“The police will take the money,” Tom said.

She looked up, startled. Their eyes locked, and she saw that the same idea had been hatching in his head. “He might have family.”

“What family? Man never had a visitor, didn’t go to work, never had a friend over. Hell, any time we tried to say hi, he’d snap at us.”

“True,” she said, feeling like she had to argue, though part of her didn’t want to. “Still.”

Tom shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.” But he didn’t reach for the phone.

She exhaled, ran a finger over the bundle. Almost a year’s salary lying on the counter. Enough to pay off most of their debt, the credit cards, the medical bills. Enough to take the pressure off, to relieve that unacknowledged noose that tightened with every envelope marked “Overdue.”

Enough to let them try again. Another spin of the pregnancy wheel.

It’s not your money. It would be wrong.

Whose money is it? Why not mine? Why is it wrong?

Anna looked around the kitchen. It was a mess: the stove blackened and charred, the wall scorched, flour everywhere, cabinet doors open, revealing food and pans and glasses, things Bill Samuelson no longer needed. Then she saw something else. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she had trouble choking out Tom’s name.

“Huh?” He looked at her, recognizing the change in tone, and followed her pointing finger to the cabinet where she’d found the flour – and where another ten-pound bag of flour rested, as well as a big bag of sugar and a clutter of boxes.

EIGHT MORE BUNDLES in the flour.

Six in the sugar.

Seven stacked beneath an inch of sea salt, fitting the box like they were made for it.

One in a box of cornstarch.

The Girl Scout cookies were worth thirty thousand dollars.

They went carefully at first, but as they found more and more, it accelerated, blurring like the scenery out a train window. Ripping open the bags and fumbling inside, pulling out bundles of cash, two months of their life at a time. By the end they were laughing, racing, each of them trying to open things faster, to find more: two bundles taped inside a Frosted Flakes box, another two in the Golden Grahams. One in a box of granola bars. Two upright in an oatmeal container.

Thirty-seven in all. Thirty-seven bundles of ten grand.

Three hundred and seventy thousand dollars.

They piled it on the counter, the money covered in flour and sugar, scraps of oatmeal. A wobbly pyramid of wealth. She stared at it. Around five years of her gross salary. God, more like eight after taxes. More than two-thirds what their whole building had cost sitting in a pile on the kitchen counter amid a sea of paper scraps and spilled food, box tops, and sugar piles. She realized she was smiling, fought an urge to tear open the bundles and throw clouds of cash in the air. “Have you ever-”

“Are you kidding?” He shook his head, the same mad grin on his face. “No. I haven’t even held a hundred more than a couple of times.”

“If the police find this, they’ll take it,” she said. “It will end up in an evidence locker.”

“Or in the mayor’s campaign fund.” He straightened, looked down the hall. “We have to call them.”

She nodded. “I know. But…”

“Yeah.”

They stood in silence, staring at the money. It was funny, she thought. In the movies it would have been ten million. Some ridiculous sum. Three hundred and seventy thousand dollars was a lot, no doubt. But it wasn’t completely outside the realm of their experience. They had good jobs, each brought in about seventy. Before they’d bought the building, before they’d started the fertility treatments, they’d lived well. Savings accounts and the occasional two-hundred-dollar dinner. An annual trip, Spain, the Bahamas. The fact that it was a graspable sum made it both more and less real. And to see it all in one place like pirate treasure, forgotten and waiting to be found? “I’m not a thief.”

“Me either,” he said. Then, “But we could always give it back, right? If he did turn out to have a family?”

“Wouldn’t we get in trouble?”

“We wouldn’t have to tell. Hell, we could leave it on their doorstep.”

“Ring the bell. Ding-dong, here’s a fortune.” She rubbed at her chin. “What if it’s stolen?”

“Stolen? From who?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he embezzled it or something.”

“I guess that’s possible.” He paused. “But even if it is, it’s not like the city is going to be on a campaign to find the rightful owner. It would be like those impounded cars, or houses people lose on back taxes. They’d probably run a two-line ad somewhere, and then when no one claimed it, it would just vanish.”

A cool breeze blew through the window, and she hugged her arms across her chest. “It’s like finding a twenty on the sidewalk. If someone is looking at the ground, you give it to them, but nobody expects you to walk it to a police station.”

“We’d have to be careful,” he said. “We couldn’t put it in our bank account. They can trace that.”

“Sure. We probably shouldn’t even keep it in our place.” She noticed that they’d moved from if to how. Wondered if she should feel bad about that, didn’t want to.

“Get a safe-deposit box or something.”

“Leave it as cash. Keep our jobs, use paychecks for bills.”

He nodded, staring at the pile of money. She did the same, her eyes tracing the edges, the geometry of freedom, weathered green, marked with sweat and wrinkled with time. The house was silent, just the breeze through the window and the sound of their breathing.And the faint, imperturbable ticking of the clock from the bedroom.

When she looked up, their eyes met, and she realized they were done talking.

HE LEFT HER IN THE KITCHEN to start cleaning while he ran upstairs for something to put it in. Something to put $370,000 in. Jesus. He felt an urge to giggle, not laugh, giggle, like a little kid or a madman. This was crazy. All of it.

In the hall closet he found his gym bag, unzipped it, and turned it upside down, dumping sour shorts and shoes. He bent to gather the clothes, then decided to hell with it, kicked them into the closet, feeling wildly alive, something nervous and free in his chest. Took the stairs three at a time. He could feel every bump and polished divot of the handrail, could taste the air he sucked in.

In the kitchen, while she used a broom and dustpan to scoop up the spilled food from the counters and floors, he stacked the money in the bag. Each packet was worn as an old blanket. It reeked of humanity, oil from a hundred wallets, a thousand hands. When he was done, Tom zipped the bag. “It’s heavy,” he said. “I didn’t realize money weighed so much.”

She leaned on the broom. “Where should we put it? For now, I mean?”

“Maybe in the linen closet, under some blankets?”

“I don’t know. If it’s in our house…”

“What if we hide it in the basement? That way if they find it, it looks like he stashed it himself.” He saw her wince. “I’m just saying.”

“No, you’re right.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“The crawl space,” he said. “I could take the maintenance panel off, stick it way back in there. They’d only find if they searched pretty thoroughly. And if they’re searching that thoroughly, they know to look for the money, and it would be better if they found it.”

She bit her lip, nodded.

By the time he’d hidden it and climbed back up the stairs, she was nearly done, the boxes and bags gone, cabinet doors closed, oatmeal and sugar and cereal swept from the floor. He looked around. “What about the stove?” Mounds of flour still spilled across it and dusted the surrounding countertop.

“This has to look like we came down, put out the fire, then found his body and called the cops. We wouldn’t stop to clean up the flour, right?”