window. I heard him stir uncomfortably in his chair.

"What do you mean?"

"I can smell it. It's not even five o'clock, and you're already drunk."

"I had a couple beers, Hank. I'm not drunk."

I turned from the window, leaned back on the sill. Jacob had to twist around in the armchair to see me. He seemed awkward, embarrassed, like a child called to the principal's office.

"It's irresponsible," I said.

"I really need the money. I need it tonight."

"You're worse than Lou."

"Come on, Hank. I had two beers."

"He's told Nancy, hasn't he?"

Jacob sighed.

"Answer me."

"Why do you keep harping on that?"

"I just want to know the truth."

"But how would I know that?"

"I want to know what you think."

He frowned, slouching into the chair. He wasn't looking at me. "She's his girlfriend," he said. "They live together."

"You're saying he told her?"

"If Lou asked me whether or not you'd told Sarah, I'd say--"

"Has Lou asked you that?"

"Come on, Hank. I'm just trying to show you that it's only me guessing. I don't know anything for sure."

"I'm not asking what you know. I'm asking what you think."

"Like I said, she's his girlfriend."

"That means yes?"

"I guess so."

"And do you remember what we said? How you're responsible for him?"

He didn't answer.

"If he screws this up, it's your fault. You'll be the one I'll blame."

"It's not like--"

"I'll burn the money, Jacob. If I think you two're going to screw this up, I'll just burn it."

He stared down at his check.

"You better straighten him out, and you better do it quick. You tell him that he's responsible for Nancy, just like I'm telling you you're responsible for him."

Jacob looked up at me, thinking. He worked his tongue along his teeth, sucking, as if he were trying to clean them. His forehead, wide and low, was spattered with pimples. His skin was greasy; it glistened in the light from my desk lamp.

"It's like a food chain," he said. "Isn't it?"

"A food chain?"

He smiled. "Lou's responsible for Nancy, I'm responsible for Lou, you're responsible for me."

I thought about this; then I nodded.

"So in a way," Jacob said, "you're responsible for all of us."

I couldn't think of anything to say to this. I stepped away from the window, walked over to my desk, and sat down behind it. "How much is the check for?" I asked.

He glanced at the check in his hand. He was still wearing his gloves. "Forty-seven dollars."

I reached across the desk and took it from him.

"What's it for?"

"It's from Sonny Major. I sold him my ratchet set."

I scanned the check, then handed it back to him along with a pen. "Sign it over to me."

While he signed it, I removed two twenties and a ten from my wallet. I gave them to Jacob in exchange for the check.

"You owe me three dollars," I said.

He put the money in his pocket, seemed to think about getting up, but then decided against it.

He glanced at my forehead. "How's your bump?" he asked.

I touched it with my finger. All that was left was a tiny scab. "It's healed."

He nodded.

"Your nose?" I asked.

He wrinkled his nose, inhaled through it. "Fine."

After that we sat in silence. I was preparing to stand up and guide him toward the door when he asked, "You remember Dad breaking his nose?"

I nodded. When I was seven, our father had bought a mail-order windmill, to help irrigate one of his fields. He'd almost finished putting it together, was up on a ladder tightening a bolt, when a sudden gust of wind set the contraption's aluminum sails spinning. Our father was hit in the face, knocked off his ladder to the ground. Our mother had seen it all from the house, and -- since he'd remained on his back for a moment, his hand clamped on his head, rather than instantly regaining his feet -- she'd run to the phone and called an ambulance. Ashenville had a volunteer fire department, so it was our father's friends who came rushing out to the farm, and they kidded him about it for years. Our father never forgave her for the embarrassment.

"That windmill's still up," Jacob said. "You can see it from the road when you drive by."

"It's probably the only thing he ever built that actually worked," I said.

Jacob smiled -- our father's inadequacy as a handyman had been one of our family's running jokes -- but when he spoke again his voice came out sounding mournful, full of loss and regret.

"I wish they were still around," he said.

I looked up at him then, and it was as if a curtain were being dragged back from a window, giving me a sudden glimpse into the depths of my brother's loneliness. Jacob had been much closer to our parents than I had. He'd lived at home up until the year before the accident, and even after he moved out, he still spent most of his time there, doing chores, talking, watching TV. The farm had been his refuge from the world. I had Sarah, and now a baby coming, but Jacob's family was all in the past. He didn't have anyone.

I tried unsuccessfully to think of something to say. I wanted to reach out in some way, to tell him something reassuring, but I couldn't find the proper words. I didn't know how to talk to my brother.

Jacob broke the silence finally by asking, "What do you mean, blame me?"

I realized with a little jolt of panic -- a jolt that instantly subverted whatever empathy I'd been feeling for him before he'd spoken -- that if I wanted to control Jacob, I needed to offer some concrete threat rather than the simple, abstract idea of blame. It took me only a second to come up with one: it was the obvious choice, the only thing I really had that I was sure would frighten him.

"If we get caught because of Lou," I said, "I'll tell about Pederson. I'll say you murdered him, and that all I did was help you cover it up."

He stared at me. He didn't understand.

"I'll say I tried to stop you, but you pushed me aside and killed him."

Jacob seemed genuinely shocked by this. When he spoke, he had to search for his words. "You killed him, Hank," he said.

I shrugged, lifted my hands. "I'll lie, Jacob. If we get caught because of Lou, I'm going to make you pay."

He grimaced, as if he were in pain. His nose was running, and he rubbed at it with his glove, then wiped his glove on his pants. "I don't want to be responsible for him," he said.

"But that was the deal. That was what we agreed upon."

He shook his head. The folds of flesh beneath his chin, white and marbled, continued to tremble for a second after he stopped. "I can't control him."

"You have to talk with him, Jacob."

"Talk with him?" he asked, his voice exasperated. "Talking's not going to keep him from doing stuff."

"Threaten him," I said.

"With what? You want me to tell him I'll beat him up? Say I'll burn his house down?" He gave a snort of disgust. "Threaten him."

We both fell silent. I could hear people moving about in the lobby, getting ready to head home for the night.

"I don't want to be responsible for him," Jacob said.

"Then I guess we have a problem."

He nodded.

"Perhaps," I said, "we ought to just burn it."

It was only a bluff, I didn't mean it, and Jacob didn't respond to it. He stared down at my desk, his forehead creased. I could tell that he was struggling to think.

"Lou's not going to get us caught," he said.

"That's right. Because you're not going to let him."

Jacob didn't seem to hear me; he was still lost in thought. When he finally spoke, he did so without glancing up at me. "And if it looks like he is, he could always just get into an accident."

"An accident?"

"Like Pederson."

"You mean we could kill him?" I asked, appalled.

He nodded, staring down at my desk.

"Jesus, Jacob. He's your best friend. You can't be serious."

He didn't answer me.

"The big-time murderer," I said.

"Come on, Hank. I'm just--"

"Ice him, right? Grease him." I sneered, my voice rising to mimic his own. "'He could always just get into an accident.' Who do you think you are, Jacob? A gangster?"

He wouldn't look at me.

"You make me sick," I said.

He sighed, frowning.

"How did you want to do it?" I asked. "Did you have a plan?"

"I thought we could make it look like a car accident."

"A car accident. That's brilliant. And how were you going to manage that?"

He shrugged.

"Maybe put him in his car and push him over the bridge into Anders Creek?" I asked.

He started to say something, but I didn't let him.

"We were lucky with Pederson. Everything worked in our favor. That's not going to happen again."

"I was just thinking--"

"You aren't thinking anything. That's the problem. You're being stupid. Remember how you felt out by the park? You were crying. You were bawling like a baby. You want to go through that again?"

He didn't answer.

"Look out the window," I said. "Look across the street, at the cemetery."

He looked toward the window. It was completely dark now; we couldn't see outside anymore. The glass reflected my office back in at us.

"They buried Dwight Pederson last week. He's out there because of you, because you were greedy and you panicked. How does that make you feel?"

I stared across the desk at him until he looked me in the eye. "If I hadn't done it," he said, "he would've found the plane."

"You should've let him find it."

Jacob gave me a perplexed look. "You killed him," he said. "You could've saved him, but you didn't."

"I killed him to save you, Jacob. It was either him or you, and I chose you." I paused. "Maybe I made a mistake."

He didn't seem to know how to respond to that. He continued to gaze at me, the same confused expression on his face.

"But I'm not going to do it again," I said. "Next time I'll give you up."

"I can't be responsible for him," Jacob whispered.

"Just talk to him. Tell him I'll burn the money if I think he's screwing things up."

He stared morosely down into his lap, and I noticed for the first time that he was beginning to get a bald spot. It startled me. If he had lost some weight, he would've looked exactly like our father had at the time of his death. He looked beaten down, defeated.

"I wish we could just split the money up right now," he said. "Split it up and run away."

"That's not what we planned, Jacob."

"I know." He sighed. "I'm just saying what I wish."

