Forty
WHILE MY FATHER WALKS MAUREEN INTO THE CENTER OF THE tent for their first dance, I walk into the dark night.
What I need is to get on the group chat, but I can’t justify another trip to the bathroom without faking a UTI—which I did consider, but Tom came up with the solution.
Cornhole. Our cover.
It’s perfect. The boards are in complete view of the tent, yet too far away to be heard over the ten-piece band’s ABBA covers. Who needs phones when you can have real live conversation over the East Coast’s favorite bougie outdoor game? Anyone who happens to notice the four figures tossing beanbags in the dark will assume the teens at the wedding have grown bored and decided to goof off.
Honestly, I note as I approach my crew, they’ve really committed to the bit.
Deonte and Tom are squaring off against Kevin and McCoy. From the very elaborate high five Tom and Deonte exchange, it appears they are keeping score. Nothing like a competitive cornhole match in the midst of a high-stakes heist, I guess.
Kevin picks up the four beanbags at his feet. “You think you can discourage me with your victory?” he says to his opponents. “I’m a born underdog, baby. Losing is where I win.”
McCoy looks down at him, startled. “That was very nicely put, Mr. Webber.”
Kevin straightens his shoulders at the praise. He notices my arrival and waves. It’s ridiculous, but I find myself waving back, rolling my eyes for good measure. I should cut into the game, begin the meeting.
But I don’t know. I guess I wish I’d seen some of the game.
“Bro, you haven’t even gotten one on the board. Spare us the inspirational speeches,” Deonte says, laughing with Tom.
Kevin starts swinging his arm, miming his shot. “If I sink all four in the hole, my group chat name changes to Bishop.”
Deonte and Tom exchange a look. “All four, Assface,” Tom confirms.
Kevin carefully lines up his toss. The lawn goes silent.
While we wait, holding our breaths under the starry sky, I almost forget why we’re here. Maybe in some other universe, Olivia Owens invited her friends to her father’s wedding. Maybe her father meant it when he toasted her. Maybe her boyfriend never cheated. Maybe tonight is about her family, her friends, her life full of hope and possibility—
Kevin’s first two shots go wide.
Everyone groans sympathetically. Kevin, however, isn’t deterred. He picks up the next beanbag. He tosses it. This time, it hits the board. There’s too much force in the throw, though, and it slides clean off. Before it hits the grass, he’s already throwing the final one.
It goes clean into the hole.
The four of them erupt in cheers. Even I, on the sidelines, can’t help smiling. Kevin looks as startled as the rest of us. He jumps into the air, pumping his arm.
“You’re not Bishop, but good job,” Deonte says, high-fiving Kevin.
Part of me wants to join in the moment, to linger here, to see the rest of the game even.
“Has anyone connected with Queen?” I ask instead, hating my own formality.
The cheering dies instantly, everyone turning to me with smiles slipping from their faces. It hurts more than I expected, even though it’s my own fault. It’s just been a while since I was part of a friend group. I miss it.
I shake off the sentimentality. No distractions. No weaknesses. I need to focus on what I’m good at. Which isn’t making friends.
“She’s on her way,” Tom replies, his tone neutral. “She said the options you gave her were… challenging, and no one is allowed to make fun.”
“Make fun?” Kevin repeats. “Of what?”
Answering his question, Cass emerges from the house’s patio doors. She’s braided her hair simply down her back and managed to find some lipstick left behind in my room. Instead of her black-on-black hacker ensemble, she’s now outfitted like the Olivia of freshman year, complete with the silver-black dress I wore to winter formal. It doesn’t really fit Cass, and it’s obviously not her style, but somehow, she’s honestly pulling it off.
Who cares if it’s you anymore? I would never give up anything like this.I smile, appreciating the living proof of her words in my old bedroom.
There’s something so unapologetically confident about Cass, the coder taking this job just to prove she can, that makes her look almost as if she were made for dresses like these.
The heels, less so.
She stumbles on the grass on her way to us.
Looking relieved to have made it to us with intact ankles, she stops. “Laugh and I’ll hack your search histories,” she says gruffly.
Her threat doesn’t exactly have the intended effect. Tom swallows a snicker. McCoy hides his mouth in his hand.
Before my crew can turn on one another, I interject. “I think you look pretty.”
Cass looks torn between immediately pulling up my late-night searches of “how to get over your dirtbag ex” for public ridicule and being touched. Before she can decide, I steer this meeting toward its intended purpose.
“Updates,” I say quickly. “Go around the group.” I nod to McCoy first.
