Lucky

by Marissa Stapley

“I wouldn’t go that far. She’s changed. She’s rehabilitated. Jail either makes you worse or it makes you better. Now she’s running a women’s shelter in Fresno—”

  “She was barely in four years—”

  “Plus, she’d be interested in knowing where her precious Cary got off to, don’t you think?”

  “I have no idea where he is.”

  “But you can make her think you do.”

  “One minute!” called the guard.

  “What if I call Priscilla tomorrow, let her know to expect you?”

  “Please, don’t do that. And don’t tell anyone about this ticket. Promise me that. This has to be mine alone.”

  “Come on, old man.” A guard was at their table now. Her father flinched at the sight of him.

  “Okay,” she said, pushing her chair back. But her father was leaning forward, gripping her arm.

  “Reyes told you he was no good,” he whispered. “You think I didn’t know who he really was and that you had something going with him, but I did. I should have made you stay away from him.”

  She stepped back.

  “Uncle John,” she said, keeping her tone even, trying to keep smiling, “he’s exactly like you.”

  Her father’s smile faded. “I would never abandon someone the way he’s done to you.”

  “Now!” The guard snarled. He had a grip on her father’s forearm.

  “All right, all right, no need to get testy. Not so tight. I’ll go, I’ll go.” He looked at her again. “See you later, kiddo,” he said, as if nothing had just happened, as if they were just a regular uncle and niece, bidding each other farewell until next time.

  December 1993

  BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON

  The split-level ranch house was lit up inside and out. Darla hosted a Christmas Eve open house every year and neighbors had been in and out all afternoon and evening. Blossom had a red bow on in place of a collar, and as the party wound down the girls took her upstairs to the bedroom they shared, where they had been instructed to change into their Christmas pajamas, get in bed, and read their new books. New pajamas and a new book were a household tradition on Christmas Eve in the Dixon house, apparently. Lucky hadn’t known what to say when Darla asked her what types of books she liked. The last book she’d read was Les Misérables; she’d left it behind in Novi without ever finding out what had become of the wretched Jean Valjean and the tragic Fantine. But she knew Darla would think it strange for a girl her age to ask for that book. So she asked for the latest Goosebumps story. Stephanie had asked for a V. C. Andrews novel, and squealed as she read, vowing to lend it to “Andi” after she was finished.

  Eventually, Steph put her book down. “I can’t concentrate,” she announced. “I’m too excited.” She scratched her dog’s ears. “Blossom, if you hear Santa’s reindeer tonight, you have to bark real loud and wake me up, okay?” Even though she was a year older than Lucky, Steph still believed in Santa Claus, and fervently. Lucky didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no such thing. Her father had never bothered to hide the truth from her, and he’d mentioned in an aside to her the other day that he had been tasked by Darla with finding hiding places for all the “Santa gifts.” He’d also casually suggested that Lucky ask for jewelry, and perhaps gold. “Maybe a locket or something. Something we could have melted down when we—”

  He’d seen her face and stopped talking. “You never think about anything but money,” Lucky had said. This was the first time in her life she’d really felt how magical Christmas could be, and he was ruining it.

  “You don’t understand what it takes to survive,” he replied.

  “We’re surviving fine. We can just stay here and we don’t have to steal anything—”

  Darla arrived home then, arms laden with shopping bags, and the conversation ended.

  “Hellooo,” Steph was saying now. “Zone out much?”

  “Sorry. I’m really excited, too. So excited I can’t think about anything else.”

  “You’re going to love Christmas here. Family tradition is a pile of presents for each person, like a huge pile.” Steph’s eyes were dancing with anticipation. “But first you have to open your stocking.” She pursed her lips. “I have something for you that’s really special. I don’t want it to get lost in all the chaos.” She leaped from her bed and started rummaging in her closet until she unearthed a very small box, which she handed to Lucky.

  “What’s this?” Lucky asked, staring down at it. She’d gotten Stephanie something, too, a peasant top she had admired at a store at the mall. But looking down at this small box, she realized there was something special inside. Something more special than a peasant top.

  “You shouldn’t have,” she began, just as Steph said, “I bought it with my chore money.” Now Lucky felt even more ashamed. Steph’s mom had paid for the top. Lucky had used her chore money to buy a sterling silver tie clip for her dad. She had wanted this Christmas to be as special for him as she could make it, hoping that seeing how they could live, how happy they could all be, would make him want to stay beyond the year he had promised her—which was rapidly running out. Three more months.

  Stephanie came over to sit on Lucky’s bed, and the Goosebumps book thumped to the floor.

  “Girls!” Darla called from downstairs. “Almost time for lights-out!”

  “Just a few more minutes, Mom,” Steph called back, then turned to Lucky again. “Come on, open it.”

  “All right, all right!” Lucky said. She carefully parted the tape from the paper without ripping it at all.

  It was a pale blue jewelry box. She flipped it open. Nestled inside was a golden charm bracelet. There were two charms: one was a heart with the word Sisters engraved on it, and the other was in the shape of a dog that looked just like Blossom. “I thought the gold would match the necklace from your mom,” Steph said. “I’m going to add one on your birthday, and one again next Christmas. Forever, for the rest of your life, I’ll get you charms.”