THE NEXT day was Friday. That evening, during dinner, Sarah asked me if I'd talked with Lou yet.

I shook my head. "Jacob's going to do it."

We were eating spaghetti, and Sarah was in the midst of helping herself to seconds. "Jacob?" she asked. She held the serving spoon poised in midair, pasta dangling off it toward her plate. She was wearing a dark blue dress. In the brightly lit kitchen it made her face look wan and anemic.

I nodded.

"Shouldn't you do it yourself?"

"I thought it'd be better if he did it. Lou'll listen to Jacob. He won't listen to me."

She finished serving herself and set the pot down in the center of the table. "Are you sure Jacob realizes how serious this is?"

"I scared him a bit," I said.

Sarah glanced up at me. "Scared him?"

"I said I'd tell about Pederson if we were caught because of something Lou did."

"And?"

"At first he panicked a little, but I think it's going to work." I smiled. "He even suggested that we kill Lou."

She seemed unimpressed by this. "How?" she asked.

"How what?"

"How did he want to kill him?"

"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 hospital where Sarah's mother died, slowly, of leukemia. That's where she'd met Sarah's father. She was originally from West Virginia and, even after a full decade in Miami, had a slight southern accent, which Sarah picked up from her whenever they talked.

Their calls were long collective monologues -- Millie drawled on about the mundane activities of her small coterie of friends, bemoaned the increasing decrepitude of Miami in general and her apartment complex in particular, and ended with an irrelevant anecdote or two from Sarah's father's life. Sarah talked about her pregnancy, about me and the cold weather we'd been having, about things she'd read recently in the paper or seen on TV. They never asked each other questions; there was very little interaction between them at all. They talked at each other for twenty minutes, and then, as if they'd agreed beforehand upon a mutually acceptable time limit, said good-bye and hung up.

Tonight Millie called just as we were getting into bed. When I realized who it was, I whispered to Sarah that I was going downstairs to get a snack. I didn't like being in the room with her when she talked on the phone; it made me feel like I was eavesdropping.

In the kitchen, I poured myself some milk and made a cheese sandwich. I ate standing up at the counter, in the dark. Through the side window, ten yards away across a thin strip of lawn, was my next-door neighbor's house, a mirror image of my own -- everything exactly the same, but reversed. A TV was on in the master bedroom; I could see its bluish flickering through the upstairs window, like light reflected off a pool.

I stood there in the darkness for several minutes, finishing my sandwich, while I reviewed my earlier conversation with Sarah. I was relieved by the calmness of her reaction to my confession, immeasurably so. I'd been worried that what I'd done would frighten her, that she'd treat me suddenly as some sort of psychopathic monster, but nothing of the sort had happened. There was no reason for it to have, I saw now -- just as I still looked upon myself as a good man despite my crime, Sarah did too. We had our entire past together to weigh against this one anomaly. There'd been that initial shock, of course -- I'd seen it -- that flash of fear and repulsion, but in a matter of seconds she'd filed it away somewhere, pragmatic as always, and resigned herself to what had happened. It's done, she'd said and then moved forward, focusing on the future rather than the past. Her concerns were simply practical -- whether or not Jacob knew of the crime and what effect this would have on our relations with him and Lou. She was imperturbable, a rock. If all else failed, I realized, standing there in the kitchen, she'd be the one who'd carry us through.

Next door, the television flicked off, and the house went dark. I set my empty glass in the sink.

On my way upstairs I noticed that the dining-room door was partway open. I flipped on the light, peeked inside. There were papers scattered across the wooden table, magazines and brochures.

Upstairs I could hear Sarah's voice, talking on the phone. It sounded soft, muffled, as if she were speaking to herself. I slid the dining-room door open all the way and stepped inside.

I approached the table hesitantly, as if I were afraid Sarah might hear me, though that wasn't a conscious thought. I scanned its surface. There were all sorts of brochures, at least thirty, probably more, travel brochures with pictures of tanned women in brightly colored bikinis, of families skiing and riding horses, of men on tennis courts and golf courses, of tables laden with exotic food. "Welcome to Belize!" they read, "Paris in the Spring!" "Crete, Island of the Gods!" "Come Sail the Pacific with Us!" "Nepal, the Land Time Forgot!" Everything was shiny, slick looking; everyone was smiling; all the sentences ended in exclamation points. The magazines -- Conde Nast Traveler, Islands, The Caribbean, The Globetrotter's Companion -- were exactly the same only larger.

There was a notebook off to the side, folded open, with Sarah's handwriting in it. At the top of the page was written "Travel." Below it were listed the names of cities and countries around the globe, each one numbered, apparently in order of preference. The first one was Rome, the second Australia. On the facing page was another list, this one headed "Things to Learn." Below it were listed such things as sailing, skiing, scuba diving, horseback riding. It was a very long list, reaching to just above the bottom of the page.

These were Sarah's wish lists, I realized with a pang; this was what she dreamed of doing with the money. My eyes ran up and down the pages: Switzerland, Mexico, Antigua, Moscow, New York City, Chile, London, India, the Hebrides.... Tennis, French, windsurfing, waterskiing, German, art history, golf.... The lists went on and on, places I'd never heardher mention, ambitions I'd never dreamed she had.

Ever since I'd met her, I'd thought of Sarah as more confident and decisive than myself. She'd been the one to ask me out on our first date; she'd been the one to initiate our first sexual encounter; she'd been the one to suggest that we get engaged. She'd picked the wedding date (April 17), planned the honeymoon (a ten-day trip to Naples, Florida), and decided when we'd begin trying to have a baby. It seemed like she always managed to get what she wanted, but I realized now, standing there looking down at the magazines and brochures scattered across the table, that she hadn't really, that behind her facade of assertiveness and drive there must lay an enormous reservoir of disappointment.

Sarah had received a B.S. in petroleum engineering from the University of Toledo. When I first met her, she was planning on moving down to Texas and landing a high-paying job in the oil industry. She wanted to save up her money and buy a ranch someday, a "spread" she called it, with horses and a herd of cattle and her own special brand, an S embedded within a heart. Instead, we got married. I was hired by the feedstore in Ashenville in the spring of my senior year, and suddenly, without really choosing it, she found herself in Delphia. There weren't many openings in northwestern Ohio for someone with an undergraduate degree in petroleum engineering, so she ended up working part-time at the local library. She was a trouper; she always made the best of things, yet there had to be some regret in all this; she had to look back every now and then and mourn the distance that separated her present existence from the one she'd dreamed of as a student. She'd sacrificed something of herself for our relationship, but she'd never attracted attention to it, and so it had seemed natural to me, even inevitable. It wasn't until tonight that I saw it for the tragedy it was.

Now the money had arrived, and she could begin to dream again. She could draw up her wish lists, page through her magazines, plan her new life. It was a nice way to envision her -- full of hope and yearning, making promises to herself that she felt certain she could fulfill -- but there was also something terribly sad about it. We were trapped, I realized; we'd crossed a boundary, and we couldn't go back. The money, by giving us the chance to dream, had also allowed us to begin despising our present lives. My job at the feedstore, our aluminum-siding house, the town around us -- we were already looking upon all that as part of our past. It was what we were before we became millionaires; it was stunted, gray, unlivable. And so if, somehow, we were forced to relinquish the money now, we wouldn't merely be returning to our old lives, starting back up as if nothing of import had happened; we'd be returning having seen them from a distance, having judged them and deemed them unworthy. The damage would be irreparable.

"Hank?" Sarah called from upstairs. "Honey?" She was off the phone.

"Coming," I yelled. Then I flicked off the light and quietly slid the door shut behind me.

SATURDAY afternoon, just as Sarah and I were finishing lunch, the doorbell rang. It was Jacob; I found him waiting on the front porch, dressed, to my surprise, in gray flannel slacks and a pair of leather shoes. It was the first time since our parents' funerals that I'd seen him in anything but jeans or khaki work pants, and it startled me a bit, set me off my guard, so that it took me another moment or so to notice the even more drastic change in his appearance -- his lack of hair. Jacob had gone to the barber and gotten a crew cut; his hair had been clipped back tight against his scalp, so that now his head seemed too large for his body, seemed to hover like an over-inflated balloon above his shoulders.

He stood there, watching me, waiting for my reaction. I smiled at him. Despite the obvious tightness of his pants, despite the way his brown shoes clashed with his blue socks, he seemed pleased with himself, pleased with how he looked, and that wasn't something that happened very often. It gave me a warm feeling toward him, made me want to compliment him.

"You got your hair cut," I said.

He smiled shyly, touched his head with his hand. "Just this morning."

"I like it," I said. "It looks good."

He continued to smile, glancing away now, embarrassed. Across the street one of the neighbor's kids was smacking a tennis ball against his garage door with a hockey stick. The ball was wet, and every time it hit the door, it left a mark. Mary Beth was watching him from the truck.

"You have time to talk?" Jacob asked.

"Sure." I opened the door wide. "You eat lunch yet? I could fix you a sandwich."

