“Cool. We have similar names.”
Lucky didn’t respond.
“It gets easier, I swear. This is a safe place.”
“Thanks.” Lucky forced herself to eat a tomato from her salad. She spooned a little soup into her mouth. Janet looked satisfied with this. Then the conversations in the room paused for a moment, as if a vacuum had been turned on. She raised her eyes and saw Priscilla entering. Her dark hair was shorter now, not swept back severely the way she had worn it years before but feathered around her face. She had on jeans and a cable-knit and homey-looking sweater. She turned in a slow circle, smiling at everyone in the room, meeting their eyes, nodding encouragingly at the shy ones. You are Jean Fantine. She doesn’t know you. You have to believe that. A dog barked outside in the yard.
Lucky realized she was gripping her spoon so tight her knuckles were white.
“You okay?” Janet asked.
Lucky put down the spoon. “Sure. Totally fine.”
“I see a few new faces,” Priscilla said, addressing the diners. “Welcome to Priscilla’s Place. As some of you know, this is a safe haven for women experiencing homelessness in Fresno and the surrounding areas. Every woman here is treated with kindness and respect. And, of course, we ask that you do the same with each other. Understand, this is a family.” Priscilla continued to speak, walking slowly among the tables. “The theme of tonight’s talk is dignity,” she was saying. “And what it means to you.”
“She does a speech every night?” Lucky whispered to Janet.
“Not really a speech. More like… a sermon?”
“A sermon? Seriously?”
“She’s great,” Janet said. “Just listen.”
“The dictionary definition of the word ‘dignity,’ ” Priscilla was saying, “is ‘the quality or state of deserving honor and respect.’ I make no secret of the fact that I wasn’t always the kind of person who deserved any honor at all, let alone respect—do I, ladies?” Some laughs and murmurs.
You can say that again, Lucky thought.
Janet leaned forward and whispered, “Did you see the documentary about her transformation?”
Lucky shook her head, gritting her teeth.
Priscilla continued, “There’s a second part to the meaning of ‘dignity.’ It’s about taking pride in yourself, respecting yourself. And that’s a hard thing to do when you don’t have a means to provide yourself with even the most basic of necessities. Shelter, especially. Food, of course. But, ladies, there is no shame in that, okay?” Her voice was rising, evangelist-style. “I’m here to tell you there is no shame in asking for help.” She was standing near Lucky’s table now, and Lucky could smell her perfume, the same scent she remembered from years gone by: Poison.
“She’s so fantastic,” Janet whispered. “Truly an incredible person.”
“Yeah,” Lucky whispered back, thinking about the dictionary definition of incredible: “difficult to believe.”
After a bit more fire and brimstone, Priscilla’s sermon was over. She then moved from table to table, chatting with everyone.
“I’m really tired,” Lucky said to Janet. “Think I’m just going to turn in early.” She smiled, apologetic, and stood.
“You’ll miss meeting Priscilla,” Janet said.
“Not tonight,” Lucky said. “I’m just… not up for it.” Lucky bused her plate and headed for the back door. She could hear the front door of the house opening and Sharon crooning, to Priscilla’s dog, she presumed. Just before she made it outside, someone touched her arm.
“We haven’t formally met yet. Do you have to rush off, or could you come up to my apartment for a cup of tea?”
Lucky turned and forced herself to meet Priscilla’s penetrating gaze, her deep-brown eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Well, of course, that would be—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence. A large bundle of brown and white fur streaked into the room, Sharon following close behind, shouting. The dog jumped up on Lucky, barking joyfully and wagging her tail.
“Down, girl,” Lucky said, and the dog obeyed. Of course she did. She was Lucky’s dog.
September 1999
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
In late September, Lucky returned from school to Priscilla’s mansion—a place she was having trouble considering home—to find Cary waiting in the entryway, holding a short electric-blue cocktail dress on a hanger. The place was immaculate, the pool cleaned and glimmering, the backyard pergola strung with fairy lights. There were buckets of champagne on the countertops.
