Two Five Hours Earlier
ISTEP INTO MY HEELS. THEY’RE PERFECT, THE FINISHING TOUCH. IN the mirror, I look over my handiwork.
The first thing I notice isn’t my outfit. It never is. It’s the initials inscribed in the corner of the glass in the staff room of Vive, the superstore where I’m employed. The work of knifepoint, carved into the mirror that’s intended to help us look professional on our way to the register, or, in my case, the custodial closet. EH.
Of course, I have no idea what they mean, which makes them the only interesting thing in the room.
Otherwise, the Vive employees’ lounge is a gray underworld in contrast to the clean commercial aisles outside. Overhead lights humming with their depressing cast. Couches no one uses, wispy cotton protruding from the rips in their cushions. Lockers against one wall with empty loops for employees to place our own locks.
It is not, shall I say, the ideal place to get ready for my father’s highest-of-high-society wedding. I don’t need the openly judgmental glances of the coworkers who pass me on their way to their lockers to know my preparations for the day—my pink dress, my ivory heels—look, put gently, ironic.
I focus on the initials, letting them center me. EH. When I need to escape the reality of my work, I occupy myself by inventing possible meanings for them.
EH. Equine haberdashery, I note when I pass the hats with horse logos on them.
Exquisite handbags.The purses in the display case, fifty-dollar bags I walk past with embarrassment—not because I work here, but because I know I once would have, on price and misguided principle alone, considered them cheap and chintzy. I used to wear Gucci and Shinola to school. Now I can’t afford what I used to mock.
Framed in the gray of the employees’ room, I reach for the makeup I brought to work. The waver of weakness in my imprecise hand is from the hours I’ve just spent scrubbing the floor surrounding the refrigerators, where someone dropped a glass bottle of tea.
I need to work quickly, and not just for my own reasons. If the metal door on the other end of the room opens and my manager, Oren, emerges, he’ll enlist me in helping Shaun shelve the deodorant. Yes, even though my shift ended eleven minutes ago.
Yes, even in my dress.
I’m what Vive calls “general personnel,” which means I do whatever my manager wants. Rarely is it cash register. More often, it’s cleaning.
I’m not ashamed to scrub floors, not when I know it’s helping my mom with our finances. No, I’m ashamed by how much I suck at it. I have no intuition for the work, not to mention no musculature. Growing up on the Owens estate with housekeepers, I developed no finesse for what equipment or products to use, how much pressure each surface or stain demands, or countless other intricacies, leaving me envious of my more experienced coworkers. I’m Cinderella in reverse, the princess who discovered one day she was destined for drudgery.
I put on my concealer, smoothing out my skin, which no longer gets the perfect spray tan twice a month.
I miss my old life. I won’t pretend I don’t. When my mom divorced my dad, I was cast out of everything. His home, presumably his will… his world. The world I knew.
EH. Ex-heiress.
On my darkest days, I wish Mom had maybe… made it work. Not forgiven my father. Just… figured out how to live under our old roof instead of in the small home I moved into with her two years ago, when my father’s prenup left her with nothing. Why should we get punished for his misdeeds?
The feeling never lasts long. I love my mom fiercely. I respect her conviction, her decisiveness, her self-respect, her courage. How hard she works to provide me with the narrow bedroom in our house, one the size of the closets in the Rhode Island mansion where I lived for most of my life. The way she decorated the room with reminders of what I loved, whimsically combining French art deco posters with a soccer pencil cup and the large purple mirror on my closet door.
It took more effort to make me feel like I was home than I’d ever imagined, or deserved, an effort I know my mom doesn’t have in her to make every day.
It’s something in her eyes. Even if she’s up, moving forward, making the events of the day happen—only sometimes do her eyes look like her. Green, like mine.
Other times, when I look into them, I can see she’s stuck somewhere. In some shadowy, exhausting labyrinth she doesn’t know how to get out of. Like she doesn’t know if she’s moving forward or if she’s just still moving.
The employees’ lounge’s metal door rattles open right then. I whirl, panic rising, expecting Oren is going to criticize me for something related to the spill situation and consign me to shelving, and—
It’s only Shaun, finished, I guess, with the deodorant. He doesn’t glance over on his way to the lockers.
I face the mirror, with my chest rising more evenly, and inspect the pieces of my outfit. The dress I ordered online when Mom proudly insisted we pick out something nice. The heels. The gaudy wink of the plastic diamonds in my hair clip. The girl in the initialed mirror is Barbie come to life.
It’s the perfect disguise. Myself.
Or the idea of me. The daughter of controversial podcaster–multimedia mogul Dashiell Owens. My father’s made his fame on off-the-cuff impulsivity, on not overthinking, on deciding everything while considering nothing. Imagine what everyone in the entire universe thinks of me. Dress seventeen-year-old me up in pink with heels and shiny jewelry—nobody’s going to double-check their first impression of Olivia Owens.
Which is, of course, essential to The Plan.
Reaching for my eyelashes, I push down nervousness. The Plan. Even if the notes I’ve meticulously made in the black notebook I requested for my birthday weren’t neatly headlined with the two capitalized words, I would probably hear them with capital letters in my head.
The truth is, I haven’t thought of much else since The Plan entered my head in one dark flash the day that we received Dad’s Save the Date in the mail. I’ve studied enough to keep my grades up, to dispel suspicion. I’ve helped out my mom however I could. I got this job, the least I could do when my mom works three, supporting us while struggling to stay on top of her medical debt.
One led to the other, like partners in crime—if she hadn’t been chasing surge-priced ridesharing hours one Friday night, she wouldn’t have gotten on the road exhausted from twelve hours of consecutive hostessing shifts. She wouldn’t have nodded off for split seconds. Her car wouldn’t have skidded on ice into the highway divider.
Wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t.
Her head hit the window hard. Her wrist crumpled from the impact. She was unconscious for fifteen hours. They were the worst hours of my life, in Rhode Island’s Kent County Memorial Hospital, where I sat silently, holding her hand, waiting for her to wake up. Every detail of my surroundings engraved itself in my memory forever. The fluorescent lights, the white floors, the sterile hallways. The days were full of procedures, scans, metal pins, “we’ll know more later,” and incessant worry.
Incredibly, she made it through. She’s fine except for pains in her wrist—and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt forcing her to keep working. Even miracles can cost everything these days.
I honestly have no idea where she is right now. On weekends she does DoorDash or Instacart, which sends her from Coventry, where we live, into every corner of Rhode Island. I’ve gotten used to having the car only from Wednesday through Friday, when she walks to the grocery store that we’re ten minutes from for her shifts.
Today, though, even with Dad’s wedding, I don’t need the car. The method of transportation is the first step. Starting in—
The clock on my phone counts up. 3:24.
With one false eyelash in my hand, I let nervousness overcome me momentarily. I don’t fight the feeling. Here, now, I can permit myself the cold fear chasing through me. The rest of the day, I’ll need to have everything under control, to compose myself into the exacting leader I know everyone needs. Right now, I can be fragile.
While I wait for my eyelash glue to set, I poke my phone screen with one sweaty finger. 3:25 p.m. Five minutes.
I exhale shakily.
I give myself seven seconds.
Then I meet my eyes in the mirror. Green, like my mom’s.
Instantly, I iron every waver out of my nerves. Every hint of tremor out of my fingers. With unshaking hands, I press my fake eyelash perfectly into place.
I’m ready. For months, I’ve filled countless notebook pages with important research, checklists, schedules, diagrams, everything. No one ever counted on Cinderella wanting revenge.
Today, during my dad’s third wedding, I’m going to execute the heist I’ve been planning for months.
I’m going to steal millions from my own father.