She wiped her nose and nodded again.
“And you’re still upset about that friend of yours, that girl, Steph, and her mother, Darla. You wish we hadn’t done that.” Should it have bothered her, the way her father was reading her in the same fashion he read his marks? Maybe. But it didn’t. She felt relieved she didn’t have to explain herself to him.
He was silent for a moment, watching her carefully. Was there anything else he would see, anything about her that she herself didn’t know? “Pack your bags” was all he said. “Pack up everything.”
“Why? Where are we going now?”
“Bellevue, Washington. We’ll go see Steph, and Darla. You’re right. I need to give you a proper birthday present. The one thing you really want.”
“But they’re not going to want to see us,” Lucky said. “Not after we stole from them.”
“They have no idea we stole anything. And they’re going to be thrilled to see us, trust me. I should have thought of this a long time ago.”
CHAPTER SIX
Lucky was in a twenty-four-hour diner in Tusayan, sitting at a corner table, nursing yet another coffee refill. Her feet still ached from walking to the Arizona town she was now in, all the way from the Grand Canyon. It had taken two hours. Her hand was stinging from where the man’s blade had cut into it, but it had stopped bleeding, at least.
Outside the grimy diner windows, it was the golden hour. Even the dust on the street looked special—but Lucky knew it wasn’t, that it was just plain old desert dust, the same that now coated her skin and her clothes after her long walk.
“More coffee?” The waitress was beside Lucky’s table, one hand on a skinny hip, coffeepot in the other. She wasn’t looking at Lucky; she had her eyes on the row of televisions behind the diner counter. Each of them was tuned to a different news station. There was that woman again, the Manhattan DA Lucky had seen in the Vegas hotel room with Jeremy. Lucky wanted to stand, get a closer look at the woman, who strangely felt like someone she knew, but she couldn’t do that. She had to look away from the televisions, stay inconspicuous as her face and Cary’s appeared on one of them, above the words GRIFTING BONNIE AND CLYDE COUPLE STILL ON RUN.
“Yes, thank you. And I’ll have the all-day breakfast. Over easy. Wheat toast.”
“Alrighty.” The waitress poured the coffee, eyes still on the televisions. When she was gone, Lucky stared down at the table, wishing she had a book, anything to keep her hands and her mind busy. A woman’s voice at the table beside her cut through her thoughts.
“Hear about that young couple taking money from all those old folks? What is this damn world coming to? Young people today just take, take, take. They don’t want to have to do the actual work.”
Lucky scowled. All those old folks. It had hardly been all old folks. Yes, okay, some of her clients had been seniors. She had been going over it in her mind. There had been Harry and Faye Alpert, who were in their eighties, and Burt Martinson, an elderly widower—and yes, recalling this fact, and how little it had mattered to her at the time, made her feel guilty and ashamed. But what about the other clients, the young, wealthy ones with far more money than they needed, than anyone needed? What about the people who probably weren’t going to miss the money, ever?
A different voice now: “Did you hear that one man had to cancel heart surgery because he can’t afford it anymore? All his money is gone. Apparently they’re having a benefit to try to help him out. Poor man. I plan to donate.”
Lucky chewed her lip and glanced at the screens again, but her face was gone. Heart surgery? Which client had been sick? All his money was gone? Had they really taken all of it? She had never seen it that way, like cleaning someone out. All her clients had to be at a certain income and asset level. These were the kind of people with an endless supply of family money. They would all be fine, no matter what. Wouldn’t they?
“Hope they catch them soon.”
Lucky had nothing to say to that. Her eggs arrived. She swirled the yolks around with her fork, too galled by a combination of shame and indignation to eat anything now.
“Hey,” said the female customer’s voice she had heard talking a moment before. “Look at that. The Multi Millions jackpot ticket got sold. Three hundred and ninety mil, holy geez.”
“Where, here in Arizona?”
“Nope. Idaho.”
Indeed, on two of the screens, Lucky could see the interior of a gas station convenience store, where a man stood holding one of those big novelty checks. She squinted at the screen, but it looked like any convenience store. Still, she kept watching. Her heartbeat quickened. Did the store look familiar? Was it the Idaho store she’d been in, where she’d bought her lottery ticket? That was the beauty of it. That, right there, was the grift itself: that moment of hope, that quickening of pulse, the what if, what if it’s me, what if it’s my ticket, what would I do with all that money, who would I become?
Lucky took the lottery ticket out of her wallet and smoothed it on the greasy table. Her numbers stared up at her.
“You all good here?”
She covered the ticket with her hand. “Just the bill, please,” she said to the waitress. A moment later, the waitress dropped it on the table. Lucky put the ticket back in her wallet, counted out enough money to cover what she owed and a tip, and stood, feeling dazed, like a person abruptly awakened from a dream.
Outside, the golden hour was over; the specks of dust had lost the light and gone back to being the dirt Lucky had always known them to be. She walked slowly. Her plan had been to go to the bus station after she ate, where a bus to Williams—which had a train station, and could get her wherever she decided to go next faster than a bus—was scheduled to leave in half an hour. But now, all she could think about was checking her lottery ticket.