Lucky(18)

Lucky knew the woman was thinking of her sullen daughter, mourning the past that would never be again. The sticky hugs and kisses. The unconditional love. How could you not love your mother, if you were lucky enough to have one?

“Thank you,” Lucky said as she pocketed the money. Then she turned and walked away fast, hoping the woman would think she was eager to get home to her mother.

Once she left the mall, the soda bubbles that had been coursing through her went flat. The bills were safely stowed in her pocket, but Lucky felt terrible. She had started to suspect after the Sagamore, after Steph and her mom, that every mark was going to leave its mark on her—but she hadn’t wanted it to be true. Today proved it. She had swindled that woman, and the woman hadn’t deserved it. She didn’t deserve the shoddy way her daughter treated her, either. She didn’t deserve any of it.

Lucky was crying when she got home, tears that were true and real, that came from that dark and lonely place inside her that just seemed to get bigger every day.

When she walked in the door, her father jumped up from the couch. “Lucky, my God. You were gone a long time. What happened?”

She handed him the money. “I did it,” she said. She climbed onto the couch and pulled a threadbare blanket around herself. Then she kept crying while her father stood by, mystified and helpless.

“Where is my mother?” she asked when she could finally speak. “Can we try to find her? Like really try, not just say we’re trying?”

Her father looked at her for a long moment, then sat down beside her. “You want a mother,” he said. She nodded. “And a life that isn’t like this one. Something different. Something more… conventional. It’s all you really want, isn’t it?”

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?