Lucky

by Marissa Stapley

  “I just told you, the ticket is gone! Gloria stole it!”

  “So? We’ll find her.”

  Lucky just shook her head. “How? How are we going to get to her before she cashes it in?”

  He looked out at the river, then back at her. “I loved you the second I saw you, you know. It isn’t what you think. I wanted to take care of you. I did take care of you. I said you were my daughter because that’s what I’ve always felt. You are.”

  “No. You didn’t love me: You saw my potential. Saw a way to mold me and use me in your cons. There’s nothing you can say to make things better, so don’t even try.”

  “When you were little, for the longest time you didn’t even know what a mother was,” he said. “You were four… or maybe five the first time you asked. I froze. I couldn’t think of anything to say. And so I said your mother was Gloria because she was the first woman I could think of. The lie just spiraled from there. I never thought—” He raised his hands, at a loss for words.

  “You never thought I’d find her.”

  “I guess not.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I want to be alone. Come on, Betty. Let’s go.”

  She walked away from him, toward her cabin. Before going inside, she turned back and saw her father standing alone. Reyes approached him. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he bowed his head; Lucky could tell her father was weeping. No. Not her father.

  Betty whined, and she led her inside. Lucky closed the curtain and sat on the bed, staring down into her empty hands.

  It was too late. Nothing about her or her life was ever going to change for the better. The only thing to do now was turn herself in and pay the price for her crimes.

  October 2008

  NEW YORK CITY

  “I still dream of finding her someday,” Valerie said. It was the first of the month. She and Sister Margaret Jean were sitting in the luncheonette they had been meeting at for almost thirty years. “It would be a miracle. Wouldn’t it?”

  “A miracle,” Sister Margaret Jean replied. “Yes, it truly would.”

  Over the years, Sister Margaret Jean had slowly drained the contents of that cursed bank account filled with ill-gotten gains until there was almost nothing left. Hallelujah. College for Valerie, law school, a long climb up. She had indeed become a lawyer. And now she was Manhattan’s district attorney. Sister Margaret Jean felt proud. It was the greatest joy of her life. She had done it. The world was a better place because of Valerie Mann, and therefore it was a better place because of Sister Margaret Jean. You are forgiven, she would tell herself—even though she knew this wasn’t true, not really. Only God could forgive her. And Valerie was lonely, unhappy. She had almost everything: an incredible career, money, the good kind of notoriety—and yet, she had no people. She had never married. Sister Margaret Jean didn’t know if she had any friends but suspected not really. Her secret probably loomed too large. Valerie didn’t speak to her family; she sometimes spoke of a long-dead grandmother she had been close with, but her relationship with her parents had ended long ago, when they had kicked her out for getting pregnant. And Sister Margaret Jean could see that even after almost thirty years, the weight of abandoning her child still felt heavy to Valerie. It isolated her from everyone.

  “I look for her everywhere,” Valerie had said, month after month, year after year, during their regular meetings at that same café, one of the few remnants of a city that had changed, and one they doggedly returned to. Sister Margaret Jean wanted to say, I look for her everywhere, too. And I look for him. But she only smiled and nodded, sympathetic. She kept her thoughts to herself, as always.

  “But the thing is, I think I saw her,” Valerie said now. “I know it’s happened before and I’ve always been wrong, but I saw this young woman on the news a month ago, and I can’t stop thinking about her. She looks so much like me.” Valerie slid her phone across the table. She seemed younger when she spoke this way, less like the accomplished woman she had become and more like the scared, sad child she had been when Sister Margaret Jean first met her in this luncheonette.

  Sister Margaret Jean looked at the photo of the pretty young woman in the crisp white blouse and navy blazer, leaning toward the camera, a smile in her eyes. She had to admit, she did look like Valerie. Same color hair, same curls, same face shape, same mouth—same unusual eyes. She zoomed in on them.

  “It’s uncanny.”

  “She’s wanted by police,” Valerie said. “For embezzlement. I’ve tried to find out more about her, but it’s all dead ends. No parents. No family. I know I shouldn’t waste my time. But I can’t stop looking at this photo.”

  Not for the first time, Sister Margaret Jean thought of the man with the shiny shoes, of the kind of life he might have given the baby she had allowed him to walk away with that night. Could the child have been led this far astray? Sure, she could have. Anything was possible. But she hoped not.

  “I don’t think this could be your daughter,” she said to Valerie, sliding the phone back to her.

  “Don’t you?” Valerie looked down at the image for a long moment, then put the phone away. “I guess there’s no way of knowing.”

  “No,” Sister Margaret Jean said, the guilt weighing more heavily. “There isn’t.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lucky was still sitting inside her cabin. She had been in there alone for hours, unsure of what to do next. Outside, it had started to rain, and it was getting dark. Lucky rose from her bed and looked out the window again. The white SUV remained; Reyes and John were now inside it, waiting.

  Betty was asleep, curled at the bottom of the bed, but she opened one eye when Lucky opened the door.

