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“I understand.”
“I mean, I loved the shelter. I loved the kids. And I know what you did to help. Thank you.”
“I did—”
“Even after Mom died…even when you were so angry with me…you still gave us a whopping check. I mean, you hated me. But, still, you were awfully generous.”
“I never hated you. I just couldn’t cope with having you in my life.”
“You gave them five digits year after year.”
“The gifts were supposed to be anonymous.”
“I knew it was you.”
I stood and stretched. We’d take an Uber to the casino, where I would check them in and have room service send to my suite either a very late-night dinner or very early breakfast for three.
Epilogue
Someday, I’m going to write a memoir, and it won’t be about being a foster kid, because the world has plenty of those, and it won’t be about crypto, even though it would be fun to use DAO or FUD or a word like nonfungible in a book. It will be about spending my adolescence in a casino. Because, so far, the BP has been my favorite home. (I mean, it didn’t have super stiff competition. But you get the point.) I like the new owners. They own other casinos on the strip and are very corporate. They’re putting serious “scratch” into the place and into my aunt’s show. (“Scratch” is gangster-speak for money.)
Betsy’s and my digs aren’t a crib like Crissy’s, but I like them. At first, Betsy worried it wasn’t wholesome, but I reminded her that nothing about my life has been “wholesome,” and, besides, look where that word got her. That photo shoot at Red Rocks and some guy Crissy was snogging winding up dead, that’s where. “Wholesome” is overrated, I think.
Not that I’m a fan of “unwholesome,” but lots of the people who make a big deal about having the right values are the ones who say the worst things when they’re losing a mortgage payment playing video poker at nine in the morning. Look at that nutball, Erika Schweiker. She was always going on and on about “values,” and she lost big to Senator Aldred in the election because she was friends with all those Futurium people who were arrested for things like murder. And murder was just the worst of the things that got them busted. I might be a grandmother by the time guys like Frankie, Tony, Damon, and Rory are out of prison. (Rory will be there forever. Frankie sang like a canary—I love mobster lingo—and told everyone that Rory was the one who killed Orlov. So, they have him for two murders, counting Lara Kozlov, and for ordering the hit on the Morleys.)
Even Erika Schweiker might go to jail. The Department of Justice has charged her with campaign finance crimes and political shakedowns. It was all on my tablet.
I’m now in the program for Diana, Candle in the Darkness. I am officially the Head of Research because I am very good at that. (For my first assignment, I gave Crissy a list of the weirdest ways people learned that the queen had died, including a lot who learned from the account of a pretend American Girl doll on Twitter, and others who heard the news at a bangers and mash competitive-eating championship. The contenders agreed to stop gorging for a moment of silence.) When I’m in college, I’ll still be doing plenty of coding and math, but I’ll also take lots of history courses, too, because history is everything. I have found seven quotes all about learning from the past or using the past or not repeating the past.
But, of course, we still do.
Crissy and Nigel are now a “thing,” and—my aunt being my aunt—she is rewriting the show. She wants him to have a bigger role. For a crank, she is actually very generous.
My mom deals blackjack, just like Ayobami, who lets me call her “Aunt,” which my real aunt does not. I’m like the daughter Ayobami never had. I’m not sure what I am to Crissy, but I think it’s somewhere between niece and executive assistant. But she loves me.
And that’s the thing about my life now. For the first time ever, I have people who love me. Really love me. Neither Dowling sister had to do what she did that day at Frankie’s. But they did. And they did it for me.
Which is why my first tattoo is one word: family. It’s where you might put a tramp stamp, but it’s the opposite.
I haven’t shown it to Betsy or Crissy yet. I’m saving that for when I turn sixteen. In the meantime, I let them both think I wear one-piece bathing suits to Crissy’s cabana or the pool now because I’ve suddenly become weirdly modest.
Or—to quote the Princess of Las Vegas—proper. She told my homeroom teacher when I brought him backstage the other night that I am “a right proper young lady.” I’m not sure he agreed, but he didn’t contradict her. One of the things Betsy and I have learned when you live at the BP is this: you don’t contradict the Princess of Las Vegas. She’s about as close to royalty as you get around here.
And we have strippers in the burlesque show named after actual queens.