“They’re coming over. We’re having a party. For your birthday. You need to go change.”
“But it’s not my—”
He planted a kiss on her lips and took her book bag from her arms, dropping it to the floor. “Yes, it is. You’re turning nineteen. In Canada, where I’m from, remember—my name is Jonas Weston, and you’re still Alaina, but Parkes—you’d be of legal drinking age. And you’re a real party girl.” He shook the dress. “So, we’re celebrating with my new friends from school. You’re going to love them.” He laughed. “Okay, fine, you’re going to barely tolerate them, the way I do. They’re okay—a little boring and repetitive, but extremely generous and incredibly careless. And that’s important for us.”
“Remind me of the rest of the details?” This game was familiar to Lucky, but she still felt nervous.
“I’m a softwood lumber heir, but I’ve had a tiff with my parents. They don’t like that I’ve taken off to Cali to go to school for something other than business—I’m taking liberal arts, of course—and live with my girlfriend. Your parents are dead. Plane crash.” He cleared his throat and looked away, fiddling with a champagne bottle. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I know I’ve used that one on you. But it’s a good one.”
Betty came running into the kitchen and jumped up on Lucky, barking her greeting, wagging her tail. She was no longer the scrawny, malnourished pup Cary had presented her with on the dock: her glossy brown coat was now shot through with white hairs, which made her fur look reddish. She was growing fast, turning lithe, wolflike. She was a good-natured dog for the most part, but was protective of Lucky—even barking and snarling at Cary on the rare occasions when they argued. Now she had a blue bow tied to her collar. It matched Lucky’s dress, and Betty’s eyes.
“Come on, go put the dress on,” Cary said. “This is going to be fun.”
Upstairs, Lucky changed and put her hair up—but it was already falling down her back by the time she descended the stairs. Their first guests had arrived: Aaron and Magnolia, a couple who double-air-kissed as they came through the door, followed by two more guests, Hugh and Will. Will had a box of cigars in hand. “For later, my friend,” he said to Cary with a wink—while Lucky marveled at how quickly her boyfriend had managed to insinuate himself into an inner circle. “Unless your lady likes to partake.”
Lucky smiled. “Cigars aren’t my thing. Champagne, however—” There was a bottle waiting on the side table. She grabbed it and popped it open, grateful Cary had shown her how a few days before. She had never opened champagne, had never pretended to be the kind of person she was pretending to be now.
“I like her,” Hugh said as they trooped into the kitchen.
“She’s the best,” Cary said, putting his hand on the small of her back and propelling her forward, kissing her ear, and whispering, “Good job.”
“Ah, the famous Alaina,” Magnolia cooed. “Jonas talks about you endlessly. Says you’re a genius.” She had raven-black hair and bright blue eyes, and was wearing a butter-hued silk dress that draped effortlessly over her perfect body. Lucky’s hair was too frizzy and her dress felt cheap—even though she had left the tags on, afraid to take them off because of the price; now they were scratching at her side—but, “You are absolutely gorgeous,” Magnolia said, grabbing her hand once they each had a glass of champagne. “Come on, show me the pool. And is this your dog? Adorable. She must be a shepsky, right? I have a cousin wh
o breeds those on a farm in the Black Forest.”
“Exactly. We got her directly from a breeder in Germany.”
Later, by the pool, when everyone was gone and the sun was peeking over the horizon, Cary was jubilant rather than tired. “You did it, babe. You were the perfect sidekick. They thought you were a blast. You’re so good at this. Didn’t you have fun?”
She leaned her head into his chest so she wouldn’t have to look at him. He had always said they could lie to other people, but never to each other. Still, she said, “Yes, it was a great time.”
“That could be us, you know. It’s going to be us. One day, we won’t be pretending.”
* * *
Lucky’s first year of college drew to a close, and they flew to Madrid to spend the summer with Magnolia and Aaron; Aaron’s parents had a house there.