  “It’s okay, girl, I’ll be right back.” Lucky ran across the wet grass toward the office, ignoring Reyes and John, who were watching her. She went inside. First she tried Gloria’s cell phone, just in case—but it was still off. It reminded her of Cary’s disappearance, that morning in the Vegas hotel room when she had tried to phone him, and the pieces of his betrayal had slowly and sickeningly fallen into place. It was that same feeling of fruitless frustration, fear, and abandonment.

  She pushed those memories aside, put the phone down, and looked around the dim, empty office. All she felt were the empty spaces around her and inside her. The space her father had once occupied—now he was no longer her father. The space Gloria had once occupied—now she had no image of a mother to cling to. The space Cary had once occupied—now he was gone, possibly dead, and no longer someone she could ever hope to understand. And the space the lottery ticket had once occupied, that effervescent hope that had lived inside her and kept her going? It was a gaping hole, like a wound. Gloria had told her she was not her mother, but still, Lucky had started to feel like maybe she could come to trust her. She had even started imagining telling her about the ticket, asking her to cash it in. Instead, she had let her guard down, and Gloria had stolen the ticket from her when she was at her most vulnerable. She put her face in her hands.

  The door creaked open. It was Reyes.

  “Hey, how are you holding up? What’s going on?”

  Lucky shook her head. “Just go. Please? It’s pointless for you to stay here.”

  But Reyes pulled up a chair. “I had no idea. John never told me, either. We’ve talked about it now, a little. He has moments of clarity, and for a while there earlier, he seemed to understand what he had done, what you had found out. He really wants to help you.”

  “I don’t want his help. I don’t want him here at all.”

  “But, the thing is… Well, he just loves you so much. I used to be jealous of that. I thought that if I could only have someone in my life who cared about me the way he cared about you, if I could maybe have a real dad, I’d be set.”

  “I didn’t have a real dad.”

  “Better than the one I had. He used to beat the shit out of me. I got yanked out of my house and put in foster care. Which is how I ended up meeting Priscilla, and that ne
arly ruined my life, so…”

  The only sound was the pelting of the rain on the roof of the trailer.

  “Prison is brutal,” Reyes said. “It takes a lot away from you. All you have to do is look at the state your dad’s in now to see that. But it does help a person understand the importance of second chances.”

  “I can never forgive him for lying to me about who I am.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  Lucky snorted. “You must not have met very many good men in your life.”

  “He was kind to me when no one else was. He kept working for Priscilla because he wanted to try to keep me safe.”

  “I thought it was because he was trying to pay for my tuition.”

  “That was only part of it.”

  More silence, more dripping rain.

  “Your dad told me about the lottery ticket.”

  Lucky looked up. “Ah,” she said. “Now I see why you’re being so nice to me.”

  Reyes laughed. “Really, Lucky? You think I want to help you and be your friend because of some long-shot chance we’ll actually find this Gloria woman who stole your ticket and get that ticket back from her?” She shook her head, still laughing. “Do you realize what I stand to lose if I get caught with you, a fugitive? Just being here with you is in direct violation of the terms of my release from prison. Driving you to the bus station the other day—that was a big risk for me, too. Not to mention the fact that Priscilla will probably try to kill me when she finds out. I had no clue about the ticket at that point, did I? You’re going to have to learn to just trust people at some point. It’ll save you a lot of pain.”

  “Right. Consider what happened to me the last few times I decided to trust people.”

  “Maybe you need to let people prove themselves to you first, with actions, not just words.”

  Lucky wanted to be angry but found she no longer had the strength. She knew she was being harsh, and unfair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You didn’t have to come and pick me up, and you did.” She sighed. “Thanks for that.”

  “No problem. People deserve second chances. And third chances. All people do is make mistakes. If we never forgave, we’d all be alone.”

  “I am alone.”

  The rain stopped and it was silent in the small room. Lucky ran her index fingers underneath her eyes, catching all the tears that had gathered there. She wiped them off on her jeans.

  “You’re not,” Reyes said.

  “I think it’s time for me to just turn myself in.”

  “No,” she said. “Not yet. I have a friend I met through work who’s a private investigator in New York City. She owes me a favor. We can drive there tomorrow morning.”

  “What for?”

  “To see if she can help you track Gloria. And that missing ticket. You can’t just give up. It’s too soon. Plus—John had the idea that he could take you to the church where you were left. That maybe that would help. Maybe someone there has answers?”

  Lucky wasn’t sure anything would help. But she still agreed to Reyes’s plan.

  * * *

  Slowly, inevitably as they drove, the mountains gave way to rolling hills, then to houses, and big-box stores, trees that were scrubby rather than stately green.

  “Mind if I turn on the radio?” John asked Reyes. Lucky hadn’t spoken to him yet that morning. She had barely been able to look him in the eye. And he was acting as if nothing had happened, which made Lucky wonder if he had forgotten the entire conversation by the river. Could you be angry with someone for something they’d forgotten they’d done? John’s decline was undeniable. He had lucid moments, but his confusion was frequent, and profound.

