CHOICES

September 1, 2024

Where do I begin?

My name is Beverly Simmons. I’m from Adamsville, a city of about ten thousand souls located in the southern half of the state. I’ve lived here most of my life. My parents were born here as well. After I graduated from college, I married my college sweetheart and we settled in my native city.

We have two children who have never given us any serious trouble, which is a blessing. They graduated from the same high school I attended, and are now in college. Both fancied the idea of attending out-of-state private colleges instead of the more economical state university. They are doing well, or so I’ve heard. I hope so, since we’re paying the bills, with a little help from Uncle Sam.

Sounds like a perfect life, doesn’t it? It was, but it is not anymore.

My husband was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer in October 2022. He’s already had half of his left lung removed, in addition to radiation and chemotherapy. The cancer is still present, though, but thanks to God, it’s local and has not metastasized, and the doctors continue to say it’s treatable. But he’s a long way from a full recovery. I don’t know if he will ever be able to work again. He was a successful construction contractor and chair of the Rotary Club before he got sick.

Between the medical and tuition bills, our bank accounts are almost drained. I’m a real estate broker, so my salary is largely based on commissions. At times, it’s difficult to count on a stable income flow. What we can count on is increasing expenses.

I’m an elder at our church, the Holy Christian Family Church. Because of my business degree, I was elected treasurer five years ago. And you know, once you volunteer for something, you end up doing it for life. We’re a small church, so it’s a tight squeeze to keep the lights on. The church’s spending sometimes exceeds its fickle donations, but we make do. Having an endowment fund helps.

My situation began on a cold day in March last year. I had received a call from our janitor about a locked closet in the northeast corner of the basement underneath a stairway. He couldn’t find the key, so he called me and a locksmith to open the door. The small closet was about four feet by eight feet and had no electricity or plumbing. The outside walls were made of small boulders dating back to the construction of the church in 1885. Surprisingly, the floor was dirt, and the ceiling corners had cotton candy-like spider webs. I figured no one had been in that room in many years.

I had never paid attention to the door or what it concealed until the janitor’s call. I found the contents of the closet disappointing. It contained a disintegrating metal chair and old musty boxes of papers. Hidden in the back left corner was a small safe tucked under a stack of discarded rags. Despite some rust, it wasn’t in terrible condition. The safe didn’t seem all that important (at least that’s what I told myself), so I didn’t tell anyone else at the church about it.

On a Tuesday evening about a week after I had discovered the safe, I was alone at the church paying invoices in the building’s basement office. As I was filing the last bill, I noticed a handwritten note at the bottom of the file drawer. It had a set of numbers written on it, and the paper looked quite old. After puzzling over it for a few minutes, I realized the numbers were formatted like a lock combination. I was struck with a thought: Maybe it was the combination for the safe.

I grabbed the lantern from the church’s emergency response kit and the note with the numbers, and entered the old filthy closet. It took a few tries for the rusty tumblers to cooperate, but eventually the lock released itself from its many years of bondage. I pulled open the squeaky door.

Initially, I was disappointed. I was hoping for something exciting, like gold coins, jewelry or stacks of cash. Instead, I found several envelopes in various stages of disintegration. I removed them from their tomb and took the papers back to my desk in the church office. Three envelopes contained partial plans for an addition to the church that was completed in 1958. A couple more packets held generally unreadable notes. The sixth and seventh envelopes were fuller. When I opened them, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I pulled out thirty-six U.S. Government Series E bonds. They had been issued on dates ranging from 1952 to 1969 in maturity denominations of mostly $1,000. There appeared to have been two donations per year. All the bonds had far exceeded their maturity dates, and I knew they had drawn significant interest well above their maturity amounts. I did a quick calculation and estimated their total combined worth to be more than $275,000.

According to a scribbled note in one of the envelopes, a man named Horace Grant had donated the bonds to the church. I did some sleuthing and learned Mr. Grant was a recluse who attended church occasionally and sat in the back left pew. The treasurer at the time was Marvin McGee, who held the post from 1952 to 1982. Mr. McGee retired when he was diagnosed with dementia and seemingly just stuffed the bonds in the envelopes and put them in the safe.

Mr. Grant died in 1980 followed by Mr. McGee in 1985. I surmised others must have known about the bonds, but they never wrote anything down and they, too, must have passed on. Why Mr. McGee didn’t tell anyone about the bonds is anyone’s guess. Maybe he planned to do the same thing I ended up doing with them.

Thus, as far as I knew, the church had no records of the bonds.

I sat alone at the desk staring at the bonds. I thought about my family’s financial situation. We were going broke. Who knew what my husband’s outcome would be, or the cost of his care. He didn’t have a large life insurance policy. My children would have to leave their private colleges or take out bigger student loans. My car was ten years old and needed to be replaced.

It seems cliché, but I felt an angel sitting on my right shoulder and the devil resting on my left. The angel told me to report the bonds to the pastor and other ruling elders. The bonds could be put in the church’s endowment and used on unexpected expenditures, like a new roof. Some of the money could be spent on overseas missions. I would be a hero.

