Only Ever could take my anger and bend it into something like affection. I swallowed. “Where’d you go, anyhow?”
He opened the grocery bag. “To get this.”
Inside was stuffed with bills—tens, twenties, fives. Not crisp, like from the bank, but bent and wrinkled.
“For Sam,” Ever explained. “Since none of these people will let him wash their stupid cars. Think of it as a cruelty tax with seventeen years’ interest.”
My jaw dropped. Ever watched with a neutral expression, waiting for me to speak.
“How—where?”
“Holy Fire.” He said it so lightly.
“From my dad’s office?” It was where he’d kept the tithe collections since I was young. His office, not the elders’, who were technically in charge of the budget. Very few people knew that.
Ever nodded.
“How’d you know it was there?”
His gaze cut away. “Good guess.”
“You got all of this from his safe?” My father had installed one in the wall behind his desk, hidden by a large painting of the two unnamed men crucified next to Christ, history’s most famous thieves. It was meant as an inside joke and a warning. He trusted that safe so much it was where he kept everything important: car titles, birth certificates, even the deed to our house.
Ever nodded again. His expression said he was being patient with me while I processed.
“How’d you get into it?”
He shrugged. “You could say my father taught me.”
I stared down at the stuffed bag. There was so much money. More than I’d ever seen. I inhaled the peculiar scent of cash. What made money smell so good? The paper, the ink, the hands it traveled through—or was this what power smelled like?
“We’re going to talk about how you learned to do that later,” I promised. “But for now…how much money is this? It looks like hundreds.”
“Thousands,” Ever corrected.
I blinked up at him. “He said tithing was up at the church, but I never imagined this much.”
“That’s not even half of what was in the safe.”
Holy Fire had grown over the years, from the modest white clapboard my father had inherited to the sprawling complex it was now after two additions, both paid for by congregants. He and the elders were planning yet another expansion to accommodate all the new people who had started showing up, filling every pew. My father was building an empire.
“They really do love him,” I said softly, which was nowhere near the important thing to focus on. But faced with this concrete proof of what his congregants were willing to give, I was gutted. Some part of me had been waiting for Bottom Springs to come to my side all these years.
Ever remained silent.
Time seemed to crawl as we stood looking into the bag of money. As the shock of where it came from dissipated, a vision began to form: me slipping the bag under my T-shirt and walking it home, hiding it in the dark space beneath my dresser, where my parents never looked. Sitting at the library desktop, back on LSU’s website, but this time, accepting my admission. Packing my things into a suitcase. Leaving Bottom Springs forever.
It was right there in Ever’s hands, in all those soft crinkled bills: the life I wanted.
Ever cocked his head. “Whatcha thinking, Ruth?”
Desire was thick in my throat. I couldn’t pull my eyes away.
His voice was silky. “You can have it. You can take it and do whatever you want.”
I reached inside the bag, fingering the bills. Then I looked at the empty car-wash lot. Sam was stacking the buckets. Behind him, people walked past, inspecting him and then looking away.
“No.” I almost choked on it. “I can’t.”
