“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 who 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.