“I will get pregnant,” Lucky said. “We’ll try again. And at some point, it will work. I’ll make it happen like I make everything else happen.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lucky walked around the side of Priscilla’s Place and stood in the shadows, watching the guardhouse, and Nico inside. Just as she had at noon the day before, Sharon came out of the main house and brought Nico a plate of food. He put up his feet, took out his phone, and began to eat the sandwich and salad, his finger moving back and forth across the screen, totally focused on the virtual game of Texas Hold’em he was playing.
Lucky watched a moment longer, then turned and looked up at the window to Priscilla’s apartment. She had been observing her habits over the past two days, too: Priscilla fasted in the morning, then wandered the premises, chatting with the residents, sipping green juice. She kept a close eye on Lucky almost all the time—except at lunch, when she went upstairs to break her fast and have a session with her personal trainer, an attractive, muscle-bound woman named Dee. Lucky sensed the time ticking away until their trip to Boise, when it would inevitably be revealed that she had been lying about the storage locker. Coming here had been a mistake, and Lucky didn’t want it to turn into a fatal one. If she was going to escape, she had to take a risk. It had to be now.
Lucky backed up, turned, and walked into the yard, where Janet was eating her lunch at one of the picnic tables. “Hey,” Lucky said, sitting down beside her. “I keep meaning to tell you, I just love your baseball cap. I’m a huge Angels fan, and someone stole my cap while I was sleeping on the beach in Santa Monica. I keep looking at yours, and it reminds me of it.”
“Aw, really? No way. Well, listen, do you want to borrow it?”
“Would you be interested in a trade? You borrow mine”—Lucky removed her Fabulous Las Vegas cap—“and I borrow yours, just for today? It really would make me happy.”
“Sure. Of course. I’m glad you’re doing so well here, Jean. It was the dog, right? The way she took such a liking to you, that made you feel you could really be at home here? I’ve noticed a change in you these past few days. And Priscilla hardly leaves your side!”
“Something like that, yeah.” Lucky paused. “Hey, you know what? It’s really so kind of you to let me borrow your hat. I want to give you my sunglasses as a thank-you.”
“Give me? Oh, come on. Those are really expensive sunglasses.”
“Yeah. They’re the only thing I have of any value. But—you’ve been so kind to me. Here, take them. I insist.”
“Well, then, you take mine in return.” Janet slid her cheap mirrored aviators back at Lucky.
“Thanks,” she said, putting them on. “What do you think?”
“I think you look pretty cool,” Janet said. Then she glanced at her watch. “Oh, shoot—I’m late. I’m supposed to walk Betty today.”
“Right! I forgot to tell you. We got switched. Sharon decided last night it would be better if I walked her today, and… you’re on dish duty.”
“Ohhhhh,” Janet said, laughing. “That’s what’s with the sunglasses gift. You want to make up for the fact that you stole my cushy job and stuck me on dishes.”
“Yeah. Totally.” Lucky forced a laugh. “I’m sorry. Still friends?”
“No apologies needed. I don’t mind doing the dishes. And Betty really does love you so much. She’ll be happier with you. Enjoy your walk.” Janet reached over to the bench beside her and handed Lucky the leash.
“Thanks,” Lucky said. “See you in a bit.”
Betty was napping at the front of her doghouse, but stood when she saw Lucky coming with the leash in hand. Lucky put the baseball cap and sunglasses on, clipped the leash on Betty, and walked around to the side of the house. With her head down and Betty at her side, she passed the guardhouse. Nico was still eating his lunch and playing on his phone. He barely looked up when she passed and gave a casual two-finger wave, exactly the way Janet would have. She opened the gate. A moment later, she was out on the sidewalk; the gate clanged shut behind her, as loud as her pounding heart felt. Every part of her wanted to sprint down the sidewalk now that she was out, but she forced herself to walk slowly, allowing Betty to stop and sniff flower beds and fire hydrants until they were out of sight of Priscilla’s Place.