At dinner the first night, in a yard lined with olive trees and hung with lanterns, Cary planted the first seed with their friends: the mansion they lived in was going to be repossessed (this was true, actually) because Alaina’s parents had had some bad debts before they died. It was easy. By summer’s end, Cary and Lucky had a new place to live: a coach house on Hugh’s family’s property in Alamo. They promised to pay rent—Cary even went as far as to write checks Lucky knew would bounce, but they were never cashed, always ripped up or tossed aside.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll find out?” Lucky whispered to him one night in bed.
“Find out what?”
“Who we really are.”
“Isn’t this who we really are?”
Lucky found she didn’t know anymore. She pretended to be one person at school—and she had to be careful never to get too close to anyone, no matter how much she longed for real friends, and no matter how often she was asked to meet for drinks or join others to study. She was someone else with Cary’s Stanford crowd, and someone else still once a month when she went to visit her father at San Quentin, where he had been sentenced to twenty-five years. Cary didn’t know she went to the prison at all, didn’t know about the fake ID she had bought with money stolen out of their safe so she could pretend to be Sarah Armstrong, John’s niece, and still see her dad.
“You want this—don’t you, Lucky? To leave who we were behind and become great?”
“Of course I do,” she said. But she actually wanted to ask him what he meant by great—if great meant rich at any cost; if great meant morally bankrupt. But she didn’t, because she had her own plan. She needed to stay the course, that was all. He would understand eventually that there was a better way to build a life, one that didn’t involve cheating and lying.
Time passed, and Cary pretended to drop out of school. He told their friends that he had to because they could only afford one tuition. “And Alaina is the genius, so of course it has to be her school we pay for.”
Their rich friends offered loans so he could keep going to college, but he refused, said he didn’t want handouts. He wanted to work for any money he received. And school wasn’t his thing, anyway. What Jonas, Cary’s alter ego, really wanted was to open a club.
“Dude, you throw the best parties. Doesn’t Jonas throw the best parties?” Aaron said. They were at Hugh’s; it was his birthday, and Cary had organized the whole thing: a Matrix-themed rave. Everyone was dressed in black leather and sunglasses; techno was blaring; the caterers had made “really good noodles” and “chicken tastes like everything” kebabs; there was a laser tag zone inside the house. “Guys, we have to make this happen,” Aaron said. “Jonas wants to open a club. We need financial backers!”
All their friends invested in the venture, which Cary said had to be taken slowly. First, he had to find the perfect location—which took ages, and got Lucky to the start of her final year of school. Then “Jonas” had to travel the globe looking for the right furniture, had to visit vineyards and distilleries all around Europe. Soon, everyone in San Francisco was talking about Jonas Weston’s new club—he’d decided to name it Lucky. But Cary was using hardly any of the investment money for the actual club, instead using some to pay for Lucky’s tuition and squirrelling the rest of it away.
“What do they care who I really am?” Cary said when Lucky continued to voice her fears. “They’re having the time of their lives. And the worst thing that’s going to happen? We’re going to disappear the day after you graduate, and there will be no club. They’ll realize they’ve been duped, and they’ll get over it in about five minutes. What they’re investing in this is chump change, not even enough for their parents to notice. This is just fun for them. You need to have some fun with it, too.”
* * *
The night Lucky graduated from SFU, in June 2003, Cary was sitting in the front row, holding a massive bouquet of red roses. There was an empty seat beside him at the beginning of the ceremony, but when Lucky moved across the stage to collect her diploma, Priscilla was sitting in it. Lucky faltered halfway but forced herself to keep moving.
“What is she doing here?” she hissed after the ceremony. Priscilla was off getting them drinks.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Cary said, and he really did appear to be agitated. “I was so distracted by everything we’ve been doing, I stopped keeping track of her—but she’s out of prison and she just showed up at our house—and you were already gone, getting your cap and gown. I don’t know how she figured out where we were living.”
“Who did you tell Hugh she was?”
“No one was home. They’re all at the Stanford graduation. I didn’t have to tell anyone anything. But she told me a lot.”
“Like what?”
“Shhh. Here she comes.”
