A Simple Plan by Scott Smith

bag out of the truck, and, straining, hoist it over my shoulder. Then, as I was picking my way carefully up through the snow to the house, he reversed down the driveway and drove off.
     
    I ENTERED quietly, setting the bag inside the hall closet, on the floor toward the back. I draped my jacket across its top.
    There were sliding doors on either side of the entranceway; the one on the right led to the dining room, the one on the left to the living room. Both were closed now. The dining room’s was rarely open; except for the extremely sporadic occasions when we had company over, we always ate in the kitchen. The living room’s, on the other hand, was closed only when we had a fire going.
    Straight ahead, the entranceway divided into a flight of stairs on the left and a long, narrow hallway on the right. The stairs led to the second floor, the hallway to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Both of these were sunk in darkness.
    I slid open the door to the living room. Sarah was in there, reading in a chair beside the fire. As I entered, she looked up: a tall, thin-boned woman with dark blond, shoulder-length hair, and large, brown eyes. She had some lipstick on, a bright shade of red, and her hair was pulled away from her face with a barrette. Both things—the lipstick and the barrette—made her seem younger, more vulnerable, than she really was. She was wearing her bathrobe, a huge tent of white terry cloth with her initials sewn in blue thread above her heart, and its folds masked the distension of her abdomen somewhat, making it look like she merely had a pillow resting on her lap. Beside her, on the table, was a half-finished bowl of cereal.
    She saw me looking at the bowl. “I got hungry,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be back.”
    I went over to kiss her on the forehead, but just as I was bending down, she cried, “Oh!” grabbed my hand, and placed it on her stomach beneath the robe. She gave me a dreamy smile. “Feel it?” she asked.
    I nodded. The baby was kicking. It felt like an erratic heartbeat, two firm thrusts and then a softer one. I hated when she made me do this. It gave me an uneasy feeling, knowing that something was alive inside her, feeding off her, like a parasite. I pulled my hand away, forced a smile.
    “Do you want dinner?” she asked. “I could cook us an omelet.” She waved toward the back corner of the room, where an open doorway led into the kitchen.
    I shook my head. “I’m all right.”
    I sat down in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. I was trying to decide on the best way to tell her about the money, and as I attempted to work my way around this, it suddenly came to me that she might not approve; she might try to make me give the money back. This idea led me to a disturbing revelation. I saw for the first time how much I actually wanted the money. Up till then—with Jacob and Lou—I’d always been the one threatening to relinquish it, and this had allowed me to nurture the illusion that I was relatively disinterested in its fate: I would keep it, but only if certain rigorous conditions were met first. Now, confronted with the possibility of being forced myself to give it back, I understood how artificial those conditions really were. I wanted the money, I realized, and I’d do almost anything to keep it.
    Sarah sat there, the book in her lap. She had her hand on her belly, the dreamy look on her face. She came out of it slowly.
    “Well?” she asked. “How did it go?”
    “It was all right,” I said. I was still thinking.
    “You spent all this time at the cemetery?”
    I didn’t answer her. The room was dark, except for the fire and the little lamp on the table beside her chair. There was a miniature grandfather clock on the mantelpiece and a bearskin rug on the floor before the hearth, both wedding gifts from my parents. The rug was fake, a storybook bear with perfect, glass-marble eyes and white plastic teeth. On the opposite wall was a