She started running when she was around the corner. When she got to the storage facility, she typed in the code she remembered. It didn’t work. “Shit.” She tried again. No. She had a number wrong, she knew it. But if she kept messing it up, the lock would shut down. One more try. She closed her eyes and pictured the coded list. And there it was. She had it. A satisfying beep, and she was in. She closed the door behind her and stacked the boxes she had left inside the locker so she could reach the lottery ticket she’d hidden in the smoke detector.
It was still there. When Lucky had the ticket in her hand she sagged with relief—but just for a moment. She wasn’t safe yet. She took out her wallet to put the ticket inside, and Reyes’s card fell out. She held it up and read it. Driver San Diego Third-Strikers Foundation.
“If only you had a car,” she said to Betty, picking up her leash. The dog tilted her head, quizzical. Lucky sighed. “Never mind. I’ll be right back.” She locked the door and went to the pay phone in the parking lot.
“You said I could call you if I needed help. Where are you right now?”
“I just dropped someone off in Bakersfield.”
“Okay, so you’re less than two hours away. I need help. I need a ride.”
* * *
Lucky stared out the window of Reyes’s white SUV, silent now after explaining as much as she was able. The scenery sped by. They were outside Fresno now, heading west.
“So…” Reyes finally said. “Instead of calling me for help first, you went to Priscilla?”
“I had no one else to call. As if I can trust you more than I can trust her,” Lucky muttered. “As if I can trust anyone.”
Reyes drummed her fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the song on the car stereo, then chuckled. “I’m pretty sure you can trust anyone more than you can trust Priscilla Lachaise.”
Lucky sighed and turned away from the window. “I just… I needed to know if she knew anything. About where Cary went.”
“And did she?”
“She said he might be dead.”
“I’m not sure how to feel about that.”
“Me neither,” Lucky said. She closed her eyes for a second, and she could see Cary’s familiar face. It hurt to think of him for different reasons now. “I know it probably sounds stupid to you because you always hated him, but he was my—” She couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t say aloud that the man who had betrayed her, lied to her for years, made a complete fool of her, had been the love of her life.
“I get it. You loved the guy and probably still do. Unfortunately the heart doesn’t often give a shit what the mind has to say to it,” Reyes said.
A few more miles of highway disappeared beneath the tires of the SUV before either of them spoke again.
“So, where am I dropping you off?” Reyes said.
“The bus station is coming up. I’m going to New York State.”
“You’re planning to take the dog on a bus? They don’t allow that.”
“Shit.” Lucky glanced at Betty in the back seat. She had been so happy to find her dog again. The idea of having to leave her behind simply hadn’t occurred to her.
“I’d drive you all the way to New York, but I have a job in two days and have to be in Oakland. I could take the dog, though.”
Lucky bit her lip, thinking. But she knew there was no other way for her to get to her mother’s fishing camp than by bus. “Thanks,” she finally said. “I’d appreciate it.” The bus station had come into view. “I’ll be in touch when I can come get her. I have your card. A couple of weeks, at most. And—and when I do, everything will be different.”
“Sure,” Reyes said. “I’ll keep her as long as you need me
to. As long as she doesn’t mind long car rides.”
“She’s good with anything.”
“How can I reach you, if I need to?”
Lucky shook her head. She didn’t want anyone to know where she was going, not yet.
“Don’t you think I should have a way to get in touch? What if something happens with Betty? What if your dad’s hearing goes forward? There’s been a lot of movement. These things happen fast, when they start to get going.”
“I’ll be at Devereaux Camp, near Cooperstown.”
Reyes nodded slowly. “Your dad said something once about having an ex-wife living out there. Is that your…?”
“My mom,” Lucky said. “I have something I think she might like to see. Something she can help me with. I hope.”