Priscilla handed around plastic cups of cheap sparkling wine. “Oh, please. Don’t shush each other, there’s nothing you can say I don’t already know. To answer the question you probably just asked about how I found you so fast, I had associates keeping an eye on you two while I was in prison. I’m impressed. One phone call, though, and I could blow your con to bits, tell all your friends you’ve been stealing from them before you get the chance to take off later tonight. Why did you wait, by the way?”
“Lucky wanted to get her diploma,” Cary said. “We weren’t going to be able to leave a forwarding address for it.”
“I suppose not. Well, anyway. Congratulations.” She tapped her plastic glass against Lucky’s. “You’ve done it. A business degree.”
Priscilla made it sound so small, this thing Lucky had been working toward for four years. But, she told herself, this piece of paper she now held in her hands was hers. It was her path to legitimacy—and Cary’s, too. He’d had some fun, but it was risky—and it was fake. With her, Cary was going to build a life that was actually sustainable. Alaina Cadence had no prior record with anyone. And she had a degree.
Priscilla drained her glass. “I’m here as a stand-in for your father,” she said to Lucky. “I promised him I’d share a toast. And he wanted me to give you a hug, although I doubt you’d allow that.”
“Why is my father even speaking to you?”
“I’m a rehabilitated woman. And part of my penance is apologizing to the people I’ve hurt. I’m trying to make it up to your father—and the only thing he wants is to know that you’re happy. Are you happy, Lucky?”
Lucky had been, about an hour earlier. She had been full of excitement about what the future held, but Priscilla’s presence was like a pin in her balloon.
Cary pulled her close. “Of course she’s happy,” he said. “We both are.”
Priscilla tossed her plastic cup in a nearby trash can. “Let’s go somewhere we can get a decent drink, at least. And have a proper talk.”
Cary sighed. “Don’t drag Lucky into this, Mother.”
“ ‘Mother.’ Now, that’s a first.” But she was smiling.
He turned to Lucky. “You just head home and keep packing. I’ll have a drink and a talk with Mother here, and be there in a few hours.” As he kissed her cheek, he whispered in her ear, “I’ll pic
k up the rental car on my way home. We’ll leave as soon as I get back.”
Lucky took a taxi to the coach house, packed, and waited nervously for Cary to return. Betty was at her feet, watching the door anxiously, too. He didn’t pick up his cell phone when she called—and when he did finally return, around two o’clock in the morning, he was drunk, and Lucky was upset.
“Where’s the car?” Lucky asked him. “Aren’t we going?”
“Do I look like I’m in any state to drive?” He stumbled, landed on the love seat. “We can’t leave, okay? We have to stay around for the summer. I have to actually open that fucking club. Mother says so. There are some things I need to take care of for her, or—” It was dark, but she could see it in his eyes: fear. Then he closed them, leaned his head back against the cushions. “I have no choice. I’m sorry.” Soon, he was asleep. Lucky sat staring into the darkness, until Betty nudged her with her snout, reminding her she wasn’t alone.
* * *
It was Christmas Eve, and the club was empty except for Lucky and Cary. Lucky sat on a corner couch, wearing one of the short, tight dresses Cary had bought her so she would fit the role she was supposed to play while beside him at the club. She was helping him count the night’s cash.
“A great night,” he said, locking the cashbox and putting it in a bag. “And not just because we made some good money. It’s time for your Christmas present.” He pulled a card from behind his back.
“But Christmas isn’t until tomorrow,” Lucky said. “My gift for you is back at the house.”
“We’re not going back to the house,” he said, smiling. “Open it.”
She did. There was a folded piece of paper inside. “A title deed,” she said. “For a house… in Boise, Idaho?”
Cary pointed at the page. “That’s your name, right there. Alaina Cadence. The house belongs to you.”
“Well—” she began.
“No, that’s you. All your official papers are under that name. You’ve got a passport and a birth certificate, a business degree, and now, a deed. You always said you wanted a simple, normal life. And Boise, Idaho—that’s the place! Our future starts tonight.”
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