He glanced past me into the house. He was shy around Sarah -- shy around women in general -- and always tried to avoid coming inside when she was around. "I thought maybe we could go for a drive," he said.

"We can't talk here?"

"It's kind of about the money," he whispered.

I stepped down onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind me. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing's wrong."

"Is it about Pederson?"

He shook his head. "It's just something I want to show you. It's a surprise."

"A surprise?"

He nodded. "You'll like it. It's a good thing."

I stared at my brother, debating for a moment, then pushed the door back open. "Let me get my jacket," I said.

AS SOON as I got into the truck, I asked him what was going on, but he wouldn't tell me.

"Just wait," he said. "I have to show you."

We drove west out of Delphia, toward Ashenville. At first I thought we were going back to the nature preserve, but then we took a left onto Burnt Road rather than a right, and headed south. It was a cold, sunny day. The snow on the fields had an icy crust to it, and no matter where you looked it seemed to sparkle. It wasn't until we were almost there, turning off onto the dirt road that had once led to our driveway, that I realized Jacob was taking me to our father's farm.

I stared through the window at the fields as the truck slowed to a stop. I hadn't been out to the farm in years, and I was startled to see it now, shocked by how little still remained to show me that it had once been my home. The house and barn and outbuildings had been dismantled and carted away, the basement filled in and seeded over. The huge circle of shade trees that had once marked the boundary of our front yard had been chopped down and sold for lumber. The only vestige of our family's presence on the land was our father's windmill, which still stood -- at a slight angle now -- about a quarter mile to the west.

"Do you come by here a lot?" I asked Jacob.

He shrugged. "Sometimes," he said. He was staring out toward where our house was supposed to be. You could see for more than a mile, and all of it was the same. With the flatness and the snow covering everything, it was hard to keep your eyes from wandering; there was nothing to pick out and focus on over anything else. It was like looking up into the sky.

"Do you want to get out?" Jacob asked.

I didn't, but it seemed like he did, so I said, "Sure," and pushed open my door.

We hiked straight into the field, along where we guessed our gravel driveway had once run. Mary Beth bounded ahead of us through the knee-deep snow, pausing now and then to sniff at things we couldn't see. We stopped about a hundred yards in from the road, when we reached the place where our house had once stood. We may've had the wrong spot; there were no clues to help us orient ourselves, no hearthstone or pump handle, not even a slight depression in the earth to mark the filled-in basement. It was just like everything else around it. The windmill stood off to the left in the distance, looking derelict and disused. There was a little breeze coming down out of the north, and when it gusted, it spun the windmill's sails. They creaked as they lurched into motion, like an old rocking chair, but the sound took a second to reach us, and by the time we turned to look, the sails had stopped.

Jacob was trying to guess where things had stood -- the barn, the tractor shed, the grain bins, the metal hut our father had used to store seed. He rotated on his heels, pointing out the different spots. His leather shoes were wet from the snow.

"Jacob," I said finally, interrupting him. "Why'd you bring me here?"

He grinned at me. "I've decided what I'm going to do with my share of the money."

"And what's that?"

"I want to buy back the farm."

"This farm?"

He nodded. "I'm going to rebuild the house, the barn, everything just like it used to be."

"You can't do that," I said, appalled. "We have to leave."

The dog was digging in the snow at our feet, and Jacob watched him for a moment before answering. Then he looked up at me. "Where am I going to go, Hank?" he asked. "It's different for you guys. You've got Sarah, and Lou's got Nancy, but I don't have anyone. You want me to just drive off all alone?"

"You can't buy the farm, Jacob. Where would you say you got your money?"

"I thought we could tell people that Sarah had come into an inheritance. Nobody around here knows anything about her family. We'll say that you guys bought the farm before you left, and set me up to run it."

I stared off around us at the empty fields, at our tracks running crookedly back through the snow to the road, and tried to imagine my brother staying here, rebuilding the house, putting up fences, planting crops. I couldn't believe that it would ever happen.

"I thought you'd be happy," he said. "It's our farm. I'm going to bring it back."

I frowned at him. He was wrong: I was anything but happy. The farm was something I'd been running away from all my life. For as long as I could remember, I'd seen it as a place where things broke down and fell apart, where nothing ever worked out as planned. Even now, looking out at the vacant space that had once held my home, I was filled with an overwhelming surge of hopelessness. Nothing good had ever happened here.

"It's so hard, Jacob," I said. "Do you realize that? You don't just buy a farm, you have to work it. You have to know about machines and seed and fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides and drainage and irrigation and the weather and the government. You don't know about any of that. You'd end up just like Dad."

As soon as I said it, I realized I'd been too harsh. I could tell just from the way my brother was standing that I'd hurt him. His jacket was hitched up, his shoulders hunched, his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his flannel pants. He wasn't looking at me.

"I was supposed to get the farm," he said. "Dad had promised it to me."

I nodded, still ashamed by what I'd said. Our father had wanted one of us to be a farmer, the other to be a lawyer. I'd done better in school, so I was the one they sent to college. We'd both failed him, though; neither of us had managed to live up to his dreams.

"I'm asking for your help," Jacob said. "I've never done it before, but I'm doing it now. Help me get the farm back."

I didn't say anything. I didn't want him to stay here after we split up the money -- I knew that only bad would come of it -- but I couldn't find a way to tell him this.

"I'm not asking for any money," he said. "I just want you to tell people in town that Sarah's come into an inheritance."

"You don't even know if Muller would sell it to you."

"If I offer him enough money, he'll sell it."

"Can't you buy a different farm? Something out west, where people don't know us?"

Jacob shook his head. "I want this farm. I want to live here, where we grew up."

"What happens if I refuse to help?"

He considered that briefly, then shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I guess I'd try to think up another story."

"But don't you see the danger, Jacob? How your remaining here would be a threat to all of us? The only way we'll really be safe is if everyone disappears."

"I can't leave," he said. "I don't have any place to go."

"You've got the whole world. You can settle anywhere you want."

"This is where I want to go." He stamped his shoe in the snow. "Right here. Home."

Neither of us spoke for nearly a minute after that. Another breeze came up, and we stared out toward the windmill, but it didn't move. I was working up my confidence to say no to Jacob, to tell him that it would never work, when -- perhaps sensing what I was about to do -- he allowed me a way out.

"You don't have to decide now," he said. "I just want you to promise me you'll consider it."

"All right," I said, grateful for the reprieve. "I'll think it through."

IT WASN'T until after he'd dropped me off, as I was opening my front door, that I realized why he'd dressed up and gotten his hair cut before he came to see me. He'd done it to impress me, to make himself look mature and responsible, to show me that -- if he were only given the chance -- he could play the part of an adult just as well as I. The thought of this, of him shining those shoes in his grungy apartment, of him squeezing his legs into those uncomfortable pants, tightening his belt, pulling up his socks, and then standing for a few moments before the bathroom mirror to appraise the result, filled me with a horrible feeling of wretchedness for myself and Jacob and the way we were to each other. It made me want to give him the farm.

I knew that this would never happen, though, even as I yearned for it, and when I talked it over with Sarah later that afternoon, she agreed.

"He's got to leave, Hank," she said. "There's no way he can stay." We were in the living room, sitting in front of the fire. Sarah was knitting again, and her needles clicked away while she talked, as if they were translating what she said into Morse code. "You have to make him understand that."

"I know," I said. "I just couldn't do it while we were out there. I'll tell him on Monday."

She shook her head. "Don't tell him until you have to."

"What do you mean?"

"The more time we let pass, the less important it'll seem to him."

I could see what she was saying; she was scared of antagonizing him, of forcing him into Lou's arms. I thought for a moment of arguing with her, telling her that we had no reason to fear Jacob, that he was my brother and we could trust him, but I realized that I had no means to convince her of this, no solid, objective evidence to demonstrate his allegiance. So all I said was, "I wish we could give it to him."

The needles stopped clicking, and I felt Sarah glance at me across the hearth. "He can't stay here, Hank. It'd be like leaving a giant clue behind."

"I know. I'm just saying I wish I could help him somehow."

"Make him promise to leave, then. That's how you'll help him."

"But what will he do, Sarah? Have you thought about that? He's got nowhere to go."

"He'll have a million dollars. He'll be able to go wherever he wants."

"Except here."

"That's right." She nodded. "Except here."

The needles started up again.

"I've always felt bad toward Jacob," I said, "even when we were little. I've always felt like I was letting him down."

"It's not like he's done all that much for you over the years."

I waved this aside. She didn't understand what I was talking about. "I used to look up to him," I said. "Until I went off to school and saw him teased by the other kids for his weight. Then I was embarrassed, ashamed that he was my brother. I started to look down on him, and he knew it. He could sense the change."

Sarah's needles went click, click, click. "That's natural," she said. "You were just a child."

I shook my head. "He was this shy, anxious kid."

"And now he's a shy, anxious adult."