“I hope she can help you, too. You sure as hell need it. And I wish I could do more. Do you need money?” Lucky did, but there was no way she was asking for charity from Reyes.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Reyes pulled to a stop in the bus station parking lot. Lucky turned back and buried her face in her dog’s fur. “I’ll see you soon, I promise.” She grabbed her backpack and got out of the car. “I’ll pay you back someday,” she said after Reyes rolled down her window.
“No payback needed. Good luck to you, with whatever it is you’re hoping will happen.”
Lucky hitched her backpack over her shoulder, then stood watching as Reyes rolled up her window and drove away, leaving her on her own again.
August 2008
BOISE, IDAHO
Lucky and Cary were eating dinner on their porch, basking in the summer-evening warmth after a long day. She was pregnant. Their third attempt at implantation had worked, and she was just over a month along. It felt fragile and unreal. But she had other things on her mind.
“You okay, babe?” Cary asked as she pushed her plate away.
“I’m worried,” she admitted. “The markets are bad. More and more of my clients have started asking for their investment money back—and if too many more ask, I won’t have anything left to give. I’m afraid we’ll never really have everything we want, because I’ve stolen too much from the accounts. I’m going to have to give it all back, and then we’ll be ruined.”
“No way. We run first,” Cary said simply.
“We can’t just run…”
“Why not?”
Lucky looked away from him, resting her hands on her stomach, which was still flat. “We’re going to lose everything: our house, the restaurant. This life. I could be arrested.”
“Right. You could be. Or, we just take what we can and get out of here. We have our family to consider. I’ve been thinking about it, too, you know. Everyone is talking about the financial crisis getting worse and worse. I think you need to move some of the money to offshore accounts tonight. We need a plan to get out.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
“It is that easy. Until you get caught. So don’t get caught.”
“Where would we move the money? Where would we run?”
“Well, like I said, I’ve been thinking about it a little already…”
It turned out he had been thinking about it a lot. He put the entire plan out there: secret accounts; a Caribbean island called Dominica—which apparently had a lax extradition policy for financial criminals.
They started that night. They went up to her office together and began moving funds. Cary found them plane tickets. As the days passed, Lucky became more and more afraid. Every time someone came to the door or the phone rang, she feared it was the police, wise to their scheme already. She stopped sleeping. She worked almost all the time, often not coming in from her office above the garage until the wee hours of the morning as she made every attempt possible to cover her tracks—even though she knew in the end, the only tracks she needed to cover were the ones leading to the place they would take off to.
Late one night, sharp cramps woke her up. The sheets beneath her were warm and wet. Blood, she realized when she stood and looked down at the linen in the moonlight flowing through their bedroom window. She was alone. Cary was still at the restaurant because he had been working late, too, getting everything ready for their imminent departure, he said.
Lucky didn’t call him. She went to the bathroom, sat down on the toilet, and tried not to cry. She waited. She hoped it would stop, but it didn’t. Soon, there was no denying it. She had lost the baby. Betty stayed by her side through the worst of it, growling with worry, nudging Lucky at one point to get up off the bathroom floor when she collapsed in pain. Now she followed Lucky into the yard and watched as she buried the tissue-wrapped bundle in the garden. Lucky worried Betty might dig it up, but the dog just stood beside Lucky, looking solemnly at the little mound of fresh earth as if she understood what it was, what it represented.
This was her own fault, Lucky told herself. She had been working so hard—too hard. In the past few weeks, she had hardly been thinking about the baby at all. She wasn’t a good mother—because she had never had a mother to show her the way. There was also a part of her that thought somehow the baby knew and didn’t want to be born to a bad person like her. So she had made her escape.
She.
Lucky would never know for sure.
She went back inside. She cleaned the bathroom floor and the sheets. When Cary got home, she told him the baby was gone, but she didn’t have any tears left. She whispered it, stoic in the darkness of their bedroom—and after, in the silence, wondered what they had been working toward together all these months, these years. What all the money had even been for, why they had needed so much of it. What they had been willing to sacrifice for it.
