The Pretender - Cora Brent Page 0,33
to see them carted away in handcuffs and sent to the electric chair. Instead I stood beside my mother at the funeral, silent and grim, while she sobbed. And I knew I would say nothing. I would say nothing because I’d made a promise to my mother and I was all she had left.
“Bennet, sweetheart, please listen. They’ll kill you. They will. And I can’t lose you too. I won’t survive that. Do this for me.”
The day after the funeral we left everything behind. That old friend of my father’s, a big bear of a guy named Reginald, was eager to help. He would make sure we reached a safe location with new identities. Most of my father’s assets were tied to the Drexler Group but he had managed to squirrel away some cash in several safe deposit boxes. Before putting us on a plane, Reginald drove us across three states in order to cover the trail and along the way he informed us we’d need new names.
“Marlia, we already talked about your name, that it’ll stand out because it’s too uncommon, so from now on you’ll be Michele. Bennet, I think we should keep your first name as close to your real one as possible. Just makes it easier. You’ll be called Ben as in Benjamin. But you can’t use Drexler or anything that sounds like it. Any ideas?”
My mother wasn’t listening. She was curled up in the seat next to me with her sunglasses on as she stared dully out the window. I was still reeling from recent events and I didn’t care what kind of name I was stuck with from now on. I had no desire to be a Drexler anymore.
“How about Beltran?” I said, thinking of my favorite ball player.
Reginald grinned at me in the rearview mirror. “Beltran it is. I’ll take care of the legwork.”
And so Bennet Drexler was erased and Ben Beltran was invented.
Ben Beltran settled down in the nondescript small town of Devil Valley with his heartbroken mother and pretended to be this tough, scrappy kid who would get attached to no one and had no stories to tell about his past.
To my surprise, being Ben Beltran was easy.
The money ran out quickly but my mom and I have gotten used to scraping by. Maybe I’ll never completely stop looking over my shoulder but if the Drexlers had any plans to chase us down they would have done it already. Now and then someone would ask questions but I was always able to avoid them without trying too hard.
At least until now.
Until Camden.
Camden is smart and Camden isn’t so easy to avoid. Especially because I don’t want to avoid her at all.
“Ben.” My mother raps my hand with an unlit cigarette to get my attention. “You’re not eating your breakfast and you just keep glaring at the wall.” She lights the cigarette and taps it over a ceramic dish even though there are no ashes to tap out yet. “Did you and Darren have another argument?”
“No.” I scowl at the mention of my mother’s shitty boyfriend. I shovel in a bite of cornflakes and hope this is the end of the interrogation.
My mother examines me. She reaches out as if she’s going to push the hair out of my eyes and then retreats, remembering that I’m too old for that kind of mothering and I’ll just get irritated. Then she smiles.
“Is this about a girl? Maybe the pretty one who works with you at Dee’s? I’ve seen her watching you. She goes to school at Black Mountain, doesn’t she? She and her family were at the diner on Saturday.”
I swallow my cereal. “Camden. Her name’s Camden.”
“Camden,” she repeats and her eyes twinkle in a way that I don’t see too often anymore. “She’s a cutie. And I hear she’s smart too. Is she your girlfriend?”
“Come on, Ma,” I complain and collect my dishes for the sink. I’ve never thought of any girl as a ‘girlfriend’, not even the ones I’ve spent a lot of time with. It seems like an old fashioned word, not fit for the times. Anyway, just because you hook up with a girl and kiss her goodnight doesn’t mean she’s your girlfriend.
However, I can’t say this out loud because you don’t admit such things to your mother and because the way I feel about Camden is confusing. The day she told me she wanted to interview me for some silly article I practically bit her head off and