Read Online A Simple Plan by Scott Smith - Free Book Online

loud before, and I was astonished to hear myself do so now. It was as if someone else had uttered the words; I had to pause a moment to let them sink in.
    Sarah nodded, her face calm, expressionless, and I got a further shock from that: she wasn’t surprised by what I’d said. She’d already known the extent of my possibilities at the feedstore as well as I had. I waited for her to say something, to protest in some way, but she didn’t.
    “Think of the life we could give the baby,” I whispered. “The security, the privilege.”
    I glanced over at her, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking down at the packets. I continued to poke at the fire.
    “It’s lost money, Sarah. Nobody knows anything about it. It’s ours if we want it.”
    “But it’s stealing. If you get caught, you’ll go to jail.”
    “Nobody gets hurt by our keeping it. That’s what makes it a crime, isn’t it? People getting hurt?”
    She shook her head. “It’s a crime because it’s against the law. It doesn’t matter whether anybody gets hurt or not, you’ll still get arrested. I’m not going to be left bringing up a child all by myself because you’ve done something stupid and ended up in jail.”
    “But we can do it for the right reasons,” I said. “We can do it so that something good comes from it.” I was beginning to flounder. I wanted the money, and I wanted her to want it too.
    She sighed, as if in disgust. When she spoke again, her voice rose a step. She was becoming angry. “I’m not worried about the morality of it, Hank. I’m worried about getting caught. That’s what’s real; the rest is just talk. If you get caught, you’ll go to jail. I’d let you keep it if there wasn’t that risk, but there is, so I won’t.”
    I stopped short at this, startled. I’d assumed from the beginning that any reluctance I’d encounter on her part about keeping the money would stem from moral grounds. It had given me a helpless, fatalistic feeling—I knew that there was no way to argue against something like that—but now I saw that it was much simpler. She wanted to keep the packets, but she was afraid of getting caught. I should’ve realized this from the beginning, too. Sarah, above all else, was a pragmatist—it was the quality I loved best in her—she dealt with things at their most basic level. For her, a decision to keep the money would be predicated on two simple conditions. The first—which I’d already dealt with—was an assurance that no one would be hurt by our actions; the second was that we wouldn’t get in any trouble. Everything else, as she’d said, was just talk, a distraction from what mattered.
    I told her about my plan.
    “The money’s the only evidence that we’ve committed a crime,” I said. “We can sit on it and see what happens. If someone comes searching for it, we’ll just burn it, and that’ll be that.”
    She pursed her lips. Watching her, I could see that I’d gained a foothold.
    “There’s no risk,” I said. “We’ll be in complete control.”
    “There’s always a risk, Hank.”
    “But would you do it if you thought there wasn’t?”
    She didn’t answer me.
    “Would you?” I pressed.
    “You’ve already left a lot of clues.”
    “Clues?”
    “Like your tracks in the snow. They lead in from the road, right to the plane, and then back out again.”
    “It’s supposed to snow tomorrow,” I countered triumphantly. “They’ll be gone by tomorrow night.”
    She half-nodded, half-shrugged. “You touched the pilot.”
    I frowned, remembering Jacob asking Carl about the plane. It was starting to seem stupid again, rather than clever.
    “If they suspect you for any reason,” Sarah said, “they’ll be able to figure out that you were there. All they need is a single follicle of hair, a half-inch thread from your jacket.”
    I lifted my hands in the air, palms up. “But why would anyone suspect me?”
    She answered quickly, though she didn’t have to. I knew