The devil called me a sucker and said I’d be a hero for a day, but my personal expenses would be an anchor around my neck forever. I should cash the bonds and save my family. After I got my family expenses under control, I could just donate more to the church. Eventually things would work out fine.

I sat there until—I confess today—the devil won. I didn’t want it to be this way, but my family needed the money. The temptation was too powerful, too enticing. I set out a careful plan. I went to the bank on the other side of the county. The bank was small, and I didn’t know anyone who worked there except the head teller, Doris Parks. I told her I wanted to open an account in the church’s name.

I knew the bank required a co-signer to open the account, so I added Jeremy O’Toole to the account. Mr. O’Toole had attended our church occasionally years ago before moving out of state. I became a great manipulator and forger, so I forged everything needed from Mr. O’Toole. All this was done outside the bank and no one questioned Mr. O’Toole. To this day, I regret using his name and taking advantage of my friendship with Doris.

The combined total value of the bonds came to $313,758.

I didn’t tap into the account right away. I waited a couple months. Then the kids’ tuition bills came due along with my husband’s latest medical bills. We did not have the money to cover everything, so I took from the secret bond fund. When I went to withdraw the money, I made small talk with Doris and told her the money would be used to replace the church’s sump pump and carpeting, and to re-stripe the parking lot.

The first time I cashed a bond, a strong shock of guilt came over me. I wanted to scream, “Stop me, please! What I’m doing is so wrong!” Yet, no one at the bank questioned me. After all, I was a respected church elder, the church treasurer and a pillar of the community.

A year went by, and I felt more comfortable each time I cashed a bond. The supplemental income those bonds provided was a godsend to my family. I didn’t spend any of the money on myself—except to buy seven cashmere sweaters and a Michael Kors purse. There were a couple of trips to the spa, too.

I deserved a little reward for keeping my family together and in good standing. I should have been paid more at my real estate job. The men had higher incomes than me, even though I worked as hard or harder than they did. Life isn’t fair. And I volunteered hundreds and hundreds of hours at the church for so many years.

Eventually, my guilt diminished and I was less hesitant to act. I deserved that money.

During the first year, I spent about $100,000 of the $313,758. Filing taxes on the bond income was not a problem. As the church treasurer, the IRS correspondence was addressed to me, and I took care of it.

Unfortunately, my time as a master criminal didn’t last much longer. I was sitting at home reading Cosmopolitan and taking a quiz about successful wives when the phone rang. It was our pastor, Gerald Grimstone. He asked me to attend a meeting about what seemed to be routine charity donations. I gave little thought to it until I arrived at the church. Several people were in the conference room besides the pastor and an elder, including someone I recognized from my visits to the bank, the church attorney and two police officers from the Adamsville police department.

Pastor Gerald explained that he had gone into the bank where I had my special account to do some personal banking. Unfortunately for me, he knew the vice president of the bank, Greg Warrenstock, from college. Warrenstock mentioned the endowment fund I and Mr. O’Toole had opened, and asked Pastor Gerald how the church’s projects were progressing. Pastor Gerald said he was unaware of any special endowment fund, so with Doris’ help, Warrenstock showed him the documents regarding the fund and its activity. The only people who had withdrawn funds from the account were me and Mr. O’Toole. It was clear the funds were not going to the church.

Pastor Gerald had Warrenstock make a copy of all the account’s transactions, including the date, the amount and who had withdrawn the money. The Pastor gave the information to the Adamsville Police Department, who contacted Mr. O’Toole. Mr. O’Toole obviously denied any involvement in my scheme and consequently helped the police piece together what I had done.

I knew my time was up. Still, I acted appalled—I wasn’t going down without a fight. I decried how my integrity was being questioned. I pleaded about being a long-term, good and faithful member of the church. I had a sterling reputation in the community—how dare they accuse me of fraud! This had to be a mistake.

I looked around at every person in the room as I spoke. The police officers showed no emotion. Surprisingly, my fellow church members did not show hostility, only sadness. At that moment, I knew I was finished. I brushed that nasty devil off my shoulder and welcomed the angel and whatever would follow.

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“I’m done,” I said. I placed the pen down and sighed. The yellow pad of paper I was writing on was faded, but the lines were distinct enough to keep my sloppiness to a minimum. There was no need to write anything further. I turned the pad around and gave it to the detective sitting in front of me.

“You’ll have your rights read to you. Then you will be booked and placed in a holding cell at the jail until you meet with the judge, who will set your bail. If you post bail, you will likely be released until the trial. You haven’t really hurt anyone, except the people in the congregation who trusted you. Maybe that’s worse than anything, Mrs. Simmons. Being trustworthy is one of the most valuable traits a person can have, and you’ve squandered it all away.”

Hearing the detective’s words, coupled with the weight of what I had done, pounded my soul. The church had always been my sanctuary from the outside world. Now, I let the church and my fellow congregants down. I can never go back there. My refuge has been terminated. And worse, I let my family down. What will they think? Will they abandon me?

I’m going to plead guilty and confess to what I did. I have to. Perhaps the court will show me mercy.

Now comes the question I continue to ask myself as I sit in jail: If I had a second chance, would I repeat what I did? Would I manage the bonds for the good of the church, or for me?

I’d like to think I would change. But then again…