The second count came out the same. Someone near the back said amen, and the church laughed softly through its tears. Audrey slid the money into the recovered envelope, now carefully restored and preserved, with the original writing visible across its face.
"Jasmine Rivers," she said, "would you come up here, please?"
Jasmine took the envelope with both hands. The church rose and applauded, not for a judge who had defeated a deputy, but for a student whose tuition money had finally reached its intended purpose and for an older woman's ten years of faithful counting. Harvey applauded hardest, his cap tucked under his arm.
"Can I keep the envelope after we deposit the money?" Jasmine whispered.
"It was always meant for you," Audrey said. "Mama just didn't know your name when she wrote on it."
"Are you scared they'll do this again?"
Audrey thought about the road, the cooler, and the release forms. "Yes. But I'm more afraid of a world where nobody checks."
"Then I'll count things, too," Jasmine said.
"Good. Count carefully. And let other people count with you."
After the service, Harvey reminded Audrey that her mother would have made them count a third time before allowing the envelope to leave the building. She reminded him that Willa would then have ordered him to carry the dinner plates to the car. He said he would have carried every one and probably gone back for the chairs. For the first time in months, the day belonged entirely to living people rather than to the arguments created by someone else's false report.
Audrey left the church carrying a small box of sweet potato pie. Snow dusted the edge of the parking lot. When she reached the silver sedan, she opened the passenger door to put the box inside and noticed that the glove compartment was slightly ajar. She had not opened it since collecting the car.
A black envelope lay on top of the papers. It bore no stamp and no return address. Audrey lifted it carefully, noting that it had been placed where a person would find it sooner or later without having to rummage through the car. Inside was a folded card, an old paper map of Interstate 95, and a narrow black ribbon, still soft and untied.
The card addressed her as Judge Sinclair. It referred to the three-dollar-and-twenty-nine-cent bottle and the 312 notices, saying that the bottle had not been the worst part of what happened. The silence protecting the practice had been worse. Then it offered a sentence that made Audrey read the words again before lifting the map.
"When you're ready, we rise. Project Rise."
Three locations were circled on the map, each in a different county beyond Bramwell. Beside each circle somebody had written the same amount in red ink: $3.29. The ribbons at the mile marker and cooler returned to Audrey's mind, followed by the knot on the court reporter's wrist and the unmarked sedan whose headlights found her mother's envelope in the weeds. She still had no proof that one person or organization connected those events.