Ever the straight-A-student-turned-teacher, McCoy is ready to be called on. “Maureen’s parents are polite, but they don’t seem happy about this wedding. Her mom told me the newlyweds haven’t been together long.”
“It’s not like she would have told her parents if she was sleeping with a married man,” Cass says. “That doesn’t negate the possibility of infidelity in Lexi’s marriage.”
She has a point, but we need proof, not possibilities.
“No,” Kevin agrees, “but what I found out does.”
Unfortunately, we all turn to look at him. The sudden attention goes to Kevin’s head. He grins like a child with a new toy.
“It wasn’t easy to get out of my dad,” he goes on, preening in the spotlight of our attention. “I didn’t want him to know what we were up to, of course, so I had to be extremely deft in the conversation. I knew I had a couple of routes, but ultimately I chose a lateral approach to the subject, which naturally—”
Tom cuts him off, sparing us the unnecessary editorializing. “Mitchum did a background check on Maureen when he found out there wasn’t a prenup. She was living with a boyfriend in California in her year between college and journalism school, during Lexi and Dash’s marriage.”
“Well, that feels conclusive,” I say, pinching my nose. Another dead end. We don’t have time for dead ends, not with the wedding progressing. Mitchum gave us three hours before he has to report the safe has been opened. If we haven’t gotten into the bank account by then, every password will be changed, and we’ll have nothing.
What do we do if Dash didn’t cheat on Lexi with Maureen? It’s not as if we can search the wedding for other suspects. If there even is anyone to find. I’m starting to suspect my father was somehow loyal to his second wife.
Which is just perfect. It’s maddening—the one instance in which I’d welcome my father having cheated on his wife, and he manages to disappoint. Nice work, Dash!
I grasp for other loose ends, desperate.
“Why isn’t there a prenup?” I ask.
This time Kevin answers quickly, before Tom can steal the stage. “Dad doesn’t know. He did imply that Dash’s podcasts cost more money than they make… but even so, he says it’s highly out of character for Dash.”
I file away the observation. There’s nothing I can do with it right now. Turning to Deonte, I gesture for him to take the floor.
“Quinn believes Dash never cheated on Lexi,” he says, then glances meaningfully at me, a question in his eyes.
I shake my head, appreciating the kindness. I don’t need everyone knowing just how broken my parents’ marriage was.
Deonte goes on without missing a beat. “He referred to Abigail Pierce as Olivia’s competition.”
“That’s not surprising,” McCoy muses. “Her name is on the will. Another heir.”
“Please tell me you found out who the hell we’re dealing with,” I say to Cass.
For the first time, Cass looks ill at ease in my hand-me-downs. “I don’t know,” she says to the ground. “There’s nothing. I’ve pulled census records, local clerks, and… less public records. Credit card databases. Everything. As far as I can find, Abigail Pierce doesn’t exist.”
I swallow the scream of frustration clawing at my throat. There’s a solution here. I can find it. I’m good at this—at only this. If I fail today, if I go home with nothing to my mom’s debts, to a school where I have no real friends and now no boyfriend—
I can’t. I refuse.
“You know, you talk a big game about hacking our search histories and such,” Tom says, frustration evident in his tone, “but you can’t even find one person?”
“Why don’t you open the Safari app on your iPhone and check my work?” Cass replies flatly. “Or you can save yourself the time it takes to use Google, and trust me when I say, whoever Abigail is, someone paid a lot of money to have her digital footprint erased.”
“Why would someone do that?” Kevin asks.
“If they’re trying to cover up something,” I say, thinking out loud. I return to Mitchum’s words. To Allen’s. My father has debts, probably more than I know. He’s done something that can be exposed and used against him. Abigail is somehow the root, but of what?
“What’s interesting is that you said she hadn’t been added to the will yet,” Deonte muses. “This is something Dash has recently decided.”
Tom’s eyes sharpen. “Maybe we’re thinking about this in the wrong direction. What if Abigail isn’t someone he’s covered up? What if—”
“Abigail knows something and is blackmailing him,” I finish, catching on to the idea’s momentum. That would make her worse than my competition. A threat.
The idea surprises me. Are my father’s enemies my own? I’m stealing from him, but are others allowed to? Now that I know I’m in the will, I know I’m intended to inherit part of what he will pass down one day. Is it weird for me to feel vindictive and defensive at once?
Or is it just family?
“This is all fascinating theorizing,” Cass interrupts, “but none of it helps us get into the bank account.”
McCoy reaches up to stroke the beard he no longer has, then lowers his hand. “She’s right,” he says. “We need to deal with Lexi first, which means we need something to trade her for the codes.”
