At twelve fifty, Bell knelt in the closet doorway wearing gloves.

I stood behind him holding a legal pad I hadn’t written a single word on.

He opened the canvas bag first and laid it on a towel he’d brought from the kitchen.

The bag held banded stacks of twenties, still in their paper wrappers.

Bell counted under his breath and set the stacks out on the towel in rows.

He stopped at forty-five thousand dollars.

“That matches the loan,” he said.