His Hired Bride

by Holly Rayner

I found my car where I'd left it. My hands shook as I turned the key in the ignition, and I drove home without stopping, adrenaline still flooding my body.

  I half expected the police to be waiting for me, but they weren't. No one had followed me. No one had been called. I flicked on the living room light. My feet were wet in my sneakers, and I could still feel the night's cold in my bones. I wanted to go to my bedroom, get undressed, and take a shower, but something stopped me. I stood in the living room, staring at the stolen items which surrounded me.

  While I sold most of what I took from the houses, sometimes I was unable to move an item and had to keep it. That's what happened with the broken clock that sat on my narrow, painted mantle over the fireplace. The yellow vase in the corner hadn't turned out to be worth as much as I’d expected, so, rather than risk fencing such a cheap item, I'd kept it. I hadn't noticed the silver money clip in the desk drawer was monogrammed until I'd gotten home with it, and it was far too risky to fence personalized items.

  Those items, the ones I couldn't sell, were easy to justify keeping. But there were others, things I'd taken and kept for myself simply because I wanted them. The music box upstairs on my bedroom dresser. The silver soap dish in the bathroom. The tapestry in the hallway. Those things proved that I really was what the man had called me: a thief. There was no nobility in breaking into houses simply because you like pretty things. I'd never be the good guy in anyone's story.

  I sighed and headed to the bathroom, tossing my backpack into my bedroom as I passed it on the way.

  As I showered, I thought about what the man had said. I didn't know if I deserved a second chance, or even if I wanted one. I hadn't set out to become a thief, after all. My first job after dropping out of college had been waiting tables at a pizza place downtown. The money had been okay, but it was never enough to pay the household bills, let alone provide Marion with the things she needed. I took a second job cleaning office buildings and empty apartments, but still, month after month, I fell short. Marion graduated from high school, the summer began, and her first day of college loomed before me. I'd told her it was no problem—that she was going to Northwest, her first choice school, the one she'd worked so hard to get into. I planned the move with her, and even bought her a few things for her dorm move, just as if there weren't a $10,000 tuition bill that I had no idea how I was going to pay.

  It was a week before the payment deadline when I was sitting outside the pizza place on my fifteen-minute break. I gazed at the people rushing by, but I didn't really see them. I was rehearsing, in my head, how to tell her that she couldn't go. I leaned against the brick wall of the restaurant, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. It was all too much.

  That's how he found me, wearing that stained uniform, my eyes full of tears. His name was Derek, and we'd gone out for a few months in the summer after I'd graduated high school. It hadn't lasted, partly because of his mean temper and partly because of his wandering eye. I hadn't thought about him in years, and I certainly wasn't glad to see him again after so long.

  He made a lazy pass at me, but it felt more like habit than genuine interest on his part. I expected him to leave after I'd shut him down, but he didn't. Instead, he asked me if I needed a job.

  "I have a job," I said, pointing at my uniform before glancing at my watch. My break was almost over.

  "Yeah, and you make what in a shift? Fifty bucks? A hundred?" He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

  I shrugged. "What do you care?"

  "My friends need help with something. The job pays five hundred dollars for two hours' work."

  I made a face. "Go to hell, Derek. I'm not a hooker." I meant it, but still felt a flash of temptation at the thought of the money.

  He laughed at me. "Don't flatter yourself, honey. You're good, but not five hundred dollars good."

  I ignored his insult.

  "What's the job, then?"

  He shook a cigarette out and lit it. He put the pack away and glanced around, then came closer to me.

  He explained that the job was a warehouse robbery, some place where one of his buddies worked. They were going to move out a bunch of electronics and needed someone to stand lookout. He assured me that the job was low-risk. If it went bad, I could just walk away and pretend I wasn't with them.

  Five hundred wouldn't be enough to pay Marion's tuition, but the college might agree to make a payment plan if I had something to give them up front.

  I bummed a cigarette from him as I thought about it. I rarely smoked, and the first drag made my head spin, adding to the absurdity of the moment.

  "Five hundred isn't enough," I said.

  He smiled.

  We eventually settled on seven hundred, and the job was a simple as Derek had promised. He and his three friends left that day with over three hundred flat-screen televisions and five hundred laptop computers. The guys were giddy with the size of the haul and decided to make my cut an even thousand. They thought I was good luck.

  I never went back to the pizza place.

  The day after the warehouse job, I called Northwest and set up a payment plan. The day that I signed the installment agreement for Marion's tuition was the day that I truly became a thief. The payments were enormous; there wasn't a waitressing job in the world that would allow me to earn that amount.

