Page 13 of Your Every Wish

I find Kennedy sitting on the couch, looking white as chalk. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Let’s go to town.” She jumps off the sofa and grabs her purse.

“Just give me a few minutes to blow-dry my hair.”

“Okay, but hurry.”

“What’s your rush? Did something happen while you were out walking?” She’s acting peculiar.

“No, but I feel cooped up here. And I’m hungry. Let’s go to a restaurant.”

“Fine, I won’t dry my hair but at least let me change out of these sweats into jeans and a sweater.” I dash into my bedroom, quickly throw on some clothes, and tie my wet hair back in a ponytail.

“I’ll meet you in the car,” she shouts from the other room.

I grab a jacket, jog out the door, and meet her in the driveway, where her engine is already running.

“Where’s the fire?” Before I can fasten my seat belt, she’s backing out of the driveway.

“I need to get away from here for a few hours, is all.”

We drive to the highway in silence. She’ll tell me what’s going on in her own good time. Or not. We may be roommates now, but we hardly know each other. It could be that she’s moody, or at the very least a chronic antsy pants.

Regardless, the drive is nice and now that my column’s done, I have nothing better to do. In San Francisco, I’d hang out at Perk Up or go over to Mom’s. Or if Dex was amenable, meet him for lunch.

The trees are in full color, and it’s turned overcast as if it might rain.

Only an hour ago, the sun was out, and summer seemed to be lingering.

Still, the ride is beautiful. So many rolling, green hills with the Cascade Mountain range close enough in the distance that it almost feels as if I can touch it.

Kennedy turns on the radio and searches for reception until she lands on a local station. A country-western song comes on and she quickly switches it off.

We’re halfway to town when she says, “I need thirty thousand dollars.”

“What? Why?”

“Because if I don’t come up with it in the next twenty-four hours I’m going to be arrested and thrown in jail.”

I’m trying to absorb what she’s said when she abruptly pulls over to the shoulder of the road and kills her engine. “I’m not kidding. I’m in real trouble here.”

“I’m going to need you to start at the beginning,” I say.

“I don’t have time to start at the beginning. I’m asking, no, I’m begging, which you should know is totally out of character for me, for thirty thousand dollars. And I swear I’ll pay you back as soon as we sell Cedar Pines.”

“First of all, I don’t have thirty thousand dollars.

If I did, I’d have a beautiful apartment near the man I love, instead of having to commute nearly three hours to see him.

I’ll help you figure this out, though. But before I do, I need you to tell me the whole story.

Arrested? Jail? What did you do, Kennedy? ”

“That’s the thing, I didn’t do anything.” She rests her head on the steering wheel and closes her eyes. “One of my clients believes I stole thirty thousand of his craps winnings.”

“Why would he believe that?”

“Because my mother did.”

I’m too stunned to respond, though I don’t know why.

I work for a newspaper. Every day we report stories of crime—murder, assault, rape, robbery, embezzlement.

As we say in the news biz, “If it bleeds it leads.” But I’m related to Kennedy, and by extension her mother, sort of.

And we’re not the kind of family that steals.

Although Willy might’ve been. But I never completely considered him a member of my family.

“Well, she needs to return the money,” I say.

“She doesn’t have it to return.”

“Then she’s the one who should go to the police. Or to your client. Or whoever. How did this happen, Kennedy? Please tell me she desperately needed the money for a heart transplant or something equally urgent.”

Kennedy sits up and turns to me. “Puerta Vallarta. She needed a trip to Puerta Vallarta with her boyfriend.” She lays her head down again. “I can’t let her take the fall.”

“Why not ? If she’s the one who stole the money . . .”

“Because she didn’t mean it. She thought Willy was leaving me . . . us . . . a bundle and that I could pay it back. I know what you’re thinking and it’s not like that. She’s not like that. She’s a good person. A good person who sometimes does stupid things.”

“Ya think? How is it that she even came into possession of your client’s winnings?” To say I’m confused is an understatement.

“She’s a bookkeeper at Caesars. It was my job to see to Mr. Sterling’s every need, including arranging a deposit of his winnings.

It’s standard operating procedure for any casino host. I cash in his chips, give him a receipt, take the cash to the basement, fill out a form, and one of the bookkeepers is in charge of wiring the money to the bank of his choice.

