“Sure. It is. We need some fun. Blaze of glory, right?”
She opened a bag of pretzels and tilted it toward him. They were just a regular couple on a road trip, nothing to fear. “What will it be like, in Dominica, do you think? What kind of house will we live in?” It had been like a game, back when they had first met, to dream of the life they were going to build, construct a future in their minds. They hadn’t had much time to dream about this next incarnation of their lives, given that they were leaving in such a rush. “Oceanfront, obviously—but, what do you think, pool or no pool?”
“Mmm?” Cary reached into the bag and grabbed a handful of pretzels, then glanced in the rearview mirror again.
“No pool,” Lucky decided. “Who needs it when you have the ocean, right? And we’ll get a dog—a rescue, like Betty was, and go for long walks with her on the beach every day.” The words dried up as soon as she mentioned Betty. The LOST DOG signs were still posted on poles around their neighborhood in Boise. The loss of Betty was yet another ache inside her empty body.
“Do you think someone found her?” Lucky said. “Someone good?”
Cary glanced at her now, before turning his attention back to the highway.
“Found who?”
“Betty.” There was a lump in her throat.
“Sure. Bet she’s being well taken care of right now. Don’t you worry about her. Betty will land on her feet.” Cary took one hand off the steering wheel and reached for Lucky’s. “I know it’s hard. But everything is going to be fine.” His hand was clammy. He was scared, she could tell.
The truth? So was she.
September 1992
THE ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK
Lucky worked with her father, and this meant she’d been traveling around the country for as long as she could remember. She was only ten—going on thirty, her dad would say. She’d seen a lot of the world. She knew things.
For example, Lucky already knew that money didn’t just come to you; you had to chase it. Which was often exhausting. “Some people have to hustle harder than others,” her father would say. “You come by your name honestly, though. You’re luckier than most when it comes to money. But you still have to hone that luck. Make sure it never leaves your side. That’s going to be a hard job.”
For the first time, they were going to have an honest-to-goodness vacation, though. They’d recently had a run of good luck, and her father was feeling flush. He was taking her to a fancy hotel in the Adirondacks. “No work for a whole week. Just reading, relaxing, swimming, doing whatever you want.”
Lucky pressed her face to the car window, then touched the gold crucifix she always wore around her neck. It had been hers since she was a baby, a gift from her long-lost mother, one of the few possessions she carried with her when they traveled, the only thing she had that was really hers.
Lucky was in the back seat, surrounded by books that had been “borrowed” from the library in the town before last. Stealing library books made Lucky feel guiltier than almost anything else, but her dad would say it was the government that paid for those books—and that the government owed them. Besides, they needed the books because she was homeschooled—“road schooled,” he called it.
They sped past a sign that said WELCOME TO NEW YORK, THE EMPIRE STATE. “Hey, isn’t this where I was born? Around here somewhere?”
“You were born in New York City,” her father said. “Not out here in the mountains.”
“But isn’t this where my mother is from, though? Around here somewhere? Didn’t you say that? That Gloria Devereaux was from here?”
“Did I?”
Lucky put aside the book she had been reading, The Elegant Universe. She didn’t know that other ten-year-olds were reading Goosebumps stories, not books about string theory. She didn’t know any other ten-year-olds. “Yes. You did. You came home one night from a poker game and I asked you where Gloria was from, and you said ‘Adirondacks.’?”
“You shouldn’t ask me questions when I’ve been drinking too much, which I probably was after that poker game. Say, what’s in that book you’re reading?”
“Tell me a story about my mother,” Lucky pressed. “Tell me about Gloria.”
“I need to focus on the road.” This was a lie; her father could drive on a freeway blindfolded.
“Come on,” Lucky said. “Just tell me one tiny thing.”
“I came home one night from buying you formula, and, poof, she was gone” was all her father had ever said about her mother’s departure. He made it sound final, like Lucky’s mother had completely disappeared—but she had to exist somewhere out there, didn’t she?
When Lucky got like this, when she prodded for more information, her father’s reaction was almost never good. Sometimes he got mad and told her to stop poking at old wounds. Sometimes he said it was cruel of her to bring up things that made him feel so sad. But every once in a while he’d relent and throw her a crumb.
“Why was this necklace so special to her? Why did she leave it behind for me to have? If she didn’t want anything to do with me, why did she leave anything behind for me at all?”
Lucky thought he might not answer. But then, “She attended St. Monica’s Parish,” her father allowed. “That necklace was a gift from a nun who lived there.”
“Parish?” Lucky repeated.
“Yeah, like a church.”
Lucky had never been inside a church. “What happens?” she asked. “At church?”
More silence. Then, “There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be a good person. About what God might do to you if you’re bad. Where he might send you. About hell.”