Lucky(57)

“Betty is gone! I let her outside a few minutes ago, in the yard. And now she’s… she’s just gone!”

The two of them spent hours walking up and down the streets of their neighborhood, calling Betty’s name. They printed signs and taped them to telephone poles. Cary had to go back to the restaurant eventually; Lucky sat at home, waiting by her phone, staring down at the papers she had procured to take Betty to Dominica with them, crying endless tears. Just like the loss of the baby, this was her fault. She had been preoccupied, too focused on the money they were moving offshore. She ignored the voice that told her she hadn’t done anything wrong, anything different from what she did every day.

“It’s like someone took her,” Lucky said to Cary when he got back. “Like someone stole her. Betty would never run away.”

“Maybe she sensed we were about to leave, and she didn’t want to go. You have to try not to worry about it, okay? You can’t fix this. We have to keep moving.”

“How can I not worry about her? She’s all I—” She had been about to say, She’s all I have. But this wasn’t true. She had Cary. They had the money. She had to start believing that the things she actually still had in her grasp mattered.

Betty didn’t come home. Days passed, and then it was time for them to leave. “What if someone finds Betty, though? Can’t we delay our departure? Just a few more days?”

“We can’t stay here,” Cary said. “We’re going to get caught. The stock market has gone even lower. How many clients called you today, asking about their money?”

“Too many,” Lucky admitted.

“Babe, it’s time. We have to get out of here. We’ve waited too long already.”

But it didn’t feel right. It felt like bad luck to leave on this note, like if they left like this, any chance they had of ever having a happy life would be lost. And she was still holding out hope. Someone would call about Betty.

“I have an idea,” Lucky said. “What if we go to Las Vegas? What could be more fun than that? And it’s safe there; we know how to go incognito.” It felt like exactly what they needed to do, all of a sudden. Like the perfect way to hit the reset button on her life, and buy a tiny bit more time. “We’ve lost so much. We need to do something special—go out in a blaze of glory. Don’t you think? Before we leave forever?”

Cary took her in his arms, looked down at her. “Will it make you happy again? Because I hate seeing you sad like this.”

“Yes, it will.”

“All right,” Cary said. “What’s one more night in America, I guess? No one will find us in Nevada.”

The next day, they got in their silver Audi, and they started to drive.





February 1982





NEW YORK CITY




Margaret Jean went back to bed the night the baby cried on the steps of St. Monica’s cathedral and the man with the shiny shoes stared into her eyes and said, “This is my child.” But she couldn’t sleep. When dawn broke, she went to the sisters and asked about her aspirancy. They told her they had indeed decided she could join their order, and she felt something unexpected: relief so deep it was almost rapturous. All at once, this was what she wanted. To redeem herself, and to redeem others.

It was weeks later when Sister Margaret Jean—as she was now known—heard there was a young woman in the parish asking about a baby left on the steps.

“You didn’t hear anything that night you were on watch, did you?” the sisters asked her.

“No, of course not,” Sister Margaret Jean said, and they believed her, because who would lie about such a thing? Poor girl, the nuns all said. Poor thing, she mustn’t be in her right mind.

Sister Margaret Jean immediately knew that was true: the young woman was indeed out of her mind, with grief. And, in this new incarnation of herself, as helper, as redeemer, as someone different from the woman she had been before—someone who had bilked people out of their money and then hidden herself away so she wouldn’t have to pay for her crimes—she was going to help her.

When she reached the steps, the young woman was at the bottom, walking slowly, shoulders sloped downward, a portrait of dejection. Her hair was red, like a flame, so she was easy to follow. Sister Margaret Jean walked along behind her, trying to think of what to say. Finally she was close enough that she could reach forward and touch the young woman’s shoulder.

“Get your hands o—”

“No, no, I don’t want to hurt you,” said Sister Margaret Jean. “I want to help. Please, come with me.”

There was hope in the young woman’s eyes—eyes that were an unusual green, like emeralds, or the lime-flavored hard candies Margaret Jean used to buy for pennies as a child.

“Do you know where my baby is?” the girl said.

“Let me buy you breakfast. Let’s talk.”

They went to a café Sister Margaret Jean remembered from her life before the parish, when she had spent her time befriending people who were sick or old and lived alone. She would work her way into their lives, and then into their wills. It was systematic, and became an addiction. She got more money than she knew what to do with. She had told herself the harm she was doing wasn’t real, that she was in fact making people’s final days happy. But if there was one thing she had learned at the parish with all that Bible reading, it was that stealing was stealing was stealing.