Lucky(2)

She bolted the door behind her and returned to her monastic cell, where she prayed for the baby and the man, prayed that they would be blessed, that they would be lucky.





CHAPTER ONE


Luciana Armstrong stood in the bathroom of a gas station in Idaho, close to the Nevada border. She was wearing a white blouse, navy blazer, matching skirt, and low heels. Her hair was tied back in a neat bun. “Goodbye, Alaina,” she said to her reflection—and tried to ignore the sadness. She had been sure Alaina was going to stick around.

She took off her clothes and shoved them in her handbag. Then she pulled out a minidress and a pair of stilettos. She snaked the dress over her body, smoothed down the gold-beaded material, felt a twinge of sadness as her hands passed over her flat stomach, shook out her hair. A stranger was reflected back at her now.

“Hello, Lucky,” she said.

In the gas station convenience store, she roamed the aisles. A man buying cigarettes whistled at her as she tried to decide between cheese puffs or pretzels. She grabbed both and approached the register, skimming the newspaper headlines as she waited: DAY OF RECKONING ON WALL STREET; ANALYSTS PREDICT 2008 MARKET CRASH WILL BE WORST OF ALL TIME. Then a cardboard stand on the counter caught her attention: MULTI MILLIONS LOTTERY, it said. Reading it, she was ten years old again, hurtling down the I-90 to who-knows-where-next with her father. “You’re the luckiest girl in the world,” he had always told her. And he had always bought a lottery ticket when they stopped at a gas station rest stop like this one. “We’ll never win, but we can hope,” he often said. “The lottery is the greatest con of all time, kiddo. Proves our government is just like us, tricking people into thinking any dream can come true.” When he said things like that it made Lucky feel better about who they were, and the things they did.

She reached the cash register. Impulsively, Lucky grabbed a lottery playslip from the stand and filled out her numbers, the same ones she had used just for fun when she was a kid: Eleven, because that was how old she had been when she had thought to have lucky numbers. Eighteen, because that was the age she couldn’t wait to be at the time, thinking adulthood was going to unleash some sort of magic into her life. Forty-two, because that was how old her dad had been when she had come up with the numbers. Ninety-five, because that was the highway they were driving on that day. And seventy-seven, just because.

She handed the paper to the cashier. He printed off her lottery ticket and handed it back. “You should sign your name on that,” he said. “People forget, and then their ticket gets stolen or lost. It’s a big jackpot this time, three hundred and ninety million.”

“I have a higher chance of being struck by lightning, twice, than I do of winning that jackpot,” Lucky said. “It’s just a dream, that’s all.” Then she turned, ducked her head as she walked past the security cameras and out into the parking lot. She put the ticket in her wallet and imagined herself in a beach house in Dominica, taking the ticket out once in a while and remembering her dad—before he had landed in prison.

Outside, her boyfriend, Cary, had finished filling their silver Audi’s gas tank. He saw her, grinned, and mouthed the word Damn. She blew a kiss at him and walked toward the car, letting her hips sway. But a voice made her turn.

“Could you spare any change?”

A woman was sitting with her back against the concrete wall of the station, holding a sign that said UNEMPLOYED, BROKE, ANYTHING HELPS. Lucky took out her wallet. She emptied it of several hundred—then paused and pulled the blouse, skirt, blazer, and shoes from her bag.

“Take these,” Lucky said.

“Where would I ever wear them?”

“Sell them on consignment. Or…” Lucky leaned down. “Use them to pretend to be someone else.”

The woman blinked at her, confused. “What?”

“Never mind. Just… take care, okay?”

Cary was grinning as she walked toward him again. She got in the car and he grabbed her chin, turned her face to his, kissed her mouth. “You’re looking damn hot, Mrs.… what did we register at the hotel as, Anderson? I think it’s great that you went in there looking like an investment banker and came out looking like the girl I used to know. You never dress like this anymore. I like. And now I see why you wanted to go to Vegas so badly.” He let go and she felt something shift between them. “But it’s funny that you’re always thinking you can, I don’t know, redeem yourself or something by giving money out to people like her. Soon you won’t feel that need anymore. Soon you’ll forget all about it.”

She felt suddenly irritated. “People ‘like her’? And I’m not trying to redeem myself. I’m trying to help people who need help.”

“Why?”

Out the window, the woman had her hand lifted in a wave, but Lucky looked away.

“Make up for the money we’ve stolen by acting like Robin Hood?” Cary went on. “Steal from the rich, give to the poor? It’s cute, I guess.” He started the car and pulled out. “But it’s never going to work. We are who we are, Lucky.” He had a way of digging straight down to the painful secret spots in a person’s psyche. And, not for the first time recently, she felt a niggling sense of worry about this. They were moving to a remote island together. It was just going to be the two of them. They would never be able to leave.