Chapter 2

Six days earlier, the pantry shelves were bare.

I stood in the basement of Barlow’s Reach Methodist Church with a clipboard and a pen, counting cans of green beans that weren’t there. The inventory sheet said sixteen. I counted nine.

Outside, the first snow of January fell in fat, lazy flakes. Inside, the furnace clanked and rattled like it was dying. Miss Doreen, the church secretary, had left at noon because her arthritis acted up in the cold. Pastor Kyle was upstairs in his study, preparing a sermon he’d probably copy from a book.

I was the pantry coordinator. Unpaid. Unofficial. Two years ago, when Kyle took the pulpit and married me three months later, he’d said this was my ministry. Our ministry. A way to serve the congregation and the town.

Mostly it meant I hauled boxes, sorted expired cans, and lied to people’s faces when they asked why we were out of peanut butter again.

I’d been noticing things for weeks. Small things. A case of formula that disappeared from the back room. A box of rice that never made it to the shelves. The deacon’s food drive that brought in four hundred dollars but only stocked half the pantry.

I told Kyle. He said I was tired. He said pregnancy made women forgetful. He said the church council was watching, and I needed to be more careful with my accusations.

So I stopped telling him.

Instead, I started an audit.

Every Thursday, the dairy co-op donated surplus milk and cheese. Every Friday, a truck from the Rutland food bank dropped off canned goods and pasta. I started keeping my own records. A small notebook I hid in my apron.

That Friday, I found the ledger.

I was moving a case of canned peaches to the back shelf, and the case was heavier than it should have been. I lifted it and found the green accounting book wedged against the wall. It was the pantry ledger, the one Kyle said he kept locked in his study.

I opened it.

Missing deliveries. Fake invoices. Payments to a man named V. Cutler. Eighteen thousand dollars Kyle had borrowed eleven months ago, according to the entries. Eleven thousand four hundred diverted from the pantry over ten months.

And on the last page, a loan application with my name signed at the bottom. Hannah Mae Trask. The signature was a good forgery. Almost perfect. But I knew my own handwriting. I’d never signed that paper.

I sat down on the cold concrete floor and pressed my hand to my mouth.

Eli’s feeding tube alarm beeped from the other side of the wall. I’d heard it a hundred times, but now it sounded different. Like an accusation.

I thought about Eli’s thin wrists. The untouched trays I’d been finding in his room. The way he watched Kyle with those wide, frightened eyes.

Kyle was starving his brother.

The thought hit me so hard I almost threw up.

I heard footsteps on the stairs. Kyle.

I shoved the ledger back behind the peaches and stood up, brushing dust from my apron.

“Hannah?” His voice was cheerful. “You down here?”

“Just counting cans.”

He appeared in the doorway. Tall. Handsome. Smiling. He wore his clerical collar and a cardigan, and he looked like the kind of man who’d never done a wrong thing in his life.

“You look pale,” he said. “You should rest.”

“I’m fine.”

He walked toward me. Slow. Deliberate. He reached past me and grabbed a can of peaches from the shelf. His arm brushed my shoulder.

“These are good,” he said. “I think I’ll take a case to the Cutlers. Vern’s been asking about the pantry stores.”

Vern. V. Cutler.

My heart stopped.

“Vern Cutler?” I said.

“Selectboard chair. You know him.”

“Why would he care about the pantry?”

Kyle’s smile didn’t waver. “He’s concerned about church finances. With the land sale coming up and all.”

The land sale. Eli’s land. The family farm their father had left in trust for Eli, with Kyle as trustee.

“What land sale?” I asked.

“Nothing you need to worry about, sweetheart.” He kissed my forehead. “You’re carrying our child. Let me handle the hard things.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to show him the ledger. I wanted to demand why my name was on a forged loan.

But I didn’t. I was nine months pregnant, with no job, no money, and no car. Kyle controlled everything. If I accused him, he’d turn it around. He always did.

So I smiled. “You’re right. I’m just tired.”

He left with the peaches. I waited until his footsteps faded, then I pulled the ledger out again. I took it to the ancient photocopier in the church office and made a carbon copy. The machine jammed twice. I prayed no one would come in.

Then I hid the original back behind the peaches. And I kept the carbon copy in my apron.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I just knew I couldn’t let it go.