Starter House(76)

She could go home. She could persuade Drew. All he wanted was love, like any child. She’d keep him sweet, make sure he never again thought she loved someone else more than she loved him— No, she couldn’t. As soon as the baby was born, he’d know the truth. He’d had a sister once, baby Dorothy who cried all the time. Lacey would never be able to convince him he was first in her heart, and the baby simply a tiresome responsibility.

She fanned through her handful of twenties again. Even if Eric paid spousal maintenance without fighting her—and if the court went by last year’s tax returns, she’d end up paying him, she having worked while he was in school—it would be weeks before any money came. Seventeen hundred dollars wasn’t much. Fourteen hundred was even less. Ella Dane was right, it was easy to walk out of a hotel with no luggage. So she did it.

It was easier than it had been when she was twelve or thirteen, and it was her job to haul the duffel bags down the stairs and out of the hotel while her mother came down the elevator and quizzed the desk clerk as to the best place to eat lunch. Now she came down the elevator herself, waddled through the lobby and out the front door, giving the desk clerk a tired smile. It was only nine thirty. She wasn’t skipping the bill; she was stepping out for a breath of air. Out to the parking lot, and there was her car. Left and then right and she was on Airport Road with sixteen hundred dollars rolled up in the zippered inner pocket of her purse, and one hundred thirty-six in her wallet.

She pulled into a gas station for pork rinds, beef jerky, and barbecue potato chips. Back in her car, she tore open the bag of pork rinds, took a bite, and let it melt into grease on her tongue. The nausea she felt had nothing to do with the baby. This was the same way she’d felt when she took up shoplifting at thirteen.

She didn’t steal for fun, the way her friends did—thirty, forty, sixty dollars in their wallets, and they’d snatch up here a lipstick, there a designer clutch or pair of sunglasses. No. Lacey stole only the things she so urgently needed, and Ella Dane couldn’t or wouldn’t buy for her. She stole bras, panties, and even shoes, putting on the new shoes in a style similar to her old, shoving her old pair into the box, and walking out in the new. She was careful and quick, and always knew when someone was watching. The shoes were the riskiest, but if she pulled out at least ten pairs and tried them on, first in pairs and then in mismatched pairs, walking up and down the aisles and eyeing her feet from every angle in the mirrors, the store employees lost interest. They were glad to see her go, grateful she had put all the shoes back in their boxes. The bras and panties she simply slid from their packaging, rolled tight in her hand, and shoved up her sleeves.

She needed them. Ella Dane shopped in thrift stores. Mostly, it wasn’t so bad. The smell came off after a couple of washings. But the shoes never fit right, and as for thrift-store underwear, everybody had to draw the line somewhere. Lacey would rather steal.

When she was fourteen, she started babysitting, and then tutoring, and she didn’t have to steal anymore. This was something she’d never told Eric. He claimed to have no secrets from her, and maybe he really didn’t. He’d told her about the girls he’d been with before her (both of them), and how ashamed he was of the way he’d broken up with his first girlfriend (at her birthday party, just after the cake). He apologized to the girl and gave her a gold necklace for her birthday, and she forgave him and agreed that it was for the best—she was getting ready to dump him, anyway.

“I didn’t feel right until I told her I was sorry,” he’d told Lacey.

She couldn’t tell him about the shoplifting, because he’d insist on her finding some way of making amends. Going back to the stores and giving them their money back, after all these years, like a little girl caught with a candy bar in her pocket. In marrying Eric she had married up, but she hated him to remind her of it.

He’d know about the hotel, because the bill would get back to him. Seventeen hundred dollars wasn’t much, and fourteen hundred was even less, but she couldn’t let Eric think she was a thief. She drove back to the Skyview and turned in her key card. “Thanks,” the clerk said, and went back to tapping on his computer.

She waited. After a while, she said, “Excuse me?”

“Ma’am? Was there a problem with the room?”

“I need to check out.” She put her purse on the counter and dug into it for the roll of twenties. “Two nights. I need to pay cash, if that’s okay.”

He spent a few seconds on the computer. “It’s paid already. Says here, paid in cash, for two nights.”