The Girls I've Been(9)

“I—”

“Casey Moulton. Say it.”

Doorknob’s turning.

“Casey Moulton,” she whispers.

Door swings open.





— 11 —


    Rebecca: Sweet, Silent, Smiling




One of my clearest early memories is my mother standing me in front of the mirror and combing my blond hair back off my shoulders as she said, Rebecca. Your name is Rebecca. Say it, sweetie. Rebecca Wakefield.

My name isn’t Rebecca, if you were wondering.

It’s not really Nora, either. But everyone in Clear Creek knows me as Nora.

I thought it was a game. The Rebecca thing. But later Mom slaps my arm when I answer to anything but Rebecca, and I learn it isn’t a game.

I learn it’s my life.

Rebecca. Samantha. Haley. Katie. Ashley.

The girls I’ve been. The perfect daughters to the women my mother has become to con her marks.

Each girl was me, but different. The best con has a seed of truth. She taught me well, to take those truths and spin them into stories so believable no one would think to question them.

Rebecca wears her hair loose with an Alice band holding it back. This is when Mom stops letting me cut it beyond a trim. By the time Lee gets me out when I’m twelve, it hangs down to my hips, and people sometimes stop Mom or me to coo about how pretty it is. Rebecca wears a lot of pink. I tell Mom I don’t like pink as much as purple, and she says Rebecca loves pink, that it’s her favorite color . . . and then she makes me repeat it.

She makes me repeat a lot of things when we’re alone. My brain is a sponge, that’s what she says, and I need to learn early what the world is like. You and me, baby. We’re going to be something.

That something turns out to be criminals.

Rebecca is Justine’s daughter. Justine is my mother and also not her. She wears brown contacts and pencil skirts, and she calls people sugar with a little lilt to her voice that Mom doesn’t have. Justine works as a receptionist in an insurance office, and her mark is Kenneth, the CFO. He’s skimming from the company coffers—not that the insurance game isn’t already a huge racket, but that’s another conversation—and she’s got him paying her in a blackmail scheme quicker than you can snap your fingers.

I’m little then. I’m still learning. So I don’t have to do much but be cute and charming when she brings me into the office. It softens her image, and no one would ever suspect the sweet widowed receptionist with the adorable little girl.

Being Rebecca teaches me how to lie. How to look into someone’s eyes while there isn’t a true word coming out of your mouth, but they believe it because enough of you believes it. It sharpens me too soon, this power and the blurred lines between truth and lie. I’m not a cute seven-year-old lying wide-eyed and obvious about stealing a cookie. I’m manipulating people. Figuring out what actions get the desired reactions. What kind of smile gets a smile in return. What cute little twirling dance will make the older ladies at the office clap their hands and give me candy. What whimpering tantrum can work when Mom needs me to be a distraction as she slips past, papers in hand, plotting, always plotting.

Each step into Rebecca’s skin is a step out of my own, but I’m expected to snap back into myself as soon as Mom says the word, as soon as we’re alone, and I’m constantly reeling from the shift. Nothing’s steady. There’s no solid ground. I learn to dance on a tilting one instead.

Mom always knows when to pull the plug, and before Kenneth can get vengeful enough or cheap enough to come for us or use whatever he’s stashed away to put a hit out on her, we’re gone, ditching the town and those names. Soon, she’ll be researching a new mark and standing me in front of a mirror in a new town, fixing my hair in a new way, and saying, Samantha. Your name is Samantha.

She chooses bad men. She says there’s justice in stripping them of their money and therefore their dignity, because to men like that, money is everything, and they’re not much without it.

But as the years pass and the names on my list of girls grows, the truth is hard to deny. She chooses bad men because she likes bad men. She’s drawn to them and the risk they present, because she’s all risk, full throttle, all the time. She chose this ride and put me on it with no way off, and then I grow up drawn to bad men, too, like mother, like daughter.

There’s just one difference between her and me. She’s drawn to bad men because deep down, she wants to love them. She needs them to love her.

I don’t want to love them, and I’ve never needed to be loved by them.

I learned very early, the best thing you can expect from them is pain.

And the best thing you can do with a bad man is destroy him.





— 12 —


9:47 a.m. (35 minutes captive)

1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, no plan



This time, it’s Gray Cap who comes into the office.

His knuckles are bloody. It’s the first thing I notice, and it makes me want to crowd next to Casey, to hide her from him.

Who did he hurt? The guard, more? The teller, first? Or the woman who’d just cried, stone-faced, the whole time we were in the lobby?

What to do, what to do, my mind’s skipping and turning, and all I know is that keeping Casey’s real identity from them is the safest thing for her, so I focus on that. Hide Casey.