Lily Stanton

Regrets, she had a few.  The first coming to live with her parents during the pandemic because she could work remotely as a medical billing and coding specialist, a job she had to admit she loathed.  All she was doing was ruining people’s lives, even if they had insurance.  Occasionally, she would recode things to make a procedure or a doctor’s visit cheaper.  However, if she were caught, her job would be gone and would she be prosecuted?

She laughed at those simple fears.  Now.  But she hadn’t when Federal agents showed up at their Tuscan orange door in a quiet street away from traffic but near enough to walk to the train.  She had been found out.  Ruin awaited.  But instead—  Puzzled, she called up the stairs.  “Dad?”

And that was the end, wasn’t it?  She had to move out of Scarsdale and fast because she couldn’t hold her head up, she was so embarrassed, so humiliated.  How could her father—

Dad was an addict.  An online gambler.  Who knew?  He was an old man, for goodness sakes.  How did he ever know how to get online to gamble?  And why why why!  He was in debt up to his patootie.  They were going to lose everything.  Her poor mother.  The Feds were trying to get Mom for conspiracy, claiming she had primed the pump, getting her friends to invest.  But what did Mom know?  Really?  Hadn’t she just believed Dad when he told her he had a sure thing?  Of course, she wanted to let her friends in on it.

How did those Russians gangsters get to him anyway, make him do their bidding?  Now he couldn’t even cooperate with the government because his lawyer, a friend from the country club, where they were no longer welcomed, told him not to say a word until they could get the best deal possible.  Dad told  his wife and Lily it might mean prison time, but he would feel better, getting it off his chest; and maybe prison would break him of his gambling habit.  Yea, let’s look on the bright side, Dad.

Her brother Sloan was well away from it all out in sunny California, cocooned in a university, getting his Ph.D. in bioengineering.  No one out there would ever connect Sloan Stanton with Will Stanton, master fraudster.  But what was she to do?  The Stantons had always been a fixture in Scarsdale.  Well, at least in some parts of it, the better parts.

She needed to get out of Scarsdale, out of the state, away from anyone who might recognize her.  And so many did.  After all, she had been senior prom queen in high school, along with being a cheerleader and singing in the chorus.  For college she had just gone up the river a bit to Vassar, so she had that circle of friends around here too.  She couldn’t disappear, fade into nothingness.

Because she lived at home after college, while she took her billing and coding course—after all, what could one do with a degree in comparative literature—she had now saved enough money to live elsewhere.  The problem was her mother.  Her mother begged Lily not to desert them now.  And how could she when her mother was in such a pitiful situation?  So Lily was left, going around town with a scarlet A.  Well, no, A is for adultery.  So she guess an F for fraud?  C for criminal class?  T for tanked, as that’s what her life was doing.

Her mother had taken to drinking wine from Trader Joe’s instead of from Winder’s Winery.  So was Lily going to be dealing with an alcoholic along with a gambling addict?  She should try to interest her mother in marijuana.  It would mellow her out.  But her mother was under the impression that marijuana was still illegal.  Like, that mattered in their household anymore?  But oh no, here Lily was, on her way to Trader Joe’s again.  Using her own credit card because all her parents’ joint cards and bank accounts were frozen.

On her ventures out, Lily took to wearing a hoodie.  She figured, if no one could spot her auburn locks, she was less likely to be recognized.  Grabbing a shopping cart, she wanted to pick up a few vegetables and some samosas before she hit the wine aisle.  It was while she was examining the frozen food that someone said, “Lily?”

Busted!  Damn it!

Lily looked up.  At first she didn’t recognize him.  But then, how could she forget him?  It was Frank Franklin, Eden’s older brother.  He was five years older than she, so she hadn’t really had much to do with him, socially, but she always thought of him as handsome and desirable, the way girls saw their best friend’s brothers.  Well, ex-best friend after the football fiasco.  The guy wasn’t even worth the loss of her friendship with Eden.  He was way too impressed with himself.  For a reason Lily could never fathom.

“Frank?” She said tentatively.

“Hi.”

Jesus, he was smiling at her.  Didn’t he know?

“How are you doing?  Are you surviving?”

Okay.  He did know.  Deflated, she tried to just push her cart past him.

“Hey,” he said, “you don’t want a ticket for dangerous driving.”

“No,” she retorted.  “I have enough on my plate with the law right now.”

Puzzled, he wondered, “Were you involved in the fraud?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.  “It doesn’t matter. The Stanton name is now shit.” Oh great, a woman with a baby in her cart was looking at Lily indignantly.  “What are you doing here anyway?” she asked Frank rudely—in a much lower voice.

“Visiting my mother.  She lives in one of the new apartments on Baker Street.  Hey, look, Lily, we both have scandals in our families.  There’s no reason to be angry at each other. Which by the way, I am not.”

“Then I suppose your father didn’t have anything invested in Allgate Reality.”

“Oh, hell, yes, he did.  It was the major part of his portfolio. But, except for small bequests to his children it was all going to go to his widow.”  He smiled and shrugged. “No harm, no foul.”

Loosening her grip on the shopping cart, Lily said, “Well, I’m glad for that. I mean that it doesn’t hurt you or—Eden.”

“Oh, Eden’s pissed as hell because chances are she won’t get the twenty thousand Dad left her.  But then—weren’t you two on the outs anyway?”

Lily shrugged.  “Stupid high school stuff.  Regrets. I have a lot.  Well, I—“  She made to push past him again.

“Do you want to have lunch?  My mother’s working and I’m on my own until her birthday dinner.  Or—“

What was she to say?   That she had to make the wine run for her mother?  Screw that.  Lunch with someone that didn’t hate her sounded like a plan.  She left Trader Joe’s without hitting the wine aisle.  Her mother could always resort to Dad’s Glendronach.