The Open Safe
The safe door stood open across the hall.
I stopped with a stack of towels pressed against my chest and listened to Margaret answering the kitchen phone downstairs.
I had already gone to prison once for stealing money to save Mom.
Inside the safe were documents, velvet boxes, and several bundles of cash held together with paper bands.
Eight feet away, Mr. Howard rested in his usual chair by the sitting-room window.
His face was turned toward the afternoon light.
At 85, his eyesight had deteriorated so badly that he needed my arm on the stairs and held labels inches from his face.
He could not see what I was looking at.
That was the sentence I used to cross the hallway.
I set the towels down, reached into the safe, and slipped one bundle into my pocket.
Then another.
Margaret laughed at something the caller said.
I closed the cash envelope, picked up the towels, and walked away before she returned.
I’d stolen $8,000 in less than a minute.
It was not the first time I’d told myself theft was an act of love.
Three years earlier, my mother had begun cancer treatment while I worked nights at a shipping warehouse.
Insurance covered part of her care, but every appointment seemed to produce another bill.
I borrowed what I could, missed rent twice, and eventually took money from a deposit bag at work.
I meant to replace it.
The company discovered the shortage first.
I turned myself in and spent 18 months in prison.
During every visit, Mom made me promise I would never sacrifice my life to prolong hers.
After my release, nobody wanted the man my background check described.
May you like
Then I saw a handwritten advertisement taped inside a bus shelter.
LIVE-IN CAREGIVER NEEDED. $5,000 MONTHLY.