I frowned at her. I was trying to express how I felt toward my brother, trying to give her some hint of the despair that had washed over me earlier that afternoon, after he'd dropped me off.

"Did you know that he was a bed wetter?" I asked.

"Jacob?" Sarah smirked at the idea.

"In seventh grade he began losing control of his bladder every night. It lasted all through the winter and into the spring. My mom used to set her alarm clock so that she could wake him in the middle of the night, get him up, and take him to the bathroom, but it didn't work."

Sarah continued her knitting. She seemed like she wasn't really paying attention.

"Toward the end, I told one of my friends about it, and pretty soon everyone knew. Everyone in the whole school."

"Was Jacob mad?"

"No. He was just ashamed, but that made it worse. He didn't even tell our parents about it, so I never got in trouble." I paused, thinking about this. "It was the cruelest thing I've ever done."

"That was ages ago, Hank," Sarah said. "I bet he doesn't even remember anymore."

I shook my head. I shouldn't have tried to speak about it, I realized: it hadn't come out right, I hadn't said what I meant. What I meant was that I wanted to help my brother, to do something good for him, to make his life better than it was. But I couldn't find a way to say this.

"It doesn't matter what he remembers," I said.

LATE that night I woke to the sound of a car's engine idling in our driveway. Sarah was on her back beside me, breathing deep and slow. The only light in the room came from the digital alarm clock, a pale green glow floating out across the night table and settling softly onto the blanketed bulk of her pregnant body.

It was quarter till one. Outside, the car's engine shut itself off.

I slipped out of bed and padded to the window. The sky was clear. A half moon, pale yellow, almost white, hung at its very center. Stars shone through the branches of the trees, bright and precise. The snow in the front yard sparkled with their light. At the bottom of the driveway, parked with its nose facing the house, was Lou's car.

I glanced quickly at Sarah, who continued her steady, muted breathing; then I tiptoed across the room and out into the hallway.

As I headed down the stairs, I heard a car door squeak open. After a moment, it squeaked shut again, slowly, quietly.

At the front door I peeked through the slit window. Lou was making his way carefully up the driveway. He was wearing his white camouflage jacket and walking like he was drunk. I wasn't sure, but it looked like there was someone waiting in the car. As I watched, Lou veered off toward the garage.

The garage was attached to the left side of the house. I couldn't see the front of it, and when Lou got near it, he disappeared from sight.

I didn't have any weapons in the house. All I could think of were the knives in the kitchen, and I didn't want to leave the window to go get one.

He spent a long time by the garage. The doors were unlocked, but there was nothing in there for him to steal. I stared at his car. There was definitely someone waiting there, maybe even two people.

The miniature grandfather clock in the living room ticked loudly through the silence, punctuating it, seeming to draw it out.

I considered briefly turning on a light, trying to scare them away, but I didn't do it. I just peered out the window, shivering in my pajamas and bare feet, and waited for Lou to reappear.

When he finally did, he headed not for his car but straight toward my front door.

I stiffened, took two steps back into the entranceway.

Lou climbed up onto the porch, his boots making a hollow sound against the wood, a pair of drumbeats. He tried the door, jiggling the knob, but it was locked. Then he knocked, very softly, tapping with his glove.

I didn't move.

He knocked again, louder, with his fist, and -- remembering Sarah asleep above me -- I stepped forward and unlocked the door.

I opened it just a crack and peered outside.

"What're you doing, Lou?" I whispered.

He gave me a big, jagged-toothed smile. His eyes seemed to twinkle. "Mr. Accountant!" he said, as if he were surprised to see me.

I frowned at him, and his expression changed quickly in response, instantly becoming serious, somber.

"Hank," he said. "I'm here to make a tiny withdrawal." Then he giggled, unable to hold it back. He wiped his mouth with his glove. I could smell the alcohol on his breath.

"Go home, Lou," I said. "Turn around and go home." A steady stream of cold air came in through the open doorway and poured across my bare feet, making them ache.

"It's freezing out, Hank," he said. "Invite me in."

He pressed his body up against the door, and -- when I involuntarily retreated -- stepped inside. He shut the door behind him, a big grin on his face.

"I've decided it's time to split it up, Hank. I want my share." He rubbed his gloves together and glanced around the entranceway, as if he were expecting the duffel bag to be just sitting there, right out in the open.

"The money's not here, Lou."

"Is it in the garage?"

"Even if it were here, I wouldn't give you any."

He reared back in indignation. "Just because you have it doesn't mean it's yours. Part of it's mine." He tapped his finger against his chest.

"You made an agreement," I said sternly.

He ignored me. He leaned to the side and looked down the hallway into the kitchen. "Is it in the bank?"

"Of course not. It's hidden."

"I just need some cash, Hank. I need it right now."

"The only way we keep the money is if we stick to the agreement."

"Come on, Mr. Accountant," he said, his voice soft and insinuating. "Be a sport."

"Who's in the car?"

"In the car?"

"Waiting for you." I gestured past the front door.

"Car's empty. It's just me."

"I saw someone in the car, Lou. Is it Nancy?"

He smiled a little. "You been watching me all this time?" He seemed to find this funny, and his smile deepened.

"Nancy and who else?" I asked. "Is Jacob there?"

Lou shook his head. "Just Nancy." He paused and then, when he saw me frown, smiled again, like a child caught in a fib. "Nancy and Sonny," he said.

"Sonny Major?" I asked, surprised. I hadn't thought that they were friends.

He nodded. "He came over for the rent, and Nancy and me invited him out." His grin stretched into a leer. "That's why I need the money, Mr. Accountant. I'm taking my landlord out drinking."

"You tell them about the plane?"

He snorted with disgust. "Course not. I told them you owed me some money."

I frowned. The house made a creaking sound around us in the darkness, settling into its foundation.

"All I'm asking for is what's rightfully mine," he said. He wobbled a bit back and forth on his feet, and, watching him, I felt an overwhelming wave of impatience. I wanted him to leave. I wanted him to leave immediately.

"It doesn't even have to be all of it," he said. "Just give me one of the packets. I can come back later for the rest."

I spoke very slowly, keeping my voice low and quiet. "If you ask me again," I said, "I'll go and burn the money first thing tomorrow. Is that clear?"

He snickered at that. "Bluff," he whispered. "B-L-U-F-F."

"Call it then. See what happens."

He snickered again. "I know a secret, Mr. Accountant. Jacob told me a little secret."

I stared at him.

"I know what happened to Dwight Pederson."

I stiffened, just for a moment; then I stopped myself. I stayed surprisingly calm. My mind was thinking very quickly, darting this way and that, but my body didn't betray it. Jacob had told him about Pederson: I was stunned, I hadn't expected this at all.

Lou grinned at me. I forced myself to look him directly in the eyes. "Dwight Pederson?" I said.

His smile widened, taking up his whole face. "You killed him, Mr. Accountant. You and Jacob."

"You drink too much, Lou. You don't know what you're saying."

He shook his head, still smiling. "I'm not going to let you burn the money. It'd be like stealing from me. I'll tell if you do it."

The clock in the living room chimed the hour, a single, deep toll. After it died away, the hallway seemed darker and quieter than before.

I put my hand against Lou's jacket, right at the center of his chest. I exerted no pressure; I simply rested my palm there. We both looked down at it. "Go home, Lou," I whispered.

He shook his head again. "I need the money."

I stepped over to the hall closet. I felt around inside my jacket until I found my wallet. I took two twenties from it and held them out to him.

He hardly even glanced at them. "I want one of the packets," he said.

"They aren't here, Lou. I've hidden them away from the house."

"Where?"

"Take the twenties." I shook them at him.

"I want my share, Hank."

"You'll get it this summer, like we agreed."

"No. I want it now."

"You aren't listening to me, Lou. I can't give it to you. It's not here."

"I'll come back in the morning then. We can go get it together."

"That's not what we agreed on."

"Be a shame if someone wrote a note to the sheriff, saying there might be something a little suspicious about Dwight Pederson's accident."

I gave him a cold stare. I was overcome by a desperate desire to hurt him. I wanted to take my fist and smash his crooked teeth down the back of his throat. I wanted to break his neck.

"Take the twenties," I said.

"I mean, he just drove off that bridge? You believe that?" Lou shook his head in mock disbelief. "Seems pretty strange to me." He paused, grinning. "Weren't you two out that way on New Year's morning?"

"You'd never do it."

"I'm desperate, Hank. I'm broke, and I owe people money."

"If you turned us in, you'd lose it all."

"I can't wait till summer. I need it now."

"Take the twenties," I said. I held the bills out toward him.

He shook his head. "I'm coming back in the morning. I need at least a packet."

I began to panic, but only briefly. Then I saw a way out. "I can't go in the morning," I said. "It's a day's drive away. I can't go until after Sarah has the baby."

Lou didn't seem to know if he should believe me. "A day's drive?"

"It's at a storage place up in Michigan."

"What the fuck is it doing up in Michigan?"