  It's amazing what you can make yourself do when you think you don’t have a choice. That's what I said to myself, over and over, whenever my conscience would rise up. I thought about Jean Valjean, the noble thief from Les Misérables. I told myself that I was brave, and that no one needed the things I took—at least, not as much as I did.

  I'm still regularly flabbergasted by the unbelievable wealth of Seattle's upper class. In the houses I've broken into, I've found solid gold picture frames, dog collars studded with diamonds, toothbrushes with ivory handles. I've found cigar boxes full of cash and baggies of drugs stashed in sock drawers. I once found a child's piggy bank with over six thousand dollars stuffed inside, mostly in crumpled twenties and fifties.

  Do they know that people a mile away from here are starving? That someone tonight will have their heat turned off because of an eighty dollar unpaid bill?

  I almost hated them for their excesses, and that made it easier, too.

  At first, all the money went to Marion's school. The payment arrangement I'd made with them made me uneasy, and I relaxed a little more when I'd paid her bill in full for that year. I'd planned to take a break from stealing after that, but found myself going out anyhow. I told myself that I needed to put money into savings for next year's tuition bill. I did save money, but I spent it, too. I replaced the battered living room furniture, I fixed the roof that leaked after bad storms, and the oven that didn't heat up. I bought clothes for myself and a computer for Marion. The joy on her face when she opened her gift that Christmas made me forget my guilt, at least for a few days. But then she went back to school, and I was alone again.

  The house had been my mother’s, and her presence was still everywhere. She'd worked tirelessly to support the three of us. She'd done it alone, and she'd done it honestly. She hadn't raised us to lie or to steal. I knew she'd never approve of what I was doing. I imagined her sadness each time I returned from a job carrying things that did not belong to me. I rid the place of the things that had belonged to her, filling it with the things I'd stolen or bought with ill-gotten money, but I couldn't make that feeling go away. It would always be my mother's house.

  I wondered what my mother would have thought about the man I'd met tonight, the one who'd given me a second chance.

  You know damn well what she'd think. That you were lucky. That you need to wake up. That you won’t be able to help Marion or yourself if you end up in prison.

  By the time I stepped out of the shower, I felt more tired than ashamed. I toweled off my hair, smelling the boutique shampoo that I'd never been able to afford on a waitress's pay. I went to my bedroom, put on a soft t-shirt
to sleep in, and slipped between sheets that belonged in a luxury resort, not a college dropout's tiny house in a low-rent suburb. I reached over and turned off an antique lamp I'd concealed in a baby carriage before I took it from a lake-front mansion six months ago.

  Even in the darkness, I felt surrounded, suffocated by my sins. A lump rose in my throat as I wondered if I'd ever again feel like a good person, someone worthy of being loved by someone as amazing as my mother.

  It's never too late to make things right.

  I heard her voice in my head, and even though I knew it was just my own thoughts, love for my mother swelled in my chest.

  "I miss you," I whispered in the darkness. "I wish you were here, Mom. I've screwed up so badly and I don’t know what to do."

  I love you anyway. You know that I do. I will always love you, no matter what you do.

  I let the tears come, half wishing I'd been raised by someone less wonderful; maybe then I wouldn't miss her so much.

  By the time my tears dried, I knew what I had to do. I lay in the dark making a mental list of everything I'd taken that I still had in my house.

  The clock, the tapestry, that scarf, the green ring, the music box...

  I never forgot a house, and I never forgot an item. I couldn't do anything about the things that had already been sold, but it was in my power to return the things I still had. Maybe it wouldn't mean anything to the people I'd stolen from, but on the other hand, maybe the lamp was a family heirloom. Maybe the tapestry was a gift from a lost lover. Maybe I could undo a little of the damage I'd caused. And even if I couldn't, I'd still know that I'd done everything I could to make things right. I never again wanted to feel the fear I'd felt tonight when I'd thought the police were coming for me, and I never again wanted to wonder if my mother would still love me if she were here now.

  The violin, the red shoes, the silver bracelet...

  I began to drift off, feeling more peaceful than I had in months. Just as my eyes closed, though, they shot open again. I sat up straight in bed, then got out of it, fumbling in the dark for the backpack I'd tossed aside.

  Sure enough, it was there. The room was too dark for me to see clearly, but there was no mistaking the cold weight of the watch I'd stolen from the sad, mysterious man in that dismal mansion—I never gave it back.

  FOUR