I took it. I did. Not all of it, and not right then. I sat on it, literally. Sat on what I took. I didn’t even know how much I grabbed. Just some of it. I put the envelope with the rest back in the safe and closed the door and locked it and carried the safe back to the table where it was when I found it. Back on the couch I put the money under me as I sat for a few hours, thinking, really thinking if I should take what I already had, kept thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it until it grew light outdoors. And I only moved twice from the couch that whole time, once to make sure the key I held was real and that the safe door was closed and locked, and the second time to make sure none of that money I sat on got dragged with me when I went to check the safe, check to see the key in my hand was real.

Mom got up at quarter to six. I shoved those bills under the couch cushions. Just as I had scared her when I burst through the closet, I scared her again, not meaning to, when I said hi from the living room.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said. “I thought you were at your friend’s?”

“I came home last night,” I said.

“You slept out here?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She didn’t say anything more. I smelled the coffee she poured, could taste the hazelnut creamer she used, could taste it thick on the air.

“There’s coffee,” she said, and she took her cup to the bathroom with her.

I poured too much in a mug. My hands shook and I spilled some all down the sides and on the counter, and to get rid of some of it I sipped it and burned my lip and tongue.

I put the TV on just to have it on, and the news was playing. Mom watched it from time to time, when she was taking breaks from getting ready, always standing, never sitting, holding a small white plate with a toasted English muffin with strawberry jam on it, leaving, coming back and standing there again in my periphery, putting earrings in, leaving, returning, asking if she missed the weather, leaving, returning, looking for her cigarettes, her wallet, her purse, coming once more to ask about the weather.

“More rain,” I said.

“Don’t forget to call your grandmother later.”