"I didn't want it near us. In case we came under suspicion for some reason. I wanted it far away."

I could see him debating inside his head. "When's she supposed to have it?" he asked.

"In a couple weeks."

"And we'll go then?"

"Yes," I said. I just wanted him to leave.

"You promise?"

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.

"I'm scared, Hank," she said, and I nodded.

"It'll be all right," I whispered again, feeling foolish this time. But there was nothing else to say.

I WAS up early the next morning. I dressed in the hallway and brushed my teeth downstairs so I wouldn't wake Sarah. In the kitchen I made myself some coffee, and while I drank it I read yesterday's newspaper.

Then I drove over to Jacob's.

I parked across the street from his apartment, right behind his pickup. It was a beautiful morning, cold, crisp, cloudless. Everything looked clean, scrubbed -- the striped vinyl awning of the grocery store, the parking meters' silver pillars, the flag snapping in the wind above the town hall. It was still early, a little before eight, but Ashenville was already wide awake, the street active with people coming and going, newspapers folded under their arms, cups of coffee steaming in their mittened hands. Everyone seemed to be smiling.

Jacob, as I'd expected, was asleep when I arrived. I had to pound, wait, and then pound again before I heard him shuffling slowly toward the door. When he finally got there, he seemed displeased to find me standing outside. He leaned against the doorjamb for a moment, squinting at the light from the hallway, a look of profound disappointment on his face. Then he grunted hello, turned, and stumbled back into the apartment's dim interior.

I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light. His apartment was cramped, airless. It was just a big, square, carpetless room. Off to the left was a door leading to a tiny bathroom. Next to it, running the entire length of the apartment, was a two-foot-deep recess cut into the wall. This was Jacob's kitchen. There was a bed, a table with two chairs, an old, broken-down couch, a television set. Dirty clothes were strewn across the couch; empty beer bottles dotted the floor.

It stank of poverty. Every time I saw it, it made me sick.

Jacob returned to the bed, collapsing on his back. The bedsprings moaned beneath his weight. He was dressed in a pair of long johns and a T-shirt. The thermal underwear clung grotesquely to the soft thickness of his thighs. There was a good three inches of skin showing beneath the bottom of his shirt. It was fat -- white, rippled, malleable. It seemed obscene to me. I wanted him to cover himself with a blanket.

I went over and pulled open the blinds on the two windows, filling the room with sunlight. Jacob shut his eyes. The air was thick with dust, sifting slantwise through the light like miniature snow. I considered briefly the possibility of sitting down, eyed the couch with distaste, and decided not to. I leaned back against the windowsill and folded my arms across my chest.

"What'd you do last night?" I asked Jacob.

Mary Beth was on the foot of the bed, his head resting on his paws, one ear cocked, one eye open, watching me.

Jacob, eyes shut, shrugged. "Nothing." His voice was gritty with sleep.

"You go out?"

He shrugged again.

"With Lou?"

"No." He coughed, cleared his throat. "I've got a cold. I didn't go out."

"I saw Lou," I said.

Jacob pulled a blanket over himself and rolled onto his side, his eyes still closed.

"He came by the house."

Jacob opened his eyes. "And?"

"Nancy was with him, and somebody else. I thought it might've been you."

He didn't say anything.

"Were you there? In the car?"

"I told you." His voice sounded as if he felt picked on. "I didn't see Lou last night. I'm sick."

"That's the truth?"

"Come on, Hank." He rose up on his elbow. "Why would I lie to you?"

"Was it Sonny?"

"Sonny?"

"Sonny Major. Was it him in the car?"

"I don't know. How would I know that?" He put his head back down on the pillow, but he was fully awake now. I could tell it from the sound of his voice.

"Are they friends?"

"Sure. He's his landlord."

"They go out together?"

"I don't know," Jacob said tiredly. "Why not?"

"Does he know about the money?"

"The money?"

"Yes," I shouted, exasperated. "Has Lou told him about the money?"

Someone banged against the wall next door, and we both froze.

After a moment, Jacob sat up in bed. He dropped his legs over the edge, leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees. I stared at his naked feet. I was always shocked by their size. They looked like two raw chickens.

"You've got to relax, Hank. You're getting paranoid. Nobody knows but us and Nancy and Sarah."

"Sarah doesn't know."

He looked up at me, then shrugged. "Us and Nancy then. That's it."

The dog climbed out of bed, stretched, then walked across the floor toward the bathroom. He disappeared inside and started to drink loudly from the toilet. We listened until he stopped.

"I killed Pederson for you, Jacob," I said.

He straightened up. "What?"

"I killed him for you."

"Why the fuck do you keep saying that? What does that mean?"

"It means I put myself at risk for you, and you turn around and betray me."

"Betray you?"

"You told Lou where I hid the money."

"Hank, what the fuck's going on with you today?"

"He knew it was in the garage."

Jacob was silent. The dog came walking back out of the bathroom, his nails clicking against the tiled floor.

"You never said I shouldn't," Jacob mumbled.

Very quietly, I said, "You told him about Pederson."

"I didn't..."

"You betrayed me, Jacob. You promised me you wouldn't tell."

"I didn't tell him anything. He's just guessing. He did the same thing to me."

"Why would he've guessed something like that?"

"I told him how we went back to the plane that morning. He'd just seen about Pederson on the news, and he said, 'Did you kill him?'"

"And you denied it?"

He hesitated. "I didn't tell him."

"Did you deny it?"

"He guessed, Hank," Jacob said, his voice impatient, put upon. "He just knew."

"Well that's great, Jacob. Because now he's using it to blackmail me."

"Blackmail you?"

"He says he'll tell if I don't give him his share."

Jacob thought about that. "Are you going to do it?"

"I can't. He'd start spending hundred-dollar bills all over town. He'd get us caught just as quick doing that as he would by telling Carl about Pederson."

"You really think he'll tell?"

"Do you?"

Jacob frowned. "I don't know. Probably not. It's just that he's been gambling lately, so he's short on money."

"Gambling?"

He nodded.

"Where's he been gambling?" For some reason the idea seemed absurd to me.

"In Toledo. At the racetrack. He's lost some money."

"A lot?"

Jacob shrugged. "A bit. I'm not sure exactly."

I rubbed my face with my hands. "Shit," I said. Then I turned to the window. There was a pigeon sitting outside on the ledge, puffed up against the cold. I tapped the glass with my knuckles, and it flew away. Its wings flashed in the sunlight.

"Do you see what's happening, Jacob?" I asked.

He didn't say anything.

"Lou can send us both to jail now."

"Lou's not going to--"

"And we can't control him. Before, we could threaten to burn the money, but now we can't. He'll tell if we do."

"You never would've burned it, Hank."

I waved this aside. "You know what the problem is? The problem is, you think you can trust him. He's your best friend, so you think he won't betray you."

"Come on. Lou's just--"

I shook my head. "You don't have any distance on this. You're too close to see what he's really like."

"What he's really like?" Jacob asked incredulously. "And you think you're going to tell me that?"

"I can tell you--"

He cut me off, his voice rising with anger as he spoke. "He's my best friend, Hank; you know nothing about him. You've seen him drunk a few times, so you think you know him, but you don't. You can't tell me anything."

I turned to face him. "Can you guarantee that he won't turn us in?"

"Guarantee?"

"Will you write up a confession, saying you killed Dwight Pederson all by yourself, sign it, and give it to me to keep?"

He threw me a frightened look. "A confession? Why would you want that?"

"To show the police if Lou were to tell on us."

Jacob was speechless. He seemed mortified by the idea, which was exactly what I'd hoped for. I didn't really want a confession; I was just trying to scare him, trying to shock him out of his complacency.

"It's your fault, Jacob, our being in this mess. You're the one who told him."

Jacob didn't say anything. I waited a moment, then turned back toward the window.

"Now Lou's asking me for something I can't give him," I said. "And when I refuse to do it, he's going to tell. He's going to send us to jail."

"Come on, Hank. You're the one that's going to end up getting us caught. You're getting all worked up over--"

"I came here this morning," I said, not turning from the window, "to find out whose side you're on."

"Side?"

"You have to choose."

"I'm not on any side. You both keep talking about sides..."

"Lou talks about sides?"

He ignored my question. "I'm on both your sides. We're all together. That was the plan."

"If you had to pick a side--"

"I'm not going to pick a side."

"I want you to pick one, Jacob. I want to know: Lou, or me?"

Behind me I could sense his confusion, his panic. The mattress creaked as he shifted his weight.

"I'm..."

"Pick one."

There were perhaps ten full seconds of silence. I waited through them, holding my breath.

"I'd pick you, Hank," he said then. "You're my brother."

I rested my forehead against the windowpane. The glass was cold; it made my skin ache. Out on the street, right below me, an old man dropped his newspaper, and it flung apart in the wind. A passing couple helped him gather it back together, and they talked for a bit, the old man nodding vigorously. "Thank you," I saw him say as they parted. "Thank you."

