tires. I eased the car door open noiselessly, then padded across the grass and
slipped through the back door, moving silently through the house, reaching
my hand out to feel my way to the filing cabinet.
I had only made it a few steps when I heard a familiar clink.
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted. “It’s me!”
“Who?”
I flipped the light switch and saw Shawn sitting across the room, pointing a
pistol at me. He lowered it. “I thought you were ... someone else.”
“Obviously,” I said.
We stood awkwardly for a moment, then I went to bed.
The next morning, after Dad left for the junkyard, I told Mother one of my
fake stories about BYU needing her tax returns. She knew I was lying—I
could tell because when Dad came in unexpectedly and asked why she was
copying the returns, she said the duplicates were for her records.
I took the copies and returned to BYU. Shawn and I exchanged no words
before I left. He never asked why I’d been sneaking into my own house at
three in the morning, and I never asked who he’d been waiting for, sitting up
in the middle of the night, with a loaded pistol.
The forms sat on my desk for a week before Robin walked with me to the
post office and watched me hand them to the postal worker. It didn’t take
long, a week, maybe two. I was cleaning houses in Draper when the mail
came, so Robin left the letter on my bed with a note that I was a Commie
now.
I tore open the envelope and a check fell onto my bed. For four thousand
dollars. I felt greedy, then afraid of my greed. There was a contact number. I
dialed it.
“There’s a problem,” I told the woman who answered. “The check is for
four thousand dollars, but I only need fourteen hundred.”
The line was silent.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Let me get this straight,” the woman said. “You’re saying the check is for
too much money? What do you want me to do?”
“If I send it back, could you send me another one? I only need fourteen
hundred. For a root canal.”
“Look, honey,” she said. “You get that much because that’s how much you
get. Cash it or don’t, it’s up to you.”