by Score, Lucy
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
I lay in bed last night thinking about all the things I miss about you. Here’s the Top 10 out of infinity.
10. The way you’re dead to the world when you sleep. A marching band could parade by and you wouldn’t even hear the tubas.
9. The way you play the piano (badly but with charming enthusiasm).
8. Your horrible taste in ice cream.
7. Your optimism. I’ve never been around someone who always believed that things would work out. I hope I didn’t break that because your hopeful heart is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.
6. The way you spell things with pepperoni.
5. Your breasts. Let’s be honest. You wouldn’t believe this list if they didn’t make the Top 5.
4. The way you dance. The way you teach others to dance. The way you’re always moving to a beat.
3. The way you say my name in any mood. Sleepy. Hungry. Annoyed. Wanting. I miss it so much sometimes I think I can still hear you calling my name.
2. How you not only conned me into adopting a dog, but you taught me how to make a home for him.
1. Your heart.
Love,
Dom
* * *
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
I will make this right. Also, I’ve decided that I’ll continue to email you daily for the rest of my life. If you have a problem with that, I encourage you to tell me. Please. Say something. Anything.
Love,
Dom
* * *
To: Ally
From: Dominic
Subject: Getting to know me
When I was a senior in high school, I had a girlfriend who dated me just to meet my mother in hopes that she’d be discovered as a model. My mother didn’t discover her. But my father did.
I walked in on them in the garage the day before my eighteenth birthday. Dad was “showing her the car they’d bought me.” He had her backed into a corner with his hand up her shirt.
At the time, I thought she was as much to blame as he was. I made it so much worse by blaming her. I know better now. I wanted to reach out to her last year. After my father was forcibly removed. After reading the affidavits of his victims. After I paid for his crimes from the trust fund he’d set up for me that I’d never touched.
I finally understood the damage that he and I had inflicted on a seventeen-year-old girl. But I didn’t reach out. I didn’t think I could handle hearing her story because I was still keeping secrets.
It wasn’t the first time I’d walked in on my father and someone who wasn’t my mother. The first time, I was thirteen. He was with a neighbor’s wife on the brand-new couch my mother had ordered from Milan.
He explained that if I told Mom, I would be ruining our family. That if I kept his secret, we’d all stay together. He promised that he’d make amends and he’d never make that mistake again. At the time, I thought he meant he wouldn’t cheat again. I didn’t realize it then, but he meant he’d never make the mistake of getting caught again.
If I had gone to Mom when it happened the first time, my father wouldn’t have been at Label to harass and assault those women. If I had told his secret, none of this would have happened. I’ve never told anyone that, Ally. You’re the first. I wish it was a happier, healthier secret. But a wise, angry woman told me that sharing the good stuff is worthless if you’re not willing to share the bad.
So here’s the bad: I am the reason my father was in a position to prey on and violate women. And I can’t forgive myself for that.
Love,
Dom
71
Ally
As March gave way to April, as winter mellowed into spring, Dominic’s emails kept coming. Every night there was a new one despite the fact that I’d never once responded. And every night I read them all over again from the couch I’d moved back into my dad’s house from storage.
Call me a glutton for punishment. A masochist. A broken-hearted idiot. Take your pick.
My shattered heart bled for the boy who’d been charged with keeping a family together. But the man he’d grown into had done the aforementioned shattering. And while Dominic didn’t know much about sharing, I didn’t know much about forgiving.
I certainly hadn’t forgiven my mother for abandoning us, not to mention taking away my father’s financial security. I hadn’t forgiven the contractor for stealing my money. I hadn’t forgiven Front Desk Deena for taking joy in threatening me with my father’s eviction.
I didn’t know how to forgive. I knew how to move on. And that’s what I was doing.
The only communication Dominic received from me was a weekly check of whatever I could spare to go toward my debt to him. The bastard never cashed them.
Everything sucked. Every single thing.
In so many ways, I was back to the beginning. Back to BD: Before Dominic. I was back to waitressing and bartending gigs and avoiding Front Desk Deena. The only thing different was now I knew what it felt like to have Dominic Russo smile at me. Fuck me. Hold me.
It was a colossal, cosmic joke.
The nursing home came into view ahead, and I did my best to shove down my negativity. Dad didn’t deserve a visit from Gloomy Gail, spreader of depression and angst.
The side door was open—thank the gods of debt collector avoidance and health care workers who sneak outside for smoke breaks—so I let myself in and headed toward the memory ward.
Braden was on the phone at the desk and buzzed me in.
I waved and made a move for the hallway, but he stopped me with a finger in the air. “Yeah, she just walked in.”
Crap. Had Front Desk Deena spotted my surreptitious building breach? I made a frantic slashing motion over my throat. I didn’t have the money owed or the energy required for the woman.
Braden’s toothy grin confused me. “Yep. No problem,” he said, before hanging up.
“What?” I asked, grimly girding my loins for whatever shoe was about to drop on me.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s good. Really good.”