Mary Beth made a yawning sound, and I heard my brother start to pet him.

"Don't forget it, Jacob," I said, my breath steaming the glass in front of me. "Whatever else happens, don't forget it."

TUESDAY afternoon there was a knock on my office door. Before I could say anything, it creaked open, and Lou stuck his head through. He smiled at me, showing his teeth. They looked like a rodent's, sharp, yellow.

"Hey, Mr. Accountant," he said. Then he stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. He came all the way up to my desk but didn't sit down. He had on his white jacket, a pair of work boots. His face was pink from the cold.

This was the moment I'd been dreading for the past three days, but now that it had finally arrived, I experienced no fear, no anger. I simply felt tired.

"What do you want, Lou?" I sighed. I knew that whatever it was, it probably wasn't something I could give him.

"I need some money, Hank."

That was all he said. He didn't issue any threats, didn't mention Pederson or Jacob, but I could feel it hanging in the air between us, like a scent.

"I already told you--" I started, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand.

"I'm not asking for that," he said. "I'm just asking for a loan."

"A loan?"

"I'll pay you back as soon as we split up the money."

I frowned. "How much?"

"I need two thousand," he said. He tried smiling at me but seemed immediately to sense that it was a bad idea and gave it up.

"Two thousand dollars?" I asked.

He nodded somberly.

"Why would you need that much money?"

"I've got debts."

"A two-thousand-dollar debt? To who?"

He didn't answer me. "I need the money, Hank. It's real important."

"Gambling debts?"

He seemed to flinch a little, surprised perhaps that I knew about the gambling, but then he managed a smile. "Lots of debts."

"You've lost two thousand dollars?"

He shook his head. "A bit more than that." He winked. "This is just good-faith money, to hold people off till I get my split."

"How much did you lose?"

"All I need is two thousand, Hank."

"I want to know how much you lost."

He shook his head again. "That's not really your business, Mr. Accountant, is it now?" He stood there in front of me, patient, immovable, his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

"It's not like I carry that much money around with me," I said. "I can't just reach into my desk and hand you two thousand dollars."

"There's a bank across the street."

"I need time," I said. "You'll have to come back at the end of the day."

AFTER he left, I went over to the bank and withdrew two thousand dollars from Sarah's and my account. I brought it back to my office, sealed it in an envelope, and dropped it into my top desk drawer.

I tried to do some work, but the day was shot; I couldn't concentrate on anything. I doodled in the margins of letters. I read a hunting magazine someone had left in my office.

I knew that giving him the envelope would commit me to splitting up the money. It was the only way he'd ever be able to repay me. I understood this but tried to pretend that it was irrelevant. What I told myself I was doing was buying time. I knew there had to be a way out, and I was sure that I could find it, if I only had a little space in which to concentrate. I needed to think; I needed to work things through.

Lou came back just before five, knocked on my door, and entered again without my calling him in.

"You get it?" he asked. He seemed to be in a great hurry. It made me move very slowly.

I reached over, slid open the desk drawer, and took out the envelope. I set it on the edge of my desk.

He stepped forward to take it. He ripped open the flap and counted the bills, his lips moving over the numbers. Then he smiled at me. "I really appreciate this, Hank," he said, as if I'd done it voluntarily.

"I'm not going to give you any more," I said.

He counted the bills again, seemed to do some sort of computation in his head. "When's Sarah due?"

"The twenty-fourth."

"Next week?" His face brightened.

"Next Sunday."

"And then we'll get the money?"

I shrugged. "I'll need a few days, for things to settle down. And we'll have to do it on a weekend. I can't take off from work."

Lou started backing toward the door. "You'll call me?" he asked.

"Yes." I sighed. "I'll call you."

I didn't tell Sarah about any of it.

THE DAYS passed one after the other. The twenty-fourth came and went. During all that time I neither saw nor spoke with either Jacob or Lou. Sarah talked incessantly about the coming birth. She didn't mention Lou or Nancy at all.

At night I would lie in bed and count off the people who knew. I'd test them in my head for weakness, picture each of them turning me in, trying to double-cross me, rob me, hurt me. I started to dream about it -- Lou beating me with a rolling pin; Jacob coming at me with a fork and knife, wanting to eat me alive; Nancy kissing Sarah, then whispering in her ear, "Poison him. Poison him. Poison him."

I'd wake in the middle of the night and picture Lou's beer can lying in the snow at the edge of the orchard, imagine someone from the FBI picking it up with a pair of rubber gloves, dropping it into a plastic bag, sending it off to the lab. Or I'd think of Carl, sitting in his office in Ashenville, waiting, when the wreck was finally discovered, to tie together Jacob's report of a downed plane with the appearance the next day of Dwight Pederson's lifeless body.

They'd exhume the corpse, they'd dig it up, they'd study it and pick it apart, and then they'd know.

But, strangely, nothing happened. The money sat undisturbed in its bag beneath the bed. No one seemed to suspect me of anything. No one seemed to be plotting against me. Lou left me alone. And, gradually, I began to resign myself to what my life had become. I could live with my anxieties, I realized. They were finite. Any day now the baby would be born. I'd call Lou's bluff, brave it out. In the spring the plane would be discovered. A few months after that we'd split up the money and move away.

Then it would all be over.

Early in the morning on Thursday, January 28, just as I was preparing to leave for work, Sarah went into labor. I rushed her to the hospital, fifteen minutes away on the other side of Delphia, and there, at 6:14 that evening, she gave birth to a baby girl.

5

I BROUGHT Sarah and the baby home four days later. The baby was healthy, pink. She weighed nine pounds even, had rolls of fat beneath her chin and pudgy little hands attached to her arms.

Driving home, we decided to name her Amanda, after Sarah's paternal grandmother.

I was stunned at how dirty the house had become in Sarah's brief absence. It embarrassed me that I hadn't been able to keep it clean on my own. There were dirty dishes piled in the sink, newspapers scattered about the rooms, a thick clot of hair in the bathtub drain.

I ushered them straight upstairs, to the bedroom. I put Amanda in her crib, which I'd set up beneath the window. Sarah watched me from the bed. The crib was the same one my father had dropped off at our house the week before his accident. It had been Jacob's and mine when we were infants; our father had built it himself.

I went downstairs and fixed Sarah some tea and toast. I brought it to her on a tray, and we talked while she ate. We talked about Amanda, of course -- about the sound she made when she was hungry, the way she jerked her leg if you touched the sole of her foot, the pale, limpid blue of her eyes. We talked about the hospital -- about the mean night nurse whose shoes had squeaked like they were full of water as she made her rounds through the darkened hallways; the nice morning nurse who'd spoken with a lisp and so tried to avoid saying Sarah's name; the doctor with the gap between his teeth who kept referring to Amanda as a he.

I stood over the crib through all of this, watching the baby sleep. She was on her back, her head turned toward the window, her eyes tightly shut, as if she were squinting at the sky. She held her hands in loose fists up beside her shoulders. She was very still. I kept wanting to touch her and make sure that she was alive.

Sarah finished her tea and toast. She talked and talked, as though she'd spent the past four days storing up things to tell me. I smiled and nodded, urging her along until she suddenly interrupted herself.

"Is that Jacob?" she asked, and I looked out the window.

My brother's truck was rattling into the driveway.

I GREETED him at the door and invited him in, but he said he didn't have time. He'd brought a gift for the baby, something wrapped in pink tissue paper, and he handed it over to me quickly, as if carrying it embarrassed him.

"It's a teddy bear," he said. He'd left his truck running. The dog was sitting in the passenger seat, watching us. He barked once, at me, and his nose banged against the window, leaving a wet smear along the glass.

"Come see her," I said. "Just quickly. She's upstairs."

Jacob shook his head, took a step back, as if he were afraid I might pull him in. He was on the very edge of the porch. "No," he said. "I will later. I don't want to bother Sarah."

"It's no bother," I said. I shifted the teddy bear from one arm to the other.

Jacob shook his head again, and there was an awkward silence while he searched for something to say before he left.

"You decide on a name yet?" he asked.

I nodded. "Amanda."

"That's nice."

"It's after Sarah's grandmother. It's Latin. It means worthy of being loved."

"That's real nice," Jacob said. "I like it."

I nodded again. "You sure you won't come up?"

He shook his head. He stepped off the porch, but then he stopped. "Hank," he said. "I wanted to..." He faded off, glanced toward the truck.

"What?"

"Can I borrow some money?"

I frowned, shifting the teddy bear back to my other arm. "How much?"

He put his hands into his coat pockets, stared down at his boots. "Hundred and fifty?"

"A hundred and fifty dollars?"

He nodded.

"Why do you need that much money, Jacob?"

"I got to pay my rent. I'll get my unemployment check next week, but I can't wait that long."

"When would you pay me back?"

He shrugged. "I was sort of hoping you could just take it out of my share of the money."

"Are you even trying to find a job?"

He seemed surprised by the question. "No."

I tried unsuccessfully to keep my voice free from judgment. "You're not even looking?"