I’ve done it hundreds of times. This time, Mom was my bookkeeper. ”

“And instead of depositing the money she kept it?”

Kennedy doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to.

I want to scream, What kind of mother does that? Not helpful, Emma . It seems the only thing that would be helpful at this point is thirty thousand dollars.

“Don’t you make a bunch of money doing what you do?” I say. “You’ve got to have some savings.”

“I make decent money but between paying half my mother’s rent and mine and all my other expenses, I live paycheck to paycheck. Like the rest of the country.”

“You don’t have any credit cards that you could take out a cash advance on?”

“Not with those kinds of balances. I tried to hock some jewelry, but no one would pay me anything close to thirty grand.”

“What about your car? It’s a BMW, they’re expensive.”

“I bought it used. The air conditioner is broken, and it has ninety thousand miles on it. I’d be lucky to get ten. Believe me, I looked it up on Kelley Blue Book.”

“Can you talk to the client, reason with him, tell him that you just came into an inheritance and that you’ll be able to come up with the money in a month or two?

Or better yet, pay him back in installments.

Maybe by then we could borrow against Cedar Pines or use some of the lot rent toward what your mother”—I emphasize mother —“owes him.”

“I’ve already tried that. It’s too late. Before we left, I got a message from a Las Vegas detective. I’m supposed to call him, which means they’re already looking for me.”

“Oh boy.” I let out a long sigh. “I’ll ask Dex for it.”

She does a double take. “You will? You would do that for me? I mean, you don’t even know me. How do you know I didn’t make the whole thing up, that this isn’t some ruse to rip you off?”

I shake my head. Only five minutes ago, she was begging me for the money.

“Look, there’s no guarantee Dex will give it to us.

I’ll have to tell him the truth and he’s not going to like it.

” And Dex can be tight with his money. I guess that’s why he has it and I don’t.

How many times has he told me I’m a spendthrift?

But this is different. This is an emergency.

“But he’s the only person I know with that kind of liquid cash, so it’s at least worth a try. ”

“Thank you. I’ll pay every dime of it back, I swear.”

“Let’s go eat.” I give her an encouraging pat. “We’ll figure out what do about the detective over a nice meal.”

She starts the car again and noses out onto the highway in the direction of town. “Seriously, why are you doing this for me?”

It only takes me three seconds to summon the answer. “Willy would’ve wanted us to take care of each other.”

She slants me a sideways glance. “Willy? Willy didn’t give a shit about me. And from everything you’ve said about him, you neither.”

“I think he changed when he got cancer. I think he looked back on his life and realized the mistakes he’d made. That’s why he left us Cedar Pines Estates, to bring us together.”

“I think you have a rich imagination,” she says and slants me another glance, this one longer than the last. “Willy died as worthlessly as he lived. Even so, I’m grateful.” That last part she says in a whisper.

I get the sense that she’s not often grateful because she doesn’t have a whole lot to be grateful about.

* * *

That night, I hole up in my bedroom and call Dex.

He’s in a good mood—today’s trading must’ve gone well—which I see as a good sign.

I start out with small talk, telling him about my day, the gorgeous hotel where Kennedy and I ate lunch, how the town’s decked out for Halloween, and about the next-door neighbor who fixed our window.

“Watch out,” he says. “The guy probably wants to get with you or your stepsister.”

“She’s my half sister. And can’t someone just be a good person?”

“You really do live in the clouds, Emma.”

There’s no sense arguing with him. We’re polar opposites when it comes to our philosophical views on humankind.

He believes everything is transactional and I believe there are still people left on this earth who actually care about each other.

Hence, the reason I’m dreading the rest of this conversation.

“I have to ask you something, Dex. And I want you to hear me out before you make a decision.”

“We’ve been over our living situation a million times, Emma. The answer is still no.”

“It’s not about me moving in with you. I’m fine here in Ghost. In fact, I quite like it.

This is something else. I need to borrow some money.

It’s for Kennedy . . . she’s in trouble.

” I explain the entire story to him, how her mother stole money from Kennedy’s client and how she’s on the hook for it.

I tell him that a police detective in Las Vegas is searching for her and that if she doesn’t make good on the money, she’ll likely go to jail.

He waits until I get to the end of the story without interrupting even once.

“So she told you this, huh? And you’re buying it?”

“Of course. Why would she make it up, Dex?”