Yeah. I wasn’t falling for that.
“Oh, gee. Look at the time. I have to go,” I said, pantomiming a watch check on my naked wrist. My neck flared up as I pivoted for the door.
But there was a small crowd of people in scrubs coming through the door and blocking my exit. I already knew my dad’s window didn’t open far enough for a body—safety feature—plus it opened to the inside courtyard, and these were not my wall-scaling shoes.
I was trapped.
A nurse in pink heart scrubs handed me a Congratulations balloon. One with a French braid and librarian glasses shoved a cheery bunch of carnations at me. They were all smiling.
Clearly they had mistaken me for someone else.
“Ally Morales,” nursing supervisor Sandy said, stepping to the front of the little smile mob.
Okay. That was definitely my name.
“On behalf of everyone at Goodwin Childers Nursing Home—”
“Except for Deena,” someone coughed from the back.
“We’d like to congratulate you on being the first recipient of the Lady George Administration Memory Care Grant.”
She handed me a letter, and over the excited buzz, I managed to skim the gist of it.
Congratulations… the first recipient of the Lady George Administration Memory Care Grant… Delighted to inform you that your father’s long-term care expenses… covered in full for the next twelve months…
A piece of paper fluttered to the ground, and I bent to pick it up. It was a receipt for twelve months of care.
I couldn’t breathe, so I stayed where I was, head to knees, and sucked in air.
“How did this happen?” I wheezed.
“The foundation contacted us. We submitted your name for their approval process. And you won, Ally!”
Dad’s care was guaranteed for twelve month
s. That meant… everything.
I gave up on the whole breathing and standing thing and sank to the floor as an entire nursing staff cried with me.
* * *
Once I recovered a tiny bit of my dignity, after I hugged and wiped my nose on every single staff member there, I spent a joyful hour with Dad. He didn’t recognize me, but he was in a good mood and telling stories about his daughter Ally.
When he started asking what time his piano student was arriving, I decided it was time to head home to get ready for my serving shift.
My steps were lighter than they had been an hour ago. But as relieved as I felt over the unexpected answer to my prayers, my heart still ached.
I missed Dominic. And I hated that. It reminded me of how much I’d missed my mother that first year after she’d left. When I’d still had hope. I’d never really stopped missing the idea of having a mother. But every time the pang arose, it brought with it a bigger, meaner twinge of self-recrimination.
How could I miss someone who had so carelessly hurt me?
I was so busy feeling like crap that I almost walked right by the big house on the corner without my usual daydreaming. And today, I didn’t feel like daydreaming. I didn’t know if I even believed in happily ever afters like the walls of that house held.
As if to add insult to injury, an older couple appeared in the front window. They were locked in one hell of an embrace that didn’t look even remotely grandparenty.
Okay, fine. So happily ever afters existed. Just not for me. The jokester who said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved was a real jerk as far as I was concerned.
I turned my back on the happy scene and started down the block when my phone clunk-clanked inside my pocket.
I could just make out my real estate agent’s name on the dimly lit screen.
“Bill, hey,” I said.
“We’ve got a full-priced cash offer on the table, Ally,” Bill said in an excited rush.
I stopped in my tracks and shook my head to quiet the ringing in my ears. I was dreaming this whole day. I was going to wake up on my stupid twin bed and be devastated any moment now. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”
“Full-priced cash offer,” he said. “They want to close by the end of the week. I know it’s short notice, but—”
“Accept it. Oh my God. Accept it!” I said, dancing a circle on the sidewalk. Then I froze, a terrible thought stealing into my brain. “Wait a minute. Tell me the buyer isn’t Dominic Russo.”
“Who? No. It’s not even a person. It’s a trust. The buyer’s agent said the buyer fell in love with the house.”
“They did?” I whispered.
“Actually the email said fell in love in the house, but that was a typo. So you’re going to need to start packing.”
There wasn’t much to pack. A couch and a gym bag of dance clothes and work uniforms. The extent of my earthly possessions. But it was better to start fresh without a lot of baggage.
72
Ally
Things kept happening. Good things.
On Tuesday, the Foxwood police contacted me to tell me my weasel of a contractor had been arrested for fraud, theft, and some other charges that sounded like general douchery. Apparently I hadn’t been the only client he’d skipped out on.
The detective wasn’t confident that I’d get my money back, but she had recovered my father’s pocket watch that the guy had helped himself to.
On Thursday, I got an email from a design firm in Manhattan. They’d seen my work in Label and somehow got a direct line to Dalessandra, who sang my praises. They wanted to know if I was interested in a job doing design work.
Friday was bittersweet goodness. The closing on my father’s house went off without a hitch. The buyers signed over power of attorney to their agent, so I didn’t get to meet them. Over a sun-dappled oak table, I traded keys for a check that would not only keep my father in Goodwin Childers for the next several years but would rebuild some of my own savings and clear my debt to Dominic.