"Why should I look for a job?" He lowered his voice into a whisper. "Lou told me you agreed to split up the money."

I stared down at his chest, considering this. I saw fairly clearly that I couldn't tell him I wasn't going to give them their shares until the summer -- he'd tell Lou, and I wasn't ready for that. But if I wanted to pretend otherwise, then I had no reason not to loan him the money. Behind him his truck rumbled and coughed in the driveway, spitting out clouds of bluish smoke. All up and down the street my neighbors' houses were absolutely quiet, as if abandoned, their windows blank. It was trash day, and plastic garbage cans lined the curb.

"Wait here," I said. "I've got to go upstairs and get my checkbook."

SARAH unwrapped the teddy bear while I stood at my dresser and wrote out Jacob's check. The baby was sound asleep in her crib.

"It's used," Sarah whispered, a note of disgust running through her voice.

I went over to look at the bear. There was nothing obviously wrong with it -- no stains or holes, no missing eyes or protruding hunks of stuffing -- but it had an undeniably rumpled look. It was old, used. It had dark brown fur, almost black, and a brass key inserted in its back.

Sarah wound the key. When she let it go, music came out of the bear's chest, a man's voice singing: "Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques/Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?" As soon as I heard it, I realized why the bear looked so old.

"It was his bear," I said.

"Jacob's?"

"When he was little."

The music continued, sounding flat and far away beneath the teddy bear's fur:

Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques,

Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

Sonnez les matines. Sonnez les matines.

Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

Sarah held the bear up in front of her, reappraising it. The music gradually slowed -- each note drawing itself out as if it would be the very last -- but it didn't stop.

"I guess it's sweet of him, isn't it?" she said. She sniffed at the bear.

I took the tissue paper and shoved it into the wastebasket beside the bed. "I wonder where he's kept it all these years."

"Is he coming up?"

"No," I said, moving toward the door. "He's in a rush."

Sarah started to wind up the bear again. "What's the check for?"

"Jacob," I said, over my shoulder. I was stepping out into the hallway.

"He's borrowing money?"

I didn't answer her.

THE BABY started to cry as I made my way back up the stairs. She began softly -- something between a suppressed cough and a squawking sound like a bird might make -- but just as I entered the bedroom, she suddenly, as if at the twist of a knob, increased her volume to a full-blown wail.

I lifted her from the crib and carried her to the bed. She started to cry even harder when I picked her up, her whole body tensing beneath my hands, her face going a brilliant crimson, as if she were about to pop. I was still surprised by her weight; I hadn't thought a baby could be so heavy, and there was a peculiar denseness about her, too, as if she were full of water. Her head was huge and round; it seemed to take up half her body.

Sarah extended her arms toward me, lifting the baby from my hands, a pained expression on her face.

"Shhh," she said. "Amanda. Shhh."

The teddy bear was sitting beside her, its back to the headboard, its little black paws reaching out, as if it also had wanted to comfort the crying infant. Sarah held Amanda in the crook of her arm and with her free hand unbuttoned her pajama top, exposing her left breast.

I turned away, walked back toward the crib, and looked out the window. I was still embarrassed by the sight of Sarah nursing Amanda. It gave me a creepy feeling, the thought of the baby sucking fluid out of her. It seemed unnatural, horrid; it made me think of leeches.

I gazed down at the front yard. It was empty: Jacob and his truck had disappeared. The day was still, beautiful, a postcard of winter. Sunlight shimmered off frozen surfaces; the trees laid thick, precise shadows across the snow. The gutters on the garage were swaybacked with icicles, and I made a mental note to knock them off the next time I went outside.

When my eyes strayed upward from the icicles, they discovered, on the very peak of the garage, the dark outline of a large black bird. My hand moved involuntarily toward my forehead.

"There's a crow on the garage roof," I said.

Sarah didn't respond. I massaged the skin above my eyebrows. It was perfectly smooth; the bump had left no scar. The baby was making a cooing sound behind me while she nursed, steady and insistent.

After a minute or so Sarah called my name. "Hank?" she said softly.

I watched the crow hop back and forth along the garage roof's snowy peak. "Yes?"

"I thought up a plan while I was in the hospital."

"A plan?"

"For making sure Lou doesn't tell."

I turned to face her. My shadow, framed in the window's square of sunlight, fell gigantically across the bedroom floor, my head looking monstrous on my shoulders, like a pumpkin. Sarah was bent over Amanda, smiling in an exaggerated manner -- her eyebrows raised high on her forehead; her nostrils flared; her lips parted, showing her teeth. The baby ignored her, frantically sucking at her breast. When Sarah turned toward me, the smile dropped from her face.

"It's kind of silly," she said, "but if we do it right, it might work."

I came over and sat at the foot of the bed. Sarah turned back to Amanda, stroked the baby's cheek with her fingertips.

"Yes," she whispered. "You're a hungry little girl, aren't you?" Amanda's lips worked eagerly at her nipple.

"Go on," I said.

"I want you to tape him confessing to Pederson's murder."

I stared at her. "What're you talking about?"

"That's my plan," she said. "That's how we're going to keep him from turning you in." She grinned at me, as if she were very pleased with this idea.

"Is this supposed to be funny?"

"Of course not," she said, surprised.

"Why would he confess to something he didn't do?"

"You and Jacob invite him out for drinks; you get him drunk; you take him back to his house, and you start joking about confessing to the police. You take turns pretending to do it -- you first, Jacob second, Lou last -- and when Lou does it, you tape him."

I assumed that there had to be something logical embedded within what she'd just proposed, and I tried for the next moment or so to find it.

"That's insane," I said finally. "There's no way it would work."

"Jacob helps you. That's the key. If Jacob eggs him on, then he'll do it."

"But even if we could get him to say it -- and I doubt we could -- it wouldn't mean anything. No one would ever believe it."

"That doesn't matter," she said. "We just need something to scare him with. If we tape him saying it, and we let him hear it, there's no way he'll turn you in."

Amanda finished nursing. Sarah took a dish towel from the night table and draped it across her shoulder. Then she picked up the baby and began to burp her. She pulled her pajama top back across her breast but didn't button it. They were the pajamas I'd given her for Christmas. She hadn't fit into them then -- her stomach had been too large -- so this was the first time I'd seen them on her. They were flannel, white with little green flowers. I could remember buying them at the mall in Toledo, could remember wrapping them in a box on Christmas Eve and then her opening them the next morning, holding them up against her swollen belly, but it all seemed as though it had happened ages ago. We'd come so far since then, so much had happened -- I'd lied, stolen, murdered -- and now that past, so close in a purely temporal sense, was utterly irrecoverable. It was a terrifying thing to recognize, the gulf that separated the two of us then -- opening our presents together on the floor beneath the tree, a fire burning on the hearth -- from the two of us now, sitting here in our bedroom, plotting how to blackmail Lou and frighten him into silence. And we'd crossed it not in any great leap but in little, nearly imperceptible steps, so that we never really noticed the distance we were traveling. We'd edged our way into it; we'd done it without changing.

"All you have to do is get him to understand that you and Jacob could claim he killed Pederson just as easily as he could claim you did it. If you make him think that Jacob would side with you, he'll never risk bringing in the police."

"This is dumb, Sarah."

She glanced up from the baby. "What harm could come from trying it?"

"Jacob won't want to help."

"Then you'll have to make him. It won't work without him."

"He'd be betraying his best friend."

"You're his brother, Hank. He'll do it if you show him how important it is. You just have to get him so he's as scared of Lou as we are." She glanced up at me, pushed her hair away from her face. There were hollows beneath her eyes, dark, bruised-looking circles. She needed to sleep. "It won't end when Lou has his money. He'll be hanging over us for the rest of our lives. The only way it'll stop is if we can make him fear us as much as we fear him."

"You're saying the tape'll make him fear us?"

"I know it will."

I didn't say anything. I still couldn't imagine Lou confessing to killing Pederson, not even in jest.

"We should at least try, Hank, shouldn't we? We can't lose anything by trying."

She was right, of course, or at least it seemed as if she was. But how could I have known then all the loss to which her simple plan would ultimately lead? I could see no risk: if it worked, it would save us, and if it didn't, we'd just be right back where we started.

"All right," I said. "I'll talk to Jacob. I'll see if I can get him to do it."

I TOOK the next day off so I could help Sarah with the baby.

In the afternoon, while the two of them were napping, I slipped out and bought a tape recorder. I went to Radio Shack, in Toledo. I told the salesman that I needed something tiny and uncomplicated. It was for dictation, I said, for recording business letters while I drove to and from work. He sold me one that was a little smaller than a deck of cards. It fit snugly, almost invisibly, into my front shirt pocket, and its record button was extra large, so that you could feel it through the fabric and know which one to press without taking it out to look.