But money and the heist, they were like addictions. Lucky knew this. There was no going back. Maybe in her new life she would become someone else.
In the morning, Cary suggested she go to a doctor, but she said no. She was up and dressed already.
“I feel fine. Soon we’ll be in Dominica. I’ll have all the time in the world to take care of myself.”
She ignored the voice in her head that whispered, What was all this for? She just kept moving forward because that was all she knew how to do.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two days later, filthy and exhausted, Lucky made it to New York State. She walked along the side of a highway toward Devereaux Camp, near Cooperstown. The Mohawk River was by her side, beyond the road and the trees, pine-needle green and flowing slow. Hovering in the distance were the Adirondack Mountains. Finally she came upon a sign, brown with yellow writing, that said WELCOME HOME TO THE DEVEREAUX CAMP. There was a flimsy barrier at the top of a dirt-and-gravel driveway lined with gawky pine trees, a few of them brown and ill-looking, one or two of them deep green and sturdy, all of them bearing PRIVATE PROPERTY: NO TRESPASSING signs nailed straight into the trunks at varying heights.
On one side of the driveway was a weathered shed, perhaps once painted red but now a streaky orange; on the other was a murky pond, then a fence, then a pasture containing three bedraggled horses and a bowlegged pony with a spiky mane. One of the horses trotted over to the fence and nickered at her.
She turned and kept walking up the drive. The camp itself came into view: two outbuildings and a few dozen mobile homes, some of them sided in white, gray, and brown, some of them with awnings and porches and small gardens crowded with ornaments. The closest one had a sign in the window that said WE DON’T CALL 911. Another one, faded blue, bore a sign that said OFFICE. Lucky’s heels sank into soft mud as she walked toward it.
“Gloria!” she heard a male voice call. She stopped walking.
“Wha’?” shouted a gruff female voice in return. Lucky followed the sound of it. Up ahead on the wide, dusty path, a woman was driving a golf cart like she was racing in the Indy 500. Lucky paused and watched as the woman hit the brakes in front of a man in a plaid shirt, open to reveal a potbelly so taut it looked painful. Gravel and dust flew up, dirty and devilish, enveloping the man entirely before
settling back down.
“Toilet’s clogged in the bathhouse again, Gloria,” he said. Lucky stood, drinking in her first glimpse of her mother.
“And you can’t take care of it because…?”
“Because it’s your job. I don’t do plumbing.”
“That’s convenient. Apparently, nothing ’round here is your job, Gus. I should fire you.”
“You’re always threatenin’. Why don’t you just go ahead and damn well do it?”
“Fine, then. You’re fired. Get the hell outta here.”
Gloria hopped out of the golf cart and stood staring him down. She was taller than him, big boned, with messy, dun-colored hair. Finally he turned, walked to the river, and got into a tin fishing boat. After a few fruitless tries with the pull cord, he started the engine and chugged off into the afternoon. Lucky waited a few beats, then began to walk toward the woman.
Gloria spotted her. “Help you?” she said, without much interest. Lucky opened and closed her mouth but her words had turned to dust.
Looking into Gloria’s flat brown eyes, at her sallow skin, small nose, and thin lips that bore no resemblance to any of Lucky’s features, Lucky began to feel there had to have been some kind of mistake. But what had she expected, for her mother to be an older replica of herself, for there to be something profound in this moment?
Yes. She had expected that.
“Gloria Devereaux?”
“Maybe. Who’s asking?” She was peering at Lucky with narrowed eyes.
“I heard in town that you were hiring.”
“Who’d ya hear that from?” Gloria put a hand on her hip.
“In the diner,” Lucky improvised. “I heard someone say to someone else that Gloria from Devereaux’s was always threatening to fire Gus, and that one day she finally would. And I had just arrived in town and I thought to myself, well, maybe today is that day. And it is.”
Lucky Page 16