Heiress Takes All

by Emily Wibberley

White baseboards giving way to pink paint; deep, dark hardwood floors where the balls of my bare feet thump with every step; crown molding, which… I only know what crown molding is because Dad would not stop pointing out to guests that the crown molding dates back to the 1800s.

The Olivia who invited over prep school classmates to experience its epic grounds because when she felt like she couldn’t be interesting or important or loved, one thing she could be was rich.

It’s probably the only pang of remorse I have for how the day went. The pink baby-doll dress my mom purchased, determined for me to fit into my dad’s world, despite how his new bride’s handbags cost what Mom makes every month.

I slam my hand on the handle of the unassuming, unpretentious door. Behind it, concrete service stairs descend even lower. The walls of the hallway here have changed without warning from genteel Georgian to unceremonious, unyielding gray cement.

While I might know every inch of this unwelcoming home, I don’t necessarily know every conceivable hidden exit from its subterranean floor.

Otherwise, the Vive employees’ lounge is a gray underworld in contrast to the clean commercial aisles outside. Overhead lights humming with their depressing cast. Couches no one uses, wispy cotton protruding from the rips in their cushions. Lockers against one wall with empty loops for employees to place our own locks.

The waver of weakness in my imprecise hand is from the hours I’ve just spent scrubbing the floor surrounding the refrigerators, where someone dropped a glass bottle of tea.

I’m not ashamed to scrub floors, not when I know it’s helping my mom with our finances. No, I’m ashamed by how much I suck at it. I have no intuition for the work, not to mention no musculature. Growing up on the Owens estate with housekeepers, I developed no finesse for what equipment or products to use, how much pressure each surface or stain demands, or countless other intricacies, leaving me envious of my more experienced coworkers. I’m Cinderella in reverse, the princess who discovered one day she was destined for drudgery.

On my darkest days, I wish Mom had maybe… made it work. Not forgiven my father. Just… figured out how to live under our old roof instead of in the small home I moved into with her two years ago, when my father’s prenup left her with nothing. Why should we get punished for his misdeeds?

Wow.

Other times, when I look into them, I can see she’s stuck somewhere. In some shadowy, exhausting labyrinth she doesn’t know how to get out of. Like she doesn’t know if she’s moving forward or if she’s just still moving.

It’s the perfect disguise. Myself. Or the idea of me. The daughter of controversial podcaster–multimedia mogul Dashiell Owens. My father’s made his fame on off-the-cuff impulsivity, on not overthinking, on deciding everything while considering nothing.

The truth is, I haven’t thought of much else since The Plan entered my head in one dark flash the day that we received Dad’s Save the Date in the mail. I’ve studied enough to keep my grades up, to dispel suspicion. I’ve helped out my mom however I could. I got this job, the least I could do when my mom works three, supporting us while struggling to stay on top of her medical debt.

She’s fine except for pains in her wrist—and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt forcing her to keep working. Even miracles can cost everything these days.

For months, I’ve filled countless notebook pages with important research, checklists, schedules, diagrams, everything. No one ever counted on Cinderella wanting revenge.

With one parting glance in the mirror, I return my makeup to my locker, knowing I’ll never see it again. I leave the dismal employees’ room of my job for what will be the final time, one way or another. In nine hours, I’ll either be very rich or I’ll be in deep, deep trouble.

Coventry looks like the town knows things—like the woods of exhaust-dusted trees hold secrets they’ll never reveal.

I don’t like complicated unless I’m in charge of the complications.

I stole the makeup on one of the essentials-only convenience store trips my mom sent me on. It’s not the only time I’ve lifted something small in the years since my parents’ divorce. The paperweight from my dad’s attorney’s office, crystal figurines from classmates’ parties… I consider it “recreational petty larceny.”

The only other item in my clutch is my phone. They’re my final props designed to turn myself into a character, the stepdaughter acting out because her daddy is getting married.

I learned to recognize the prelude to his vicious impatience from exhaustingly frequent instances, whenever I dropped something or had my iPad too loud or left the house late. I’d caught it then for FaceTiming my friends from the limo. I guess I was noisy or annoying or just young and a girl or who knows. Do everyone a favor, he snapped when I’d hung up. Keep your mouth shut tonight. While indignation flashed on my mom’s face, she knew not to provoke him further.

The goal itself is simple. The passcodes to my dad’s online offshore accounts—handwritten, to be unhackable—are in the safe in his office, just feet from where he will be getting married in a few hours. We get into the wedding, get the combination to the safe, then get the passcodes. Steal his money. And, more important, get revenge.

Despite going to the same school, we’ve only ever met over months of emails, which I’ve decided speaks well of her, given the unique circumstances of our new friendship. She looks like how she writes—efficient.

Deonte is Black, six feet tall, probably well over two hundred pounds. He’s built like a football player, which is convenient because he is a running back for East Coventry High, where I’ve gone since my dad punted me and my mom to Coventry—no football pun intended.

I clear my throat before I speak, not wanting to have phlegm from hours of not talking to anyone during my shift in my first remark to my crew. Heist leaders do not have after-work phlegm.

“It doesn’t look big enough,” I say. “That’s because it’s in pieces,” he replies. “It wasn’t safe to transport fully assembled.”

I wonder if Maureen, my soon-to-be stepmom, is this nervous, or if self-involvement has entirely swallowed self-consciousness in the bride.

His capacity for manipulating failings into marks of pride is rivaled only by his fear of looking like the loser-jerk he is.

Coventry’s one-stories with chain-link fences cede to the endless green lawns of East Greenwich, where trees hide long driveways curving up to stately homes with white shutters.

Will I even go to college? I don’t know. Although my father might step in and pay to save face, it’s not easy to contemplate leaving my mom with her debt, her lonely house. We’re the only light in each other’s days sometimes. With our present the way it looks, I don’t know how to make sense of my future. It’s impossible to mock my compatriots’ high school preoccupations without recognizing how, deep down, I’m viciously hungry for their comforting simplicity.

Tom Pham is going to be famous one day. You just know it when you see him. Not because he’s trying hard like most drama department prima donnas—but because he’s not. Everything, from the precise wattage of his knowing smile in every conversation to the easy slant of his posture right now, standing on the corner outside his house with his hands in his pockets, feels naturally charming and charmingly natural. He’s effortlessly cool, unflappably funny. Henry Golding meets Harry Styles in one sharply dressed chatterbox.

Like with Cassidy’s funereal ensemble, I did not request the exquisite flash of Tom’s outfit, the dark olive suit he pulls off with his nicely understated black tie on top of his crisp white shirt.

“Could we please de-escalate the air conditioner situation in here?” he inquires while stepping over me to the only open seat. “No,” I say immediately. So does everyone else.

“Is that a bomb?” His question comes out mildly scandalized instead of genuinely fearful. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say curtly. Tom’s eyes rove over the box in the trunk. “Okay, but, like,” he says, “would you tell me if it was a bomb?” “Would you freak out if it were?” I ask.

“Shh,” I hiss. “We cannot have heist crew members hollering the names of other heist crew members in residential neighborhoods on weekend afternoons.”

He addressed every student as Mr., Ms., or Mx., as if it were the only way he could cope with being called Mr. McCoy all day.

“I have no intention of being caught for any crimes today. Not now, not on our way home, not ever. Nothing we do can raise suspicion. Like, for instance, having a teenager in formal wear driving a utility van full of other minors.

Due to unfortunate events during my freshman year, the only year I went to Berkshire Preparatory—where I met Tom—I guessed Mr. Peter McCoy would be interested in joining our crew. I was right.

“I thought the B I gave you on your C-minus Chaucer paper would’ve earned me your trust, Mr. Pham,”

“Could I get the aux cord?” he pipes up. I eye him in exasperation. “What did I just say?” “This is a rental van from, like, 2000,” Cass comments without looking up from her computer. “I don’t think there’s an aux cord.”

“I just… made us a little pump-up playlist,” he confesses. He consults his phone, scrolling Spotify wistfully. “‘Money’ by Cardi B, ‘Money Trees’ by Kendrick—” “Did you just put songs with money in the title?” Deonte interjects. “Well, I’m not doing this heist for fun,” Tom shoots back.

I’ve refused to let Jackson “explain himself”—which I know with near certainty would look less like explaining himself than promising everything would be different, imploring me with those perfect brown eyes, pouring honeyed poison down my throat. Not going to happen.

The recency of our breakup is deeply unfortunate—if it had happened months before the wedding instead of weeks, he could’ve easily been uninvited. But Maureen sent her invites perfectly on time, and of course she invited her soon-to-be stepdaughter’s (gag) boyfriend.

“It’s not going to happen. My father’s wedding isn’t the time. It will never be the time. If I see you in the next six hours, it will not be by choice. We’re done.”

Rip the bandaid salt in wound.

While I did not know Tom well when we were Berkshire classmates—even when we were freshmen, he was one of those campus celebrities who few really knew outside of his beloved TikTok—you didn’t need to be close with Tom Pham to know he loves gossip, which is what he’s caught a whiff of in Deonte’s well-intentioned question.

On the curving climb under the vermillion cover of fall leaves, I can’t help remembering the dinners I’ve had here every week for the past couple years—my dad’s new way of pretending we’re a family.

When the road evens out, our destination finally in view out the windshield, we follow the valets’ directions into the collection of Maseratis, Maybachs, and Porsches filling the otherwise needlessly large green lawn flanking one side of the house. The older I get, the more perplexing I find this feature of the grounds. What did Dad plan on doing out here? Play polo? Hold Coachella?

Like their identities, I’ve concealed from each member of my crew the parts of the plan they didn’t genuinely need to know—until now.

If we’re overheard or our communications over the course of the next six hours are discovered or whatever, keeping our real names clean is imperative.

“Whenever I would go meet one of you, I used the same excuse to my mom,” I explain. “I would say I was going to chess club.”

“I’ll be Queen,” Cassidy decides. “Because the queen can move wherever she wants.”