I found it in the books.
Forty-one thousand dollars, moved in pieces small enough that nobody would ever look. Never the same day of the month twice. All of it routed through an account I opened myself, for the widow of a brother we buried two winters ago.
Every authorisation carried my husband's signature.
I have kept this club's money clean for eleven years. I have been married to the man who runs it for fifteen.
I didn't cry and I didn't scream and I didn't drive anywhere. I sat in that office until two in the morning and wrote the whole thing out again in ink, numbered, in a column any federal auditor in the Commonwealth could follow with one finger.
Then I waited four days for church night, and I walked into the room women don't enter, and I read the dates out loud in front of nine men.
He said yes before I finished.
I was going to leave him. I had it planned down to the hour.
Then the government came for the salvage yard and the bar and every dollar Ashfall has ever touched, and gave us ninety days, and there is exactly one person alive who can make eleven years of this club's money hold together in front of a forensic accountant.
They had to ask me to come back.
I came back with terms. Four of them, they were expecting.
The fifth one was that she stays.
On the property. Where I can see her.
