“Why do you have a gun, Sara?”

She shrugged. “A cop friend gave it to me when I moved into the city. He said, you know, a woman alone.”

“A cop friend?”

“Okay, a cop boyfriend.”

“And you kept it?”

“It seemed kind of romantic at the time. After we broke up, I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“What about Julian?”

“He’s too little to be going through drawers.”

“Are you fucking kidding?” She stared at her sister, feeling her face scrunch up. “I wonder how many parents say that just before their kid has an accident.”

“That’s a little dramatic.”

Anna held the gaze, raised her eyebrows. After a moment, Sara rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll get rid of it.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, that is way out of his reach-”

“Sara.”

“Okay, okay.” She held up the blouse. “What do you think?”

Anna shook her head, dropped the postcards to cover the pistol, then shut the drawer. She sighed, then said, “With the gray skirt.”

“The short one?”

“The long one.”

Sara tossed the blouse on the bed. “You’re no fun.”

They finished the coffee, then went to peek at Julian. He lay flat in his crib, doughy arms splayed out, hair mussed. His eyes were open and staring at a mobile of black-and-white shapes. When he saw Anna, he giggled and smiled and farted, and thin needles tore into her heart.

“Look who’s awake,” Sara said, in that exaggerated baby voice.

“Look who it is!” She leaned in and picked him up, one hand behind his head, and straightened with a groan. “You’re getting so big.”

“Hi there,” Anna whispered. She held out a finger, and Julian’s tiny fingers closed around it, and she knew. They would make it happen. The money would make it possible. It was like something out of a fairy tale. A magic lamp that could grant wishes. And she had only one.

THE LINEN CLOSET? Too frequently opened.

On top of the armoire? The quarter inch of dust was good. But there wasn’t enough space.

Her cell phone rang, but she ignored it. Under the bed? Too risky.

After Sara left, running out the door in a whirl of curses and instructions, Anna had burped Julian and changed his diaper, wiping his little bottom and dusting him with talcum powder. He’d cried for a while until she’d put a CD on, Cake’s Prolonging the Magic, and danced around her sister’s house bouncing him to the beat and singing that sheep go to heaven while goats go to hell. She had him giggling and grinning, waving his little fists like he was cheering.

“Ten months old and already a rock star,” she’d said. “You’re going to break a lot of hearts, kiddo.”

When he’d grown tired of their duet, she’d put him in his “office,” a plastic ring of bright toys with a canvas seat suspending him in the middle. He banged things happily. She dragged it into the hallway so she could keep an eye on him as she paced.

The living room didn’t offer many options. A coat closet, a couple of cabinets filled with DVDs, a bookshelf. Besides, it seemed too exposed. The bedroom felt better psychologically, deeper in the house, separated by another door. But she couldn’t find a good spot there, not somewhere she was sure Sara wouldn’t come upon.

It felt a little dirty, looking at her sister’s home as a place to hide stolen money. She’d considered renting a safe-deposit box. But something in her rejected it. For one thing, it felt too risky. Cameras and security, police on call. And the banks must have master keys to open their own boxes. It was irrational to think that they would, of course, but it just seemed better to have the money stored somewhere no one else knew about. A place she could get to anytime.

The kitchen had potential. Her sister considered mac and cheese challenging, had often joked that her culinary skill began and ended with ordering. The cabinet beside the stove was filled with shoes. The oven held two loaves of Wonder Bread. Anna squatted down, peering into a cabinet that held one skillet, a saucepan, and one pot large enough to boil pasta. Maybe if she put it all the way in the back? She leaned in, feeling around. There was plenty of space, and the angle as the counter met the wall made for a blind spot. It might do. With a grunt, she hoisted the bag in, then pushed, the weight of it cumbersome, all those stacks of bills moving and shifting. It took a little arranging, but she got it out of sight, then put the pots back in the same positions.

Not bad. Anna stood, checked it from other angles. Decided to leave it there for the moment, see how she felt as the afternoon wore on. She opened the fridge, grabbed a Diet Coke, popped the can as she walked to the living room. It was a gorgeous day, one of those right on the blurry edge between spring and summer, and she watched the sunlight trip over trees and bushes to fall in the angles of afternoon shadows. The street was quiet, just a woman in shorts walking a dog, the faint banging of a construction project. Two men sat in a black Honda down the block. As she watched, the car started and they pulled away.

The money would be safe here. If Sara happened to stumble on it, she’d recognize the bag and call Anna. It would make for an awkward scene, but she was sure her sister would understand. And now their house was clean.

She sat down cross-legged in front of Julian, who was repeatedly pushing a button that made a cow go moo. Every time it did, he would gurgle as if surprised. She wondered if it was the sound that startled him or the fact that he made it happen. Probably the latter, she decided. That was the beautiful thing about babies. As they discovered the world, you got to watch them, and to rediscover it yourself. They were so helpless, and yet they had a greater capacity for-

What the hell was she doing?

She’d been so focused on finding a hiding place that she hadn’t thought about anything else. But now, sitting with Julian, watching him press a button over and over, reality sideswiped her. Was she really hiding stolen money in her sister’s house? Money men had already died over?

She stood in a dizzy rush of blood. Sprinted down the hall to the kitchen, tore open the cabinet, knocked the pans out clanging, then grabbed the strap and hauled the duffel bag out. No. No way.

She believed everything she’d said to Tom, that there was no reason that the thieves would draw a connection to them. The odds against it seemed astronomical, and considering the benefit, it was a risk she was willing to take. But for herself.

Her cell phone rang again. Still thinking of what she’d almost done, she answered it without checking the number.

AS HE BIT INTO THE DRIPPING SANDWICH, Tom supposed he ought to be angry, but he wasn’t. Actually, he felt good. Better than good. Great. Buoyant.

Which was unexpected. The morning had been a disaster, seen him called out on the carpet by his boss’s boss. Internal politics, a turf war two levels above him, but today he’d had to serve as the whipping boy, getting questioned in humiliating detail about the project he’d headed for months. A project Daniels had signed off on at every step, by the way, though of course today his boss sat silent and stern, like he was disappointed in Tom.

All of which should have pissed him off, and did, but didn’t dampen his mood. The reason was pretty simple – halfway through the meeting, he realized that it didn’t matter. That if he wanted, he could tell everyone in the room to sit and spin, punch up a Dropkick Murphys album on his iPod, and stalk out with middle fingers in the air. It was a silly vision he hadn’t indulged in years, not since he was first starting professional life. A kid’s dream, the kind of fantasy that could only belong to someone without responsibilities.

Or to someone who had three hundred thousand dollars in a duffel bag.