I swung by the bank and deposited the check before anyone could change their minds. Then I wrote out a check for every dime that I owed Dominic Russo, dropped it in the mail, and treated myself to a Lyft to Mrs. Grosu’s. I was staying in her guest room for a few days until I could figure out my next move.
I was also hoping to get a glimpse of the new buyers next door.
Halfway to Mrs. Grosu’s in a spotless Prius, my phone gave one actual ring and then a half-hearted vibration. It was a Label office number. I hesitated. I’d ignored all calls for the last month, afraid it would be Dominic. Afraid it wouldn’t be.
I was so tired of being afraid. I was so tired of missing him.
“Hello?”
“Ally, it’s Jasmine from HR,” the caller announced briskly.
Grumpy Jasmine, bad picture taker.
“Hi,” I said.
“I’m calling about where to send your last paycheck.”
I was too sad, too depressed, to get excited about money I’d forgotten about.
“Oh, sure,” I said and rattled off Mrs. Grosu’s address.
“Great,” she said. “By the way, I have some information you might find interesting.”
I doubted that very much.
“Actually, Jasmine, I don’t think—”
“I received a call from this cute junior peon in accounting named Mickey, who I make out with sometimes.”
“Uh.” Grumpy Jasmine had just officially broken my brain.
“He was talking about this audit of the credit card statements or some other boring stuff that I usually don’t hear because I’m too busy staring at his biceps.”
Apparently she was into the arm porn.
“Anyway, he mentions that there was this weirdness because the creative director kept buying food for the admin pool.”
“The creative director?” I said slowly.
“In January, Dominic started buying food for the admins almost every day.”
“Wait. Wasn’t that like a thing? Like a thing that they did before…”
Before what? Before me? Before me and my poor ass with my expired salads and rationed leftovers started showing up for work?
“Nope. It started the day after your hire date.”
I felt like I needed to sit down.
Okay, so Dom paid for some food. Big deal. That didn’t make up for him not trusting me.
“And then there’s the phone and laptop,” Jasmine continued.
Oh, shit.
“What about the phone and the laptop?”
“Did you ever notice other new hires weren’t getting free tech?”
Yes. “Not really.”
My neck started to flare up.
“There was no record of the purchase. So I checked with Gola, who handles some of Dominic’s personal bills. He bought them out of pocket and had IT set them up for you.”
I thought of Buddy and his wife. How they still didn’t know that Dominic Russo was their secret health insurance Santa.
“I don’t understand,” I began.
“Look, maybe I’m just a romantic at heart,” she said.
I doubted that very much.
“The guy screwed up. Big time. But numbers don’t lie. He clearly cares about you. Anyway, I’m totally coming to dance this week. See you there!”
“Yeah. See you,” I said lamely.
Something occurred to me, and I couldn’t get it to un-occur.
Almost every good thing that had happened to me since January had been at the hands of Dominic Russo. The food. The phone and laptop that I desperately needed. The job. The renovations. The closetful of couture. The freaking piano.
It was a pattern. A consistent one. Dominic recognizing a need and quietly filling it.
I was not a lucky person. I didn’t win on scratch-offs. It was more fun for me to set dollars on fire than to put them in slot machines that never paid off. And I sure as hell didn’t win grants that I didn’t k
now about.
I dug into my backpack in a frantic search. I finally found it at the bottom under a banana and last month’s issue of Label.
The letter from the foundation.
Lady George Administration Memory Care Grant.
Lady. As in Faith’s club, Ladies and Gentlemen, where he’d first touched me.
“Please, no,” I whispered.
George. George’s Pizza, where we’d first met. My stomach dropped.
Administration. The admin pool. Where I’d fallen in love with him.
No. No. No. My head didn’t want to believe it. But my heart, that stupid forgiving traitor, was fluttering with idiotic hope.
I dialed the nursing home. “Sandy in the office, please?”
I waited impatiently while the transfer went through.
“This is Sandy,” she answered brightly.
“Oh thank God. It’s Ally Morales. I have a very important question.”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Swanson. I’m happy to help.”
“Is Deena there?” I guessed.
“Absolutely. That’s confirmed.”
“I’ll keep this short. Did Dominic Russo have anything to do with the grant for my dad?”
“Uhhhh…” Sandy’s nonanswer was damning. “I don’t think I have that information currently,” she said in a voice two octaves higher than normal.
“Sandy, are you lying to me or Deena right now?”
“Sometimes both options are viable,” she said.
“Has Dominic Russo visited my father?” I asked.
“Well, with HIPAA, I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” she said lamely.
“Oh my God.” I rolled my eyes. “Call me when Deena goes for her blood of children break.”
I put my head between my knees and tried not to barf everywhere.
“You okay back there?” the driver asked nervously.
“Fine,” I lied. “Absolutely fine.”
I sat back up and grabbed the sale paperwork out of my bag. The buyer’s entity was listed front and center.