“Okay. I’ll be back.” The lie felt worse than any of the others she had told.
Lucky walked through the lobby. When she got outside, she stood underneath the car park overhang for a minute, looking out at the rain. She forced herself to focus on the tiny glimmer of hope left, in order to keep herself moving forward. Yes, turning herself in would mean prison, but she could also tell the police everything. She could tell them about the lottery ticket, stolen first by Gloria and then by Priscilla. She could see if they’d be willing to investigate that. If she could manage to prove the ticket and therefore the money was really hers, if she could get someone to look at the footage from the Idaho gas station she had purchased the ticket at, maybe it could be held in trust until she got out of prison.
Lucky stepped forward into the rain. She walked a few steps—and saw that ahead of her in the darkness was a woman. The woman’s hair was wet and her face was streaked with dirt. She was sitting on a blanket that was soaked through. She was holding a piece of cardboard over her head. The words on the sign in front of her were starting to run, but Lucky could still read it: BROKE, STARVING AND SAD. A HOT COFFEE WOULD MAKE MY DAY.
Lucky reached into her pocket. She still had the bills from when she had shortchanged the cashier at the grocery store. She handed them to the woman. “Thank you,” the woman said. “Bless you.”
“Hey, is there a police station near here?” Lucky asked.
“Sure,” the woman said. “About eight blocks down that way.”
As Lucky began to walk away, a car pulled up beside her. When she heard the window roll down, she said, “Please, Reyes, it’s over. Pretend this never happened. I’m turning myself in.”
But when she looked up, it wasn’t the white SUV at all.
“Hello,” said a woman in the driver’s seat. “I’m not Reyes.” The woman had red hair, streaked with gray, pulled back in a low bun. Green eyes. Familiar eyes. This was the woman Lucky had seen on television back in Vegas, when she had been in the midst of conning Jeremy Gibson. It was the Manhattan DA. And her eyes—Lucky saw eyes like this in the mirror every day. All the hairs on her arms stood up.
“My name is Valerie Mann. I’m wondering if you might be willing to speak with me for a few moments.”
So this was it. She was being arrested. “It’s okay,” Lucky said. “You don’t need to cuff me. I’ll go quietly.”
“No.” Valerie shook her head. “It’s not that. I want to talk to you because… I think I might be your mother.”
October 2008
ONEONTA, NEW YORK
“I was sixteen,” Valerie began. “I fell in love. I thought I would die without him. Now I don’t even know where he is. Now he doesn’t matter at all. But I’ve thought of you every single day. After I left you on the church steps, thinking it was for the best and you would have a better life without me, I went back to look for you. But you were already gone.”
The young woman wrapped her hands around the coffee cup in front of her, but it looked like it had gone cold. She closed her eyes. She bowed her head. Her shoulders shook, and Valerie recognized that; it was the way she cried, too—silently, quickly. It was over, and the young woman looked up. Her daughter. Those eyes. “What’s your name?” Valerie asked.
“Luciana,” she said. “But people call me Lucky.”
Valerie wanted to tell her the name she had given her that night, but it felt too soon. “I’ve always counted your birthdays,” she said instead. “Twenty-six of them so far, right? I think I see you everywhere, and find myself constantly searching for you in the faces of strangers.”
“Me too,” Lucky said.
“Abandoning you was a terrible, terrible mistake. Can you ever forgive me? I would love to be able to get to know you.”
“Then you’ll be getting to know a criminal. I’ll tell you everything, and then you can call your colleagues to come and arrest me.”
“No,” Valerie said. “I already know all that. I want to help you. That’s not going to change, no matter what.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When the coffee shop closed, they moved to Valerie’s car. The windows fogged up as they kept talking, safe in their little cocoon. First, Lucky told Valerie everything about her own journey—including the story of the lottery ticket, and its theft. Then Valerie told her how she had managed to find her.
“When Sister Margaret Jean came to tell me she had seen you, I started to piece it all together,” Valerie said. “I traced the license plate number she gave me, found it belonged to a Marisol Reyes, and learned who she was, and that she had just picked up John Armstrong at San Quentin. When I showed Margaret Jean a picture of John, she confirmed he was indeed the man I was looking for—the man who had taken you from the steps all those years ago. But that wasn’t all there was to it. I dug deeper, and it was your involvement with David Ferguson—whose real name is Cary Matheson—that I was interested in.”
“Cary. Yes. He was my partner.”
“Do you know that he was the son of Joshua Matheson and Priscilla Lachaise?”
“I know Priscilla, not Joshua.”
“Joshua Matheson was a drug kingpin who was killed years ago by a gang leader in California. But the theory has always been that Priscilla had him killed. She didn’t deal drugs, though; she laundered money. Less messy, easier profits. But she was greedy. She started a fake charity to launder the money, but started pulling in large enough sums that someone looked into it. She went to jail, as did John and Reyes. Priscilla came out of jail claiming to be a reformed woman, but I’ve been investigating her for years. And I’m not the only one. Police departments across the country have been trying and failing to prove that she is still a massive money launderer with deep ties to organized crime in several states. She’s been so hard to catch. Apparently she doesn’t trust anyone.”