Carrying Hope (2 page)

The girl turned her heavily lined eyes to the ceiling and sighed.

“Can’t you like, give us a discount or something?”

My heart dropped; that would mean getting the override from Sal. I would have to tell him what happened.

The man reached out to grab her hand; his knuckles were emblazoned with the word PAIN in big bold letters.

“No, that’s all right. We don’t want to get the nice lady in trouble.”

I almost couldn’t believe my ears. There was no way I could be this lucky.

“A-are you sure?” I stammered, wondering if I was pushing my luck. The couple exchanged a look; she obviously didn’t agree with his choice, but his answering glare made her hold her tongue.

“Yes, it’s fine. Thank you,” he finally responded.

I heaved a sigh of relief and went back to pester Bernie again.

“That was the coolest customer ever,” I gushed with a grin. My day definitely started off rocky, but I was glad it seemed to be improving.

“He looks pretty scary to me,” he replied, crossing himself.

“Well, that just goes to show you, you can’t judge a book by its cover,” I teased, my mood lifting.

A few minutes later I served their food and left the check with them to finish up my duties before the next shift took over. I spent about ten minutes rolling silverware before I went to check on them again. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw the table was empty.

Maybe they left the money on the table and didn’t need change. Customers did that all the time. As I got closer, I could tell there was no money on the table.

“Hey, Sal? Did that couple cash out with you?” The old man was wiping the counter down. He looked at me like he was surprised I was still there and then scowled.

“What couple?”

“Shit. I think my table just walked out on me.” I started picking up their dishes, cursing myself for not watching them more closely.

“Their check is coming out of your tips,” he growled.

“The hell it is! They only walked out because your crappy computer system didn’t get their order to the kitchen,” I felt my face flush with anger. My heart beat wildly in my ears; I’d been stepped on too often for too long by Sal. I was not going to lose half of my day’s wages over an honest mistake.

“And how long did you wait to check on it? You should know if the bread doesn’t come out in four or five minutes that you need to check on the kitchen.”

“That’s so not the point,” I felt my resolve slipping. He’d somehow turned this around to make it my fault.

“No, the point is that you’ve demonstrated today that you can’t do this job. Go home and don’t come back.”

I stared at him wide-eyed in shock. Sal was a jerk to everyone. Everyone just took it. Things got heated in restaurants all the time; tempers flared in high temperatures and most restaurant people had short fuses to begin with. It wasn’t unheard of for employees and bosses to fight, but I couldn’t believe he’d really just fired me.

“Are you serious?” My voice was barely a whisper. I felt nauseous again. I thought about how I would tell Kevin that I’d lost my job. He already complained that I didn’t bring in as much as his construction job.

“Get out. You’re fired.”

Bernie dipped his head down to the window to lock gazes with me. I understood his silent plea:
I’m sorry, but I can’t lose my job too.
I nodded at him, letting him know it was okay. 

I ripped my apron off and slammed it and my ticket book on the counter. I didn’t have the words to tell Sal how much I loathed him. I could think of a few choice four-letter words, but I decided to keep my dignity.

I left the diner in a daze. I lost my job. How was I going to tell my boyfriend? I thought about the forty dollars in my pocket and I pushed back the urge to fall into old bad habits. I knew I could turn that forty into four thousand if given the chance. But I promised my grandmother I would stop gambling.

In high school, I was awkward, overweight and nerdy. It was a bad combination for a teenage girl who only ever wanted to be accepted. When my dad lost his job and my mom left, we were struggling to even eat every day. I can remember going to school in dirty ripped clothes, wearing my dad’s oversized flannel shirts and beat up sneakers that were too big for me. It wasn’t a look that made me popular with boys and other girls only made snarky remarks behind my back.

As time wore on, the comments that were once snide whispers as I passed became outright taunts. I was teased about being poor, about being fat, about my mom abandoning us and about my dad’s growing problem with alcohol. Desperate for a way to make money, I started to hang out with a bad crowd.

At first I was doing any kind of job they’d toss my way, mostly I was a lookout for their illicit activities. Sometimes I would make a delivery, sometimes I only delivered a message, but as the weeks went by I wanted to do more. Plenty of the guys I associated with told me how much money I would make selling my body, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There were times when my stomach was grumbling and I was shivering because our gas had been turned off that I considered it. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’m very glad that I never fell that far.

I realized that I could use my nerdiness to my advantage if I could trick people out of their money. It started off small; alley games of three card Monte led to alley games of dice, which in turn led me into a dark seedy bar tucked away in a bad neighborhood.

In the basement of that bar, behind the cooler where they kept the kegs, was a secret room. Entrance to this secret room wasn’t granted easily. Someone had to vouch for you or you had to have five thousand dollars in cash. For some people, you had to have both.

The men that played poker in that secret room were not the kind of men that you wanted to mess around with. Drug dealers, human traffickers and gangsters were only the tip of the iceberg. I wasn’t scared though, I knew I could win.

I only had to get in.

So I got my very first job waitressing at that bar. While I tried to ingratiate myself with the patrons and staff, I spent my nights learning how to count cards. I got very good at it.