Sarah and the baby were still asleep when I got home. I checked on them quickly, then went into the bathroom and practiced turning the tape recorder on and off in front of the mirror. I did it over and over again -- a slow, casual gesture -- my right hand scratching briefly at my chest, my palm holding the machine in place while my index finger pushed down the button. It looked good, I thought; it was something Lou would never notice.

Later, after Sarah woke up, I tried it out on her. She was in bed, with Amanda in her arms.

"What's the first thing you're going to buy with the money?" I asked, and when she glanced up at me, I scratched at my chest, turning on the tape recorder.

She bit her lip, debating. In the silence, I could just barely make out a soft humming sound coming from my pocket.

"A bottle of champagne," she said. "Good champagne. We'll drink it, get a little tipsy, and then we'll make love on the money."

"On the money?"

"That's right." She smiled. "We'll spread it out across the floor, make ourselves a bed of hundred-dollar bills."

I took the tape recorder from my pocket and rewound it to the beginning. "Look what I bought," I said. I handed it to Sarah.

"Does it work?"

I grinned. "Press the play button."

She found the button, pushed it in.

"A bottle of champagne," her voice began, the words emerging one after the other with incredible clarity. "Good champagne. We'll drink it, get a little tipsy..."

THURSDAY evening, around five-thirty, I telephoned Jacob from the feedstore and suggested we visit the cemetery together, finally fulfilling our obligation to the ghost of our father. He declined at first, saying he was busy, but eventually I managed to badger him into it. We agreed to meet at quarter till six, on the street in front of Raikley's.

By the time I emerged from the feedstore, he was already waiting for me on the sidewalk with Mary Beth. He looked even more overweight than normal, his face puffy, swollen. His jacket was so tight that he couldn't drop his arms to his sides. He kept them extended, away from his body, like an overstuffed doll. The sun had set, and it was dark out. The streetlights cast weak circles of pale yellow light across the pavement at regular intervals along the road. A few cars moved by, and down in front of the pharmacy a cluster of teenagers loitered, talking and laughing loudly. Other than that the town was quiet.

Jacob and I crossed the street toward St. Jude's, stepped up onto the opposite sidewalk, and moved into the parking lot. Our boots crunched in the gravel. Mary Beth jogged on ahead of us toward the cemetery.

"I've been thinking about the money," Jacob said, "and I think maybe we were fated to get it."

"Fated?" I asked.

He nodded. He was eating a hunk of chocolate cake wrapped in a piece of aluminum foil, taking great bites out of it as we walked, and he had to wait, chewing and swallowing, before he could speak.

"There are so many things that might've gone some other way," he said. "If it'd just been chance, then it never would've happened. It's like it was meant to, like we were chosen."

I smiled at him. It seemed like a romantic idea. "What things?"

"Everything." He listed them off on his fingers. "If the plane had flown another mile, it would've crashed out in the open and been discovered right from the start. If the fox hadn't crossed exactly in front of us, and we hadn't crashed, and Mary Beth hadn't been there or hadn't jumped from the truck and chased it, and the fox hadn't run right next to the plane, we never would've found it. If you'd left the bag inside after checking on the pilot, we would've come into town and told the sheriff without even knowing about the money. It just goes on and on."

We'd reached the cemetery's chain-link gate now, and we stopped there, as if hesitant to go inside. The gate was merely ornamental; it blocked the path but nothing more. There was no fence attached to it. Mary Beth sniffed at it for a moment, lifted his leg briefly against its supporting post, then stepped off the path and entered the cemetery by himself.

"But why is that fate?" I asked Jacob. It seemed more like luck to me, and it was a little frightening to hear him list off all the things that had gone our way. I couldn't escape the thought that everything balances out in the end: if it was luck that was bringing us through our present difficulties, it was bound to turn on us before we were through.

"Don't you see?" he said. "It's too arbitrary to be just chance. It seems like there has to be something determining it, a plan helping us along."

"God's?" I asked, smiling. I waved at the church.

He shrugged. "Why not?"

"And what about Pederson? Was that part of this grand plan?"

He nodded emphatically. "If he'd come at any other time that day, he would've found the plane. There would've been our tracks. We would've been caught."

"But why have him come at all? If you were the one making the plan, wouldn't you have just omitted him?"

He thought about that, finishing off his cake. He licked at the aluminum foil a few times, then balled it up and tossed it into the snow. "Maybe it's important for something which hasn't happened yet," he said, "something we don't know about."

I didn't say anything. I'd never heard him attempt to philosophize before. I wasn't sure what he was getting at.

"It's going on right now, too, I bet," he said. "Things are happening in just the right sequence, one after the other, falling into place so that it all works out for us."

He grinned at me. He seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood, and for some reason this irritated me. It reeked of complacency. He had no concept of the trouble we were in.

"You're happy we found the money, then?" I asked.

He hesitated, as if confused by the question. He seemed to think that there was a trick embedded in it. "Aren't you?"

"I'm asking you."

He waited a second, then nodded. "Definitely," he said, his voice serious. "Without a doubt."

"Why?"

He answered quickly, as if this were something he'd already considered many times. "I can get back the farm now."

He looked at me when he said it, to see my response, but I kept silent, my face expressionless. In a few minutes I was going to ask him to betray his only friend: it didn't seem like the right moment to inform him that he couldn't remain in Ashenville.

"And I can have a family," he went on. "I wouldn't have before. I need to find someone like Sarah, and--"

"Like Sarah?" I asked, startled.

"Someone aggressive. You needed that, too. You were too shy to find someone on your own; she had to come and get you."

I was a little bewildered to hear him say this, but at the same time I recognized it as true. I nodded at him, prodding him on.

"Without the money," he said, "no one was ever going to come and get me. I'm fat" -- he patted at his stomach--"and poor. I was going to grow old and be alone. But now that I'm rich, all that'll change, someone'll come get me for the money."

"You want someone to love you just for your money?"

"I've never had anyone, Hank. All my life. If I can get someone now, I'm not going to care why she's with me. I'm not proud."

I leaned against the cemetery gate, watching him tell me this. His face and voice were very serious. This wasn't modesty or self-deprecatory humor; there was no sense of irony whatsoever. It was the truth, cold and shiny as a bone freshly stripped of its flesh: this was how Jacob saw his life.

I didn't know how to react. I stared down at his massive boots for a moment, embarrassed, then said, "Whatever happened to Mary Beth?"

He adjusted his glasses on his nose, squinted past me into the cemetery. "She's in there."

"She's dead?"

"Dead?" he said. "What do you mean? She was just here, you saw her."

"Not the dog. Mary Beth Shackleton, from high school."

Jacob frowned. "She's married, I think. Last I heard she'd moved to Indiana."

"She liked you without the money, didn't she?"

He laughed, shaking his head. "I never told you the truth about that, Hank. I was always too ashamed." He didn't look my way while he spoke; he stared off beyond me into the cemetery. "She dated me as a joke. It was a bet she made with some of her friends. They all chipped in and bet her a hundred dollars that she wouldn't go steady with me for a month. So she did."

"You knew this?"

"Everybody did."

"And you went along with it?"

"It wasn't as bad as it seems. It was mean of her to do, but she did it in a nice way. We never kissed or touched or anything like that, but we walked around a lot together, and talked, and when the month was up she still stopped to say hello to me when we passed, which she didn't have to do."

I was shocked. "And you named your dog after her?"

He shrugged, smiling strangely. "I liked the name."

It was absurd, of course, the whole thing. I felt sorry for him, and ashamed.

A car honked somewhere farther down in town, and we both paused, listening. The night was very quiet. The dog had reappeared out of the cemetery and was sitting now beside the gate.

"I'm thirty-three," Jacob said, "and I've never even kissed a woman. That's not right, Hank."

I shook my head. I couldn't think of anything to say.

"If my being rich'll change that," he said, "then fine. I don't care if it's just for the money."

We fell silent after that. Jacob had spoken too much; we both seemed to sense this. An awkwardness hung about us like a mist, so thick that we could hardly see each other through it.

I unlatched the gate, and we passed into the cemetery. Mary Beth bounded off ahead of us.

"Sort of spooky, isn't it?" Jacob asked, his voice loud, brave, a bulldozer straining to push his embarrassment aside. He made a moaning sound, like a ghost, then laughed, short and sharp, trying to twist it into a joke.

But he was right; it was spooky. The church was dark, empty; the sky clouded over, its stars hidden, its moon just a vague shimmer above the horizon. What little illumination there was to guide our way drifted in from the surrounding town, entering the cemetery weakly, more glow than light, not strong enough even to pull shadows from our bodies. The darkness among the graves was so complete it was like something liquid; walking through the gate, I felt as if I were descending into a lake. I watched Mary Beth disappear ahead of us, leaving only the sound of the tags on his collar, clinking lightly together whenever he moved, to prove that he was there at all.

We found our parents' graves by memory rather than sight. They'd been buried in the very center of the cemetery, just to the right of the path. When Jacob and I got there, we stepped off into the snow and stood before the tombstone. It was just a simple square of granite, serving as marker for both of them. Etched into it were the words