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Betsy knew from the beginning that Marisa was more than precocious. Good God, a sixth-grade teacher who barely knew the girl had seen her potential and gotten her into some after-school coding class with teens four and five years older than her. She was a tween autodidact and could talk forever. Betsy understood that some foster kids, even adolescents, would still strive mightily for their foster parents’ approval. But most didn’t. Most knew it was a lost cause by then, and so they grew quiet and withdrawn, a little surly, which was a natural response to the fact that their lives very likely had been a series of betrayals. Not Marisa, however, which was among the reasons why Betsy was drawn to her as soon as they were introduced. Like lots of the kids she saw and lots of the kids in the foster care system, Marisa could be nihilistic and wary. She shared that with her peers. One moment, she didn’t give a damn about anything, and the next she was mistrustful and guarded. But then there were those times when she was open and optimistic, as if, despite the odds, she supposed life might not be an endless litany of despicable grown-ups or a world where she had to hoard food in her sneakers or thrift-store snow boots to survive.
And she was about to turn thirteen, one of the hardest ages there is in even the best of circumstances. You’re a hormonal dumpster fire.
At breakfast the next day, Betsy asked, “Waffles, pancakes, or French toast?”
It was Saturday. By design, Betsy wanted the two of them to have a weekend together before falling into a routine of school and work. Marisa picked waffles, and Betsy made them for the first time in years, using her late mother’s waffle iron. She was unprepared when Marisa said, “Huh. I never saw these made before. I’d never thought about how you get the squares on them.”
Betsy did not say, “You’ve never had homemade waffles?” She kept her incredulity in check and said, “Yup. It’s a panini press with squares. That’s all.”
“Panini?”
“Kind of sandwich.”
“The frozen ones have chocolate chips, you know. Not automatically. You have to pick the right kind.”
“You prefer your waffles with chocolate chips? I can put some in the next one. I have a bag in the pantry.”
Marisa shook her head. “Nope. As one of my foster moms always said, a girl’s gotta watch her weight,” she explained, and Betsy thought of her sister. She wasn’t sure which made her sadder: the idea that a kid who was tall and slender—she had legs like a giraffe—and not quite thirteen was worried about her weight, or the idea that no one had ever made her a homemade waffle.
* * *
What is it like to stand alone in the spotlight, a princess, the people before you in the dark hanging on your every word? What is it like to be the focus of memory, to know your audience is lingering in a world you have conjured?
She asked Crissy this the first time she saw the show in Las Vegas, years ago now, and years before Crissy had added Nigel. They were in her dressing room and one of the brothers who owned the casino was there. Fellow named Artie Morley.
Before she could respond, Artie said, “It’s heady as hell.”
As if he knew.
“We’re going to put serious money into the rest of the resort,” he went on. “Really build this place. You don’t have to be ‘on the strip’ to be a choice property.”
Betsy had no idea if the Morleys or their investors ever did put “serious money” into the Buckingham Palace, but when she and her mother had returned a few years later to see the show with Prince Charles now a supporting player and two additional musicians, the rest of the place had felt as sad and bedraggled as ever. The bathroom in her and her mother’s hotel room still had disposable plastic cups, and the hangers in the closet were still the sort that were attached to the bar, as if the clientele might actually filch a coat hanger. The pad on the ironing board in that same closet had long streaks of russet-colored mildew. The bedspread on one of the two beds had stains that the paisley couldn’t hide, and the mirror over the dresser—pressed wood—was chipped. Their view was a parking lot and a liquor store the size of a small warehouse.
The room her sister lived in was nicer. It was a suite with a kitchenette and something Crissy referred to as the “reading nook.” But, still, her refrigerator was little bigger than a plastic milk crate, and the “nook” was a couple of faux-leather chairs and a Naugahyde ottoman.
Before Frankie had announced that he was moving to Vegas, she had wondered when she would bring him west to meet her sister. What would a fintech millionaire think of the downtrodden world where Crissy Dowling cast her spell? She supposed he would see only potential. It was one of the things that made her care for him: he didn’t judge. At least not harshly or overtly. After all, he saw how pitiable were her two bedrooms near the UVM campus, and thought no less of her. The truth was, he very likely loved her.
It was absurd in a way.
Because she sure as hell didn’t love herself.
* * *
Betsy discovered that Marisa’s favorite things included math, fashion, and television. She was fascinated by programs about witches that were set in the present, though she grew intrigued when Betsy told her about New England’s real history with witchcraft.
“They hung them?” she asked.
“Hanged,” said Betsy, who from the time she was ten had known the correct grammar. “Yes. The past tense of slipping a noose around someone’s neck is hanged. So, the Puritans hung their pictures and hanged their witches.”
“I don’t think the devil is real,” she told Betsy.
“Me neither.”
“I wouldn’t wear black eyeliner if he was.”
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t want him to think I was a fan. Life can suck plenty even without him. Besides…”