“But we don’t have any proof Dash ever even had an affair,” Tom replies.
Everyone falls silent. We’re stuck. I can’t find proof of something that might have never happened. I work my exhausted imagination for what other kind of leverage we can offer Lexi, but with time running out, I’m not confident in my efforts.
Is this it? The ending?
“No,” Cass says slowly, as if she’s working through something. “I could make some, though.”
The second the words have left her, she stands straighter in her heels. It’s oddly meaningful, the rare glimpse of the person under the cutting efficiency, dark curls and discomfort in formal wear. Cass, I intuit, isn’t a girl comfortable with failure. It bothered her more than us that she couldn’t track down Abigail Pierce online. With this new direction, however, she’s returning to herself.
I trust her conviction more than I have reason to. Still, I have to ask. “How?”
Cass smiles, the idea clearly coming together perfectly in her mind. “I’m in Dash’s house. On his network, his VPN. I have everything,” she explains—crows, really. “I could easily use his computer to fabricate an incriminating email to Maureen, then change the sent date so the email client thinks the email is old. From during Dash and Lexi’s marriage.”
“Would that work?” Deonte’s voice is wary.
I gnaw the inside of my cheek. There are holes in the strategy. It’s not ideal, but we’ve run out of time for ideal. Perfectionism is more often a weakness than a strength.
“It wouldn’t hold up in court,” Cass continues, “but Lexi will buy it in the moment. She doesn’t know I’m here, doesn’t even know I exist. She would have no reason to suspect Olivia is capable of complex digital forgery on hours’ notice. She’ll give us the codes before she realizes the email is fake.”
Interrupting us, cheering drifts over from the tent, a reminder of the time we’re losing.
“They’re bringing out the cake,” Deonte comments, his gaze snapping to catering staff. “I’m not missing this. I think they’re serving mine.”
While I’m supportive of Deonte’s hard work, I’m a little less motivated by the cake itself. Jackson’s nosiness if he finds out I missed the cake-cutting, however? That I find compelling.
“Do it,” I say to Cass. “Tom, Kevin, go with her. Get the email, then make the exchange.” I furiously start checking off logistics. “Shit, has anyone seen Lexi? Is she just lurking somewhere in the wedding?”
Kevin shuffles his feet. “She, um, gave me her number when we were working together, before she ditched me for you.”
“Of course she did,” I remark dryly. “Get the codes. Return them to Cass. I want this wrapped up before the father-daughter dances.”
Everyone nods. For the first time since sitting down to dinner, I feel in control. We’re not just reaching into the dark, hoping our fingers catch on something useful. We have a plan. When I’m twirling prettily in my dad’s arms while he plays the doting father, I’ll have something steadying me against his hypocrisy. The knowledge that I’ve stolen millions from him.
“Love this direction, crew,” Kevin says, football-clapping his hands. “One quick question. Do you think we can finish our cornhole game first?”
We all reply in unison. “No.”
“Why would you even want to?” Tom goes on. “You were obviously going to lose.”
McCoy raises his eyebrows sternly. “Don’t be so sure, Mr. Pham. Cornhole is a finnicky game.”
“Look, we don’t know who was going to win. So we can agree it was a draw,” Kevin suggests hopefully.
Deonte frowns. “No way.”
“I propose a rematch later,” McCoy says.
“Whoever wins plays me and Olivia,” Cass replies, darting a conspiratorial glance at me.
Sudden warmth spreads in my chest at the inclusion. None of us are friends in real life. There’s no reason to ever meet up again. Still, part of me wants to.
“No way would Olivia deign to play,” Kevin says.
McCoy meets my eyes, his expression somehow supportive despite how I treated him upstairs. “I’d like to see it.”
I should walk away, remind everyone we’re not here to play games.
Instead, I pick up four beanbags from the ground and line myself up on the court. Muscle memory comes alive in me instantly. One after another, I toss them onto the board. One after another, they all slide perfectly into the hole.
No one makes a sound.
“You all forget,” I say, turning to them. “This used to be my house. I grew up at this board.”
McCoy cracks a grin first. Then Tom laughs. Deonte slow-claps. Cass just nods in approval.
Kevin, of course, whoops loudly, then hoists me on his shoulders, chanting my name into the night sky. I’m laughing too hard to reprimand him for drawing attention. Besides, if my dad were to come over right now, he’d think I was playing cornhole with friends.
It wouldn’t even be a lie.
Winded, Kevin sets me down. “No wonder you’re King.”