Brave

My son always jumped when he heard the garage door open, signaling that his father was home. On that particular day, I watched him hurriedly put away his toys and retreat to his room, vanishing so quickly it looked like I had been the one watching cartoons, which still played on the TV.

I held my breath, not sure what type of husband would walk through the door. I was trying this new community class about marriage, but it was only for the wives. The nice lady who taught it said that men needed to feel important and peaceful when they got home from work. When I asked if wives also needed to feel important and peaceful when they got home from work, she looked at me as if I had two heads. I didn’t ask any more questions.

The husband who came through the door was a type I hadn’t seen before – a happy husband! I slowly released my breath.

“Look,” he crowed, holding out an old black backpack. “Look what I found!”

I took the bag gingerly and started to unzip the top, when he snatched it away. “No, let me do it.” He yanked the zipper open and held it out in front of me. I felt like one of those cartoon characters whose eyes fill with dollar signs, because all I could see was cash. Stacked bills with little paper binders around the middle, just like you see in the movies.

“Where on earth did you find this?” I gasped. “Whose is it?”

“It was laying in the parking lot close to my car. This is God, baby. God is blessing me!”

I took a step back and kept my eyes on the bag. The nice lady at class had warned us not to question our husbands because it made them feel disrespected, and that led to our own unhappiness. She said if your husband was making a horrible decision, you should put on a sexy dress along with some nice perfume and sit on his lap. I didn’t have time to do any of those things.

“You have to turn this in,” I said firmly, raising my eyes to almost meet his. “Someone might need this money,” I continued, taking the bag from him before he could pull it away. “There must be identification in here somewhere.”

I pulled the top open further and dumped the contents on the table. It was surreal and, I’m not going to lie, a bit thrilling to see all that money spill onto the placemat my son had made in school for Mother’s Day. Tucked in the sea of cash was a little black moleskin notebook.

My husband grabbed it before I could and started flipping through the pages. “Nothing here,” he said, tossing it aside. He started to caress the bills and place them into neat stacks, but the little black notebook called to me.

I crept behind him and quietly took the notebook from the table. The first few pages were empty, so he was almost right. But about fifteen pages in, there was an address scrawled in pencil. “Look,” I cried, holding it out to him.

“You made me lose count,” he scowled, but glanced at the page held open in my hands. “Nevada?” he grunted. “Obviously these people aren’t in Nevada, if this money was dropped on the East Coast.”

“But this could give the police a clue,” I insisted. “Maybe there was something caught on the cameras outside your office? You’re so close to the bank.”

I could see the wheels turning in his head before he smiled. His smiles were never a good thing. “Look,” he whispered, standing to put his hands on my upper arms. I stiffened. “Why would anyone have this much cash in a bag, eh? Respectable people doing respectable things don’t do that. Only criminals carry this much money in a backpack. If my counting is right, there’s at least twenty thousand dollars here. Now, what would the police do with all this money after we turn it in? Use it for the policeman’s ball? The creeps who dropped it aren’t going to be asking for it back. Meanwhile, think about what it could do for us!”

“But the cameras,” I insisted. “What if they do go to the police and the cameras show you took it?” My voice wobbled with the sickening knowledge that he wanted to keep it. Maybe he was right, and it was tainted money, but couldn’t my gut be right and somebody’s world was crashing down on them?

“The cameras don’t catch the back corner where I park,” he answered, “Nobody saw me.”

“Honey,” I said, placing a hand on his forearm and smiling, as my stomach churned, “you are such a good man.” The nice lady at class had told us to say things to build up our husbands’ egos. “I know you always do the right thing. What if this were the only money you had in the whole world, and you needed it for surgery for our son? We don’t know what it’s for, but we do have an address. You could be the angel someone is praying for right now.”

He liked it when I pointed out what a great man he was. I could almost hear the story he would tell about how he singlehandedly did the right thing. “Okay, I’ll go to Nevada and check out the address. I trust myself more than the police. I’ll have to use some of the money to pay for the trip,” he grinned, and I could picture the money flying through his hands.

“Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll go, too.” Surprisingly, he didn’t disagree.

***

It was hard to leave my son behind with a friend, and traveling with my husband was like having my teeth drilled, but I really had no choice. Something pulled me toward Nevada.