  Lucky started to cry. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t accept this.”

  Steph was aghast. “Don’t you like it? I’m sorry, I thought—”

  “No, no. It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that—it’s too much. Nothing is right about any of this.” She swallowed back a gasping sob. Any day now, Steph and her mom would find out about all the lies she and her father had told. Any day now, it would all fall apart.

  Lucky put the bracelet back in the box and squeezed her eyes shut. A fat tear rolled out and down her cheek.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so sad,” Steph said. “Does it… does it make you think of your mom, is that why?”

  Lucky opened her eyes. Steph had given her an answer. She wiped her cheeks. “Yes,” she lied. “I don’t want to wear any jewelry other than my necklace. It feels disloyal, somehow…” Lucky covered her face with her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said through her fingers. “I really, really am.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  There was a noise at the door and the girls looked up. Darla and John were standing in the doorframe.

  “Everything okay in here, girls?” Darla asked. Lucky wiped her tears away with her fists. She took a deep breath.

  “Can I talk to my dad?” Lucky said. “Privately?”

  * * *

  In the old Buick later, Lucky could still see her breath. There hadn’t been time to wait for the car to warm up, of course. After Steph had finally fallen asleep, Lucky had gathered a few things, whatever clothes and books she could find in the dark, and shoved them in her school bag. She had taken the bracelet and charms, knowing her father would scold her later if she didn’t.

  “You could take a few,” her father had whispered as they had tiptoed through the living room, Blossom on their heels, her tail wagging. Lucky had ignored the suggestion, bypassed all the presents, and carefully opened the front door while her father held the dog, one of the many things she was going to have to forget about this place.r />
  Perhaps Steph thought the sounds of them leaving the house were the sounds of Santa and his reindeer, or perhaps she just slept right through it. It didn’t matter now. They were on the highway, miles away. They were never going to see Steph or Darla again.

  Lucky exhaled in a big white puff as her father sped up on the empty road; no one was out on Christmas Eve; everyone who was coming home for the holidays had already arrived. It was only people like them who would be out on a night like this. The drifters. The rolling stones.

  “Anything I can do to make it feel better, kiddo? It’s Christmas, after all.”

  “No,” Lucky said.

  “This is for the best,” her father eventually said, after the miles between them and Bellevue had increased even more. He took one hand off the steering wheel and placed it on top of hers. “We won’t involve people anymore. It’s too easy to get hurt—both us and them—when you’ve got to worry about people and their feelings.”

  “What if we just don’t do this at all anymore? What if we just moved somewhere, and settled down, and you got a job, like other dads do? And I went to school. You always told me I was smart. I could go to school, and then high school, and then a really good college. I could get a job and take care of you. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  He turned on the radio, but it was Christmas carols so he turned it off. “I know you wish you were like other kids, but what you maybe don’t realize is that what you’re really wishing is for me to be like other dads,” he said. “And I’m not. I don’t know any life but this one. I don’t know how I’d go about changing that. What sort of job could I even get?”

  “You could do anything you put your mind to. I’ve seen you.”

  But he went silent again, and they were getting close to the border between Washington and Oregon when she realized the conversation was over.

  “Get out the map, Lucky. Atta girl. Let’s figure out our next stop.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lucky stared out the window of the bus, sifting slowly in her mind through bad option after bad option. When she arrived at the bus station in San Francisco, she was still undecided. She looked at the schedule, considered buying a ticket to Fresno—but she wasn’t ready to see Priscilla yet, if ever.

  Only, what if Priscilla knew where Cary was? Did that matter to her? Lucky pushed the thought aside. She had to keep moving forward, beyond the heartache of being abandoned by Cary, beyond all the other things that had hurt her in her past.

  But names she had tried to suppress for years still came to mind as she stared down at the bus schedule in her hand. Darla. Steph. She had tried so hard not to think of them, ever, after she and her father had driven away from their house. How could her father think any good could come from contacting them now? Hadn’t they hurt them enough?

  She kept poring over the bus schedule, moving her finger over the destinations, rejecting them all. Finally, she just closed her eyes and pointed. She opened her eyes. Baker City, Oregon, it was.

  * * *

  Before boarding, she picked up a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle. There was only one article of interest:

  YOUNG BONNIE AND CLYDE COUPLE WHO FLED BOISE STILL ON LAM

  An Idaho Supreme Court judge has issued a warrant for the arrests of Alaina Cadence, 26, and David Ferguson, 30, in connection with investment fraud and money-laundering charges.

  The FBI is also now involved, with an investigation launched into the couple’s alleged connections to organized crime and racketeering. District attorneys’ offices in several states, including New York and California, are joining the investigation…

  Lucky stared at the black-and-white words until they blurred. She could still hear Cary’s voice from that day at the gas station, cutting, dismissive, telling her how funny he found it that she was always trying to redeem herself—when meanwhile, only he had known she was beyond redemption. I’m not trying to redeem myself. I’m trying to help people who need help, Lucky had said that day, what felt like a lifetime ago. Was that it, though? Did she truly, in her heart, want to help people? She had a strange way of showing it, if so.

