There’s a particular way the body understands a thing a moment before the thoughts catch up, and mine had gone cold and careful, the way you go when you sense you’re at the edge of something you won’t be able to step back from.

I stepped down off the stool and set it on the counter, and from the living room I could hear Lonnie wrapping Mama’s TV remote in newspaper like it was a museum piece.

I lifted the lid.

There was no flour inside.

Only money.

Twenties, fifties, hundreds, sorted into bundles and held with rubber bands so old they’d started to crack, some of the bills gone soft and gray the way paper goes when it’s sat somewhere for decades.

I stood there staring, unable to make sense of it.