By that time, my dad was so far into the bottle that he didn’t notice the report cards stopped coming and the calls from school never made it to him. I took the little bit of money I’d stashed away from my job and tried to get into that back room.

Of course, no one wanted to let a seventeen year old girl into their exclusive criminal gambling ring. The owner of the place laughed in my face and told me that I’d have to follow the same rules as anyone else: have someone vouch for me or pay up.

Vouching for someone was a big deal. If you spoke for someone to get in and they ran up a debt and couldn’t pay, the club was going to come after you. I tried to plead my case to anyone that would listen, but those people were few and far between and no one took my bait.

Then, I did something stupid.

I approached the owner with my plan. I told him that I would win, guaranteed. I offered him a cut of my winnings if he let me in. Being a business man, he accepted my offer and the next thing I knew I was sitting at the table surrounded by a group of men that all had rap sheets longer than my arm.

With a lump in my throat and hands shaking with nerves, I bought in to the table. For the next three hours I managed to hustle every last one of them out of their money. Though I was very good at counting the cards, I wasn’t very good at hiding my technique. Eventually they caught on and complained to the owner, not knowing he was in on the scheme. He made a big show of kicking me out and confiscated all of my winnings.

He later gave me a cut, though it was smaller than what we’d agreed on, and told me to scram. That cut was enough to buy my way into a different gambling hall where I honed my skills to near perfection.

I didn’t have any kind of malicious intent for the money. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to live in a house that wasn’t infested with vermin. I just wanted a normal life. But winning was addictive. I felt powerful and in control. I’d never felt like that any other time in my life.

Somehow or another, my grandmother learned about what I was doing and confronted me. She was the only family that I had left really, and I loved her dearly. Still, I didn’t take kindly to my Nana butting into my business. I’d made tens of thousands of dollars in only a couple of months. I was sure that I had control over everything.

In another six months I was broke. Even worse than that, I’d racked up a debt of over forty thousand dollars and my creditors were coming to collect. I pleaded with my Nana to loan me some money. Just enough to buy in. I swore I could win enough to cover my debts. Eventually, she caved and gave me five thousand dollars from her savings, making me promise that I would never gamble again after that.

I would have agreed to anything she asked at that point. All I wanted was my next fix. I managed to scrape together the money I needed to pay off my loan shark and my Nana. I realized afterward that there was no way I could ever go back. I couldn’t control myself when I was at a table. The heady feeling of power was too much for me. Nana was right.

Reliving those events always helped me remember why I couldn’t go back to the way I was. I made a promise to my Nana that I couldn’t break. I made it home with the forty dollars still in my pocket and braced myself for an awkward conversation with Kevin.

Letters, maps, and yellowed government documents littered the desk in front of me. Over the last year I poured millions into gathering all of these disparate items and I still wasn’t any closer to my goal than when I’d started.

I had to be missing something. The clues were in here if I looked hard enough. I poured myself another glass of scotch, leaning back in my leather chair with a sigh. My study was a mess: books, newspaper clippings, and photographs were scattered in every corner of the lavishly decorated room.

The furnishings hadn’t been my choice, but I had to admit that they made the room more comfortable. When I first bought this house it was for the 100 acre vineyard that was on the property. The six-bedroom mansion was only an added bonus. I hired a decorator, having no patience for furniture shopping. She’d done a remarkable job of making this house look like someone lived in it full time. The reality was that I’d only recently taken to spending time here because of my search.

I downed the rest of my drink, welcoming the caustic burn as it traveled down my esophagus. My eyes were bleary from a lack of sleep and I thought it was probably wise for me to go to bed. Wisdom wasn’t a virtue of mine.

I rifled through the stack of papers in front of me again. My best friend and accomplice, Tanner, put this packet together last week, hoping that I would find something of use in it. So far, all I’d found was frustration.

My eyes fell on my birth certificate. Bryson Ferris Dorian, born to Carol Marie Dorian and… blank. My father wasn’t there when I was born. He didn’t want his name on my birth certificate and my mother never told me who he was before she died. I asked her about him all the time. I tried to bring him up casually to see if I could make her slip. I tried to weasel answers out of her when I was having a bad day. I even tried reading her diary once, but there was nothing useful in it. All traces of my father’s existence had been erased from my mother’s life; except me.

All my mother told me was that my father was an important man and that he had another family. She never said a bad word about him, but I’d come up with enough for the both of us. I didn’t understand how a man could love and dote on one family and completely ignore another. I knew if I ever had a family that I would stop at nothing to protect them and love them as much as I possibly could.

Apparently, my father wanted nothing to do with a bastard son and went to great lengths to make sure that nothing ever connected the two of us. My mother raised me on her own, scraping together every cent she had just to keep me clothed and fed, forsaking her own health in the process.

When she became ill one winter, she was so malnourished that she never recovered. I was twelve at the time. From that moment, I swore that I would never be poor again. I would never have to rely on another person. In my young mind, I thought that if I worked hard enough I could find a way to bring her back.

I worked my fingers to the bone shining shoes, sweeping sidewalks, delivering newspapers, whatever jobs people would give me. I made sure that no one found out that I was living on my own. I was terrified of being placed in a home or in foster care. I wanted to be self-reliant and nothing was going to stop me.