Excerpt of The Melting Season by Jami Attenberg

I did not mean to take the money. Well, not all of it.

At first it was only a tiny amount, a little cream off the
top. I was just trying to store away for the winter. Winters
were long in Nebraska. We lived on chicken broth and whiskey
and tired-looking vegetables from the grocery store. The
wind leveled the cornfields, and the snow skimmed the land
like a current across a giant lake. Roads were blocked for
weeks. Icicles like enormous daggers gathered on rooftops.
We wrapped ourselves in scarves and hats so thick all you
could see when you passed your neighbor on the street was
another set of eyes peeping back at you. If we left the
house at all. Some people slept all day long.

There was a comfort to it, but it made me nervous, too. I
needed something to warm myself with. A little bit of money
would help.
Every week I took a little bit more and I stacked up the
bills in the oven of the apartment I was renting. It was not
enough that my husband would be missing it, just enough to
keep me happy. Or at least not so miserable.

But then my husband kept on betraying me, and suddenly the
little stacks of money were not enough anymore. This feeling
rolled all over me on the outside and then it dug itself
deep inside me. It was a desperate thing, and I hacked on
it, coughing like it was a bitter virus attacking my air. It
went on like that for months, my lungs full of a crazy kind
of dusty illness. I was on the edge of something dire. All
it took was a little push. That was when I realized what
needed to happen.

I can take it all and no one can stop me.

And there was nothing left to do afterward but get the hell
out of town.