  “Whatever you want,” Reyes said.

  John dialed through the channels until he found a Yankees game.

  Lucky lifted her hand and touched the cross at her neck. They were in city traffic when announcer John Sterling crowed, “Theeeeee Yankees win!” John pumped his fist and said, “Well, how about that?” Lucky found herself smiling, a reflex from another time and place.

  John grinned at her in the rearview mirror. He was back in time, too.

  Lucky looked out the window. They were getting close now, and Reyes was slowing down.

  Reyes maneuvered into a parking spot and turned off the car. “We’re here,” she said. “I’ll wait in the car with the dog.”

  St. Monica’s was a relic tucked in among apartment buildings and high-rises; its spires looked like arms raised up in a holy fervor that no one on the ground below noticed anymore. Betty was in the back seat of the car; she popped her head over the seats and licked Lucky’s hand encouragingly.

  “I think I remembered her name,” John said. “The nun who was there the night I found you. Something Jean. Maybe Mary Jean? We’ll go in there and ask for Mary Jean.”

  They got out of the car. They approached the steps, and John stopped. “Lucky,” he said, pointing down. “It was right here. This is where I found you. It was cold, and you were crying, and I thought you were a miracle.”

  “No. I can’t.” Lucky moved quickly over the step, trying not to imagine the mother who would just leave her there, in the cold, in the dark, crying and alone.

  Inside the church the air was cool. It smelled of wood and dust. Lucky craned her neck to look up at the stained glass and vaulted ceilings. John passed her and walked to the front of the church. Lucky watched as he approached a table full of candles, all lined up in translucent red glass holders. He lit one of the candles and bowed his head. How did he know what to do? It was a side of him she hadn’t seen before.

  She walked up to the front, uncertain. He gave her his lighter. “Want to light one?” She took the lighter and turned away.

  How did a person pray—and why did a person pray, exactly? If you prayed for something, did it come true? Was it like a wish? How long did it take to come true? Was it immediate, like rubbing a genie’s bottle? Or did it take time? In the past, Lucky would have asked these questions of John. Now she couldn’t. She lit a candle, then another, and another. She looked down at all the tiny flames, tucked down low in their red holders.

  “Lucky, people light these candles to remember the people they’ve lost,” John said.

  She thought of Cary, and she wished he hadn’t suffered, no matter what he had done. She lit a candle.

  She thought of the mother who’d left her on the steps of this church. She lit another candle.

  She thought of the fact that the man she had believed to be her father was no one to her. She lit another.

  The lottery ticket. One final flame.

  Then she blew them all out.

  “Lucky!” her father hissed. “You can’t do that! It’s… it’s…” Movement behind them. A nun was making her way down the aisle toward them.

  “Hello?” she was calling. “What are you doing?”

  Lucky had thought they were alone, but clearly they weren’t.

  “I’m so sorry, Sister,” John began.

  The nun stopped walking. She was just a few feet in front of them.

  “Hey,” John said. “Mary Jean, is that you?”

  Lucky was sure she saw recognition in the nun’s face, as though she knew who they were. But when the woman opened her mouth, she said, “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  The nun turned and walked down the aisle, fast, then out the front door of the church. She left them standing there, truly alone with all those extinguished flames.

  October 2008

  NEW YORK CITY

  Sister Margaret Jean had recognized them right away. She had been standing near the door, letting the fall breeze blow over her, when through the front entrance they had emerged.

  “Lucky.” It was the man. She knew this voice.

  At this point, Sister Margaret Jean opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She took her cell phone out of the folds of her habit and held it in her hand, pulled up Valerie’s number, but didn’t dial it, not yet. She couldn’t be sure. She
watched them approach the candles. The man was so much older. He no longer looked so sure of himself. But his shoes were still shiny. The young woman was beautiful, even with the ragged haircut, the bad dye job.

  Sister Margaret Jean watched in silence as they lit candles. All at once, the young woman blew the candles out. Sister Margaret Jean was shaken from her dreamlike state. She ran toward them, calling out, but not sure what she was going to do.

  If there had been any doubt in her mind that it was them, it was extinguished the moment she saw the woman up close. Her eyes were green like emeralds, the same as Valerie’s.

  For almost thirty years, Sister Margaret Jean had held out hope that miracles could really happen in Queens, although she had never seen one—but now, here it was. It had come to pass. They had returned.

  Her gaze moved from the familiar green eyes to the necklace that had once been familiar to her, now hanging around the young woman’s neck. It hadn’t had much meaning when she had owned it, but now that shining gold cross felt like a sign. Everything would break if she did the wrong thing. But what was she supposed to do?

  That was when the man called her Mary Jean.

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about,” she replied. She ran out the door of the church, pausing on the steps to write down the license plate number of the SUV she had seen them pull up in. She stepped into the street and hailed a taxi.

  The drