CALLIOPE SAT CONTENTEDLY on the floor of her mom’s closet, watching through half-lidded eyes as Elise packed for her honeymoon.
She had always found it oddly soothing, watching her mom pack a suitcase. It might have been the way Elise picked up various items—a flowy crepe de chine skirt, a pair of cropped jeans, a dangly pair of earrings—and sorted them into careful piles. The way she wrapped them, in delicate no-wrinkle paper, each shoe lovingly tucked into a padded bag. There was something comforting and ritualistic about it all, especially since packing a bag usually meant their con was drawing to a close. It was the last mile marker before they left town for good.
Calliope yawned and stretched her legs out before her. There was a linen-tufted bench that ran the length of the closet, but she didn’t want to sit on it; the oyster-colored carpet was so soft and fluffy. She found herself surprisingly glad that Elise and Nadav had decided to wait a few days before leaving on their honeymoon. It was nice to have a moment alone with her mom.
Calliope just wasn’t used to watching her mom actually get married. Although she’d been engaged fourteen times, Elise usually skipped town long before the actual ceremony, with the ring and any other gifts she could take with her. Only once before had she actually gone through with the wedding—to a Polish lord, with real papers of nobility—and Calliope felt certain that Elise had done it because she wanted to secretly call herself a lady for the rest of her life. It was the ultimate f-you to her old boss, Mrs. Houghton.
“Don’t forget swimsuits,” Calliope reminded her mom, trying to be helpful.
“I won’t need a swimsuit, sweetie.”
“There isn’t even a hot tub in the Gobi Desert?”
“It’s northern Mongolia,” Elise corrected. “To visit the woolly mammoth reculturation center. We’ll be volunteering on the steppe, helping dig up the permafrost that obstructs their grazing sites.”
God, her poor mom had given that speech so many times, she practically believed her own con. “Sorry you couldn’t convince Nadav to take you to Bali, or the Maldives.” If her mom was going to actually be married to this guy, at least she should get a beach vacation out of it.
“Oh, I don’t mind. And we’re going to Japan for a few days afterward to relax.”
“Japan, to relax? You hate it there!”
“Japan can be relaxing. All those zen gardens and tea ceremonies.”
Calliope was surprised how hurt she felt at the idea of her mom having tea without her. “You made us leave Japan early the one time we went,” she reminded Elise. “You said it was loud and chaotic, and impossible to navigate unless you speak Japanese.”
“Nadav speaks Japanese.”
It was the weirdest thing, but her mom actually seemed excited about this honeymoon. Maybe she was just ready to get away from all the madness of the wedding, and her ice queen of a mother-in-law. Calliope didn’t blame her.
She felt guilty all over again for the sacrifice she had asked her mom to make: agreeing to stay here in New York, to trade their nomadic existence for a settled family life. Surely by now Elise was getting restless. Wasn’t she counting down the days till it was all over?
Wasn’t Calliope?
She thought briefly, longingly, of Brice—but then she remembered Livya, and that ominous threat she’d made at the wedding. There was no way Calliope would ever really get to date Brice, not with her new stepsister breathing down her neck.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself, trying not to feel disappointed. Her flirtation with Brice had been just that—a flirtation. It hadn’t meant anything.
Calliope stood up and wandered over to the marble-topped dresser where her mom was sorting a stack of ivory pajamas. She cleared her throat. “Mom, I don’t know if this is worth it anymore.”
“What do you mean, sweetie?”
“It’s my fault that we’re here. I’m the one who wanted to stay and actually live somewhere for once, play out this con for another year. But it’s getting ridiculous. New York isn’t worth this. Nowhere is worth this. We aren’t even having any fun here—we’re stuck pretending to be prim and proper and boring, just to maintain your meaningless relationship with Nadav!”
“It isn’t meaningless,” Elise said quietly, though Calliope didn’t hear her at first.
“You shouldn’t have to suffer through that awful honeymoon. Why don’t we just leave? Besides, it’s getting too risky. I think Livya—”
Elise took Calliope’s hands in hers. “I don’t want to leave,” she said quietly.
Calliope blinked, stunned, as the truth hurtled inescapably toward her. It couldn’t be.
“Surely you don’t— I mean—” she stammered.
“I love him.”
Calliope thought back to all her mom’s girlish exclamations of delight, the starry-eyed way she’d looked at Nadav during the wedding. Had those smiles been real? “After all the times you told me never to let myself care about a mark?”
Her voice had risen too loud, but Elise didn’t chide her. “I love Nadav,” she stated simply. “This marriage is real. It isn’t just a con to me, not anymore.”
This is just a job, her mom used to say, in clipped, unsentimental tones. It’s temporary and unpredictable. Caring about people will only hurt you. Don’t let it happen. And now Elise, arguably the world’s greatest con artist, was violating her own cardinal rule—and for who? A nerdy cybernetics engineer.
Calliope stared wonderingly at her mom, suddenly realizing just how drastically Elise had changed.
Of course, Elise had changed constantly over the years. As they moved from place to place, playing out their various cons, she’d been forced to keep altering her appearance: widening and then re-thinning her nose, changing her hair and eye color, tweaking the curve of her chin. She was always beautiful, yet each time her mom emerged from surgery with a new face and new irises, Calliope had to get used to her all over again.
This was completely different. This time, Elise had actually become someone new.
“How . . . ? I mean when . . . ?”
Elise sank down onto the bench with a sigh, pulling Calliope to sit next to her. “I don’t know,” she confessed. She looked suddenly girlish and innocent, the light gleaming on her pearl stud earrings. “Maybe it’s that I’ve been with him for so long, much longer than I’ve been with anyone else. But I really care about him.”
“Even though he thinks you’re a goody-goody philanthropist?”
“Yes, even though he thinks I’m a goody-goody philanthropist,” Elise repeated, in such a matter-of-fact tone that Calliope couldn’t help laughing. She laughed at the sheer unlikely madness of it all, and after a moment Elise was laughing too.
“I don’t understand,” Calliope said at last. “How can you love him when you aren’t even yourself with him? I mean, he thinks you actually want to spend your honeymoon volunteering, scooping up woolly mammoth poop!”
“I’ve had plenty of beach vacations in my life. I don’t really need another one,” Elise said, in a way that made it seem as if she truly didn’t mind at all. That must be real love, Calliope thought wonderingly—being able to efface your own desires for the person you care about.
She wondered if she would ever feel that way about anyone. Brice’s face rose stubbornly into her consciousness, but she quickly forced it away.
“It’s really worth it to you?” she asked. “Staying in New York is worth playing this role forever?”
“Nadav is worth it,” Elise corrected. “New York was always your thing. I like it here, but I wouldn’t really care where we were, as long as I was with him.”
It was so outlandish that it had to be true. Wow, Calliope thought again in silent shock. Sweet, fumbling Nadav: so well-meaning but gruff. Who would’ve guessed that Elise would end up falling for him?
“If you really love him, I’m happy for you,” she decided, and was gratified by her mom’s smile.
Then Calliope remembered what Livya had said to her at Saks and again at the wedding. Her heart sank.
She glanced down at her hands, clasped in her lap, her fingernails filed into careful half-moons and utterly devoid of polish—because of course nail polish, even nude colors, wasn’t in character. “I think Livya suspects something.”
“What do you mean?” Elise asked carefully.
“She confronted me while we were dress shopping and at the reception. She suggested that we’re gold diggers, and that we aren’t who we say we are.” Calliope paused to let her well-trained eidetic memory kick in. “She said that most of the women who’ve dated Nadav in the past were just in it for the money, and that one of the reasons he loves you is because of how selfless you claim to be.”
Her mom listened to this with surprising calm. “Any girl would say that about a stranger marrying her wealthy father. It doesn’t sound like Livya really knows anything.”
Calliope winced. “She did catch me sneaking out. Twice.” She refrained from mentioning the fact that it was to see Brice.
“Then you can’t sneak out again,” Elise admonished. “Not with Livya watching us so closely. We can’t afford to do anything suspicious.”
Elise didn’t have to spell it out for Calliope to know what she meant. Nadav’s moral code was severe and uncompromising. If he learned the truth about them—that they were high-class grifters who’d left a string of broken hearts in their wake; that Elise had, in fact, first targeted Nadav for his money—he wouldn’t just send them packing. He might very well send them to jail.
“Promise me you’ll behave. Don’t risk everything just because of some boy,” Elise pleaded.
And even though she’d been telling herself that it meant nothing, that it was just a flirtation, Calliope bristled at her mom’s words. “He isn’t just some boy.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. But no more sneaking out, no more acting sarcastic or opinionated. Just keep your head down and act like the sweet, selfless girl that I told everyone you are,” Elise asked. “It’ll all be over in less than a year when you graduate. Then you can go off and be whoever you want to be. Please, for my sake, promise me.”
Calliope sighed in resignation, watching as her reflection in the mirror did the same. For once, the sight didn’t make her smile. “Why did you tell Nadav that we were philanthropists, again?”
“Because it was so clearly his type,” Elise said softly and sighed. “I’m sorry this is such a mess. To think that of all the people we’ve conned, he is the one I ended up staying with.”
“More like, of all the roles we’ve played, this is the one we ended up stuck with,” Calliope exclaimed. “Why couldn’t you have pitched us as something else? Eccentric heiresses to a shipping fortune, or bohemian artists, or what about French nobility? I loved that time we were comtesses.”
“You were an appalling comtesse,” Elise declared, and they both smiled wistfully at the memory.
“Poor Nadav, in love with a made-up character.”
“Maybe I can change,” Elise said with surprising vigor. “Maybe I can become the person he’s fallen in love with, if I give it enough time.”
Calliope wasn’t sure that was the best foundation for a relationship, but what did she know? She’d never exactly had a real relationship either.
“Besides,” Elise went on, “this way if you go to college next year, you’ll actually have somewhere to come home to.”
“College?” Calliope had never really considered it.
“What else are you going to do, start running cons by yourself?” Elise shook her head. “I don’t want that for you.”
Calliope didn’t want that either. Yet she couldn’t really picture herself in college, at least not in classes. Lounging around a coffee shop and scouting out boys, maybe. Flitting around parties and breaking hearts, definitely. Joining a sorority, rising to the top of its hierarchy, and ruling it with an iron fist, for sure. But actually going to classes and studying to become something? Calliope wouldn’t even know where to start.
“I’ll give college some thought,” she said vaguely.
“Knock, knock,” Nadav said, pushing open the closet door. Calliope barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Of course Nadav was the type of person who said knock, knock instead of just knocking.
“Are you almost packed? Oh, hi, Calliope,” he added.
“I was just giving my mom some fashion advice,” she said, standing up quickly.
“Good. I’m glad someone is doing that, since I’m definitely not qualified.” Another lame dad joke. Nadav’s gaze drifted to Elise, and he flashed an indulgent smile. “I just wanted to remind you that our plane leaves at six.”
“I can’t wait,” Elise said warmly. She was gazing at Nadav with such affection that the intensity of it almost knocked Calliope backward.
She and her mom had lived so many lives through the years, casting off their used identities each time they moved, like last season’s discarded clothing. But Nadav brought out another side of Elise: the happiest side of her, maybe even the best side. And if this was what her mom wanted, then Calliope would do everything in her power to help her get it.
She didn’t even know Brice that well, so she wasn’t sure why she was so disappointed to lose him. But it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t see him again.
She had to give him up, for her mom’s sake.