  She flipped through the paper again. There was also a small article about the lottery ticket. MASSIVE MULTI MILLIONS LOTTERY TICKET WINNINGS STILL UNCLAIMED, read the headline. The winner still has several months to collect the winnings before they will be returned to the lottery pot…

  Lucky put the paper away and took the lottery ticket out of her wallet, slowly, carefully. It was frayed at the edges, ripped on one side, and she knew she needed to find a place to keep it where it wouldn’t get so beaten up—but that was a hard thing to do when you were constantly on the move.

  Three hundred and ninety million dollars.

  She allowed herself to consider claiming the money. She rummaged in her backpack and took out a pad of paper and a pen, both pilfered from Jeremy’s room at the Bellagio. She could start by repaying the people she and Cary had stolen money from in Idaho. She began to make a list. There were twenty clients, and she owed a few million between them. She would find a way to secretly pay it back, if she ever got that lottery money. She would make it right.

  She tapped the pen against the page.

  Steph. Darla, she wrote. She would find them again. Someday, somehow, she would pay them back for all the lies she and her father had told.

  She paused, then wrote, Gloria.

  Her mother wasn’t one of the people she owed money to—but she owed it to herself to find her. And she was determined to. Not today, but someday she would.

  When she was finally the kind of person any mother would love.

  * * *

  Lucky decided to get off the bus before it reached Baker City, in a tiny town called Little Spring that wasn’t much more than a general store, two churches, a smattering of houses, and a motel and truck-stop diner, joined together, in the midst of a bunch of trees with a view of mountains in the distance.

  She headed to the diner, noting the HELP WANTED sign in the window as she walked in, her body stiff from sitting in one position on the bus for so long. In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and brushed her teeth. She attempted to fix her hair, then looked away from her tired reflection. She would decide who she was later on. She checked on the lottery ticket, which was now in an envelope in the front pocket of her jeans.

  She ordered the breakfast special, and nursed her coffee long after she was finished eating. The owners of the diner were an elderly couple named Benson and Arlene; Lucky knew this because everyone who walked in the restaurant called them by their names. Lucky seemed to be the only stranger in there that day. Even the truckers who passed through were on a first-name basis with the friendly proprietors.

  The breakfast rush ended. Benson and Arlene stopped refilling her coffee and were shooting her anxious glances. She stared down at the table until a story came to her. She approached the counter with her head lowered. It wasn’t hard for her to pretend to be nervous, out of place, a little scared. She was all these things. “I’m Ruby,” she said. “Ruby Cullen. I saw the sign. In the window?”

  “That sign’s been up for years,” Benson replied. “We’re getting too old to do all the work ourselves. But no one has ever applied. Not enough people in this town.”

  “I’m backpacking across the country, and I’ve run out of money. I’ve got lots of restaurant experience.” It spilled out easily; not all of it was a lie. “I have references… although they’re all in California.”

  “Wouldn’t waste money calling anyone long distance,” the old man said, looking deep into her eyes while Lucky worried he might suddenly realize he’d seen that green before, the exact green of a spearmint-leaf candy, an unusual eye color. But his expression didn’t change. If anything, it grew warmer. “Well, now, why don’t you just have a go at it and we’ll see how you do during lunch?” He smiled reassuringly and she smiled back. She donned the yellowed apron he handed her, rolled up her sleeves, and got to work.

&n
bsp; * * *

  The lunch rush turned out to consist of only twenty customers over the course of two hours. Still, Lucky had to work hard to keep up. It had been a while since she’d worked in a restaurant, and she’d never waited tables before. But she quickly got into a rhythm and started to have fun. She would stand at a table and size up her customers, make a game of guessing what they were going to order. She was right almost every time. “Ain’t you gonna write that down?” one trucker asked her after reciting a particularly complicated order.

  “I have a good memory,” Lucky said. She took two more orders before crossing the room and calling them out to Benson, each one word perfect.

  “You really are a pro,” he said. “Why don’t you try the dinner hour next?”

  During the frequent lulls, the elderly couple asked her questions about herself. “So, what made you decide to go—how did ya put it—backpacking around the country?”

  “I was married. But he turned out to be a real asshole. Oops, pardon my language, Arlene. He wasn’t a good man. I needed to get away.” Lucky paused here and let those words hang in the air, but had to look away from their trusting faces, how aghast they were at the idea of her facing the abuse she was hinting at, at the idea of her running away because she was scared, maybe. If she was trying to be a better person, she was off to a questionable start. “I had the idea I’d go for a long hike, I guess. Try to clear my head.”

  “A young woman like you should not be going off hiking or hitchhiking alone. It isn’t safe,” said Benson.

  Arlene was frowning, too. “You’d best not be doing that anymore, hitchhiking, at least. You’ll stay here for a while, all right? Stay here, work a bit, and have a think about deciding on a proper destination, rather than wandering around. There must be a family member or a friend you could go visit. Someone who would notice if you didn’t show up.”