The street the little black notebook led us to was clean and bright, and the houses were large and spaced apart. The particular house matching the address was quietly ominous, with all the blinds closed. Several cars were parked in the driveway.

My heart thumped loudly, and I reached out to take my husband’s arm. He jumped and shook me off. We had left the money in a safe at the hotel, and now we sat in a rented SUV under a shady tree, watching the house anxiously. An elderly couple was going door to door, although I couldn’t see what they were selling. As I studied them, chills crawled slowly up my spine.

“If, and only if, they look respectable, I won’t mention the money,” my husband repeated for the hundredth time. “I’ll just say I found the notebook and wanted to return it. Then we’ll see if they bring up the money.” I nodded. The nice lady at class would be so proud of how I held my tongue. “If no one answers, or if they’re sketchy, we go home and keep everything. Then it’s God’s will, and no more questions, eh?” I nodded again. His plan was murky, and I had often wondered if my God and his God were different, but this wasn’t the time to argue.

The elderly couple walked by without noticing us and proceeded up the driveway of the house that had brought us there. I stared at the back of the woman’s head and just knew. It was her money. And she needed it.

The next few moments would sear into my memory. The couple pleaded with the two thin, wiry men who answered the door. I heard the word “coyote” before I saw two young girls, one older and one younger than my own son, being held in front of an upstairs window. The woman saw them as soon as I did, and she cried out their names.

I found myself jumping out of the car and crossing the street as if an invisible force propelled me. “Hello there,” I called out. “We’re lost. Can you help us?” I was sure they could hear my heart beating out of my chest.

The couple grew silent and the girls vanished from the window. One man stayed in the doorway and looked beyond me. I realized my husband had followed me and stood timidly behind my shoulder.

“We’re lost,” I repeated, smiling. I took out the little black notebook from my purse and saw the woman’s eyes light up. “Could someone tell me how to get downtown? Our GPS is broken.”

The man in the doorway scowled, and I wanted to tell him that I lived with a scowler and was immune. “Downtown?” I repeated.

He relented and gave some hurried directions, which I pretended to write down in the notebook. I held it out to the woman, who had come closer to me. “Is this right?” I asked, and showed her the name and address of our hotel scribbled underneath the address of the house where we stood. She nodded, tears welling in her eyes.

“Thanks!” I said cheerily, and hurried back to the car. My husband got in before I did, and the tires screeched as he pulled away from the curb.

“You see?” he said, shakily, “bad people doing bad things. I was right. That money is ours now. You could have gotten us killed!”

The blood in my veins turned to ice. “Those children are being held for ransom,” I said. “We have to go to the police.”

“Oh no,” he answered. “I’m not getting involved. And you’d better not call the police, either, if you know what’s good for you.” He said many more things during that car ride, but I heard none of them. I prayed to my God, not his, for help.

Back at the hotel, I booked him a massage and told him after all the stress I had caused, he deserved to relax. He didn’t argue.

Once my husband was at the spa, I took the black backpack from the safe and waited in the lobby. I knew she would come as surely as I knew how many finger-shaped bruises my son had ever had on his arms. When the couple approached me, I stood and held out the bag.

“My husband found it,” I started, “and I’m sorry, but we spent some of the money to get here.”

“It’s okay,” the woman said, tears running down the soft wrinkles of her face. “They will take this over nothing.”

“Do you want me to call the police?” I asked.

“This man is an undercover agent,” she said, motioning toward her male companion. He shook my hand, then held out his card.

“I had no choice after I lost the backpack,” she continued. “I could only remember the street name, and thought I’d never see my granddaughters again. I needed help. Now they have the house under surveillance, and with the cash in hand we can get the girls out safely before they go in for the kidnappers. Thanks to you.”

Then, she hugged me, and the tenderness of that act ripped open feelings that I thought had ceased to exist. “God bless you, you are so brave,” she whispered in my ear as tears dampened my shoulder. I wanted her to keep holding me while I confessed about every single time over the last eleven years that I had not been brave. But they were in a hurry.

I carried the strength of her words with me as I rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor. I recognized her God was the same as my God, not my husband’s. And I could be brave. There were twenty minutes left before my husband would return from his massage. It was enough time to plan all the brave things I was going to do for my son and for myself. I took out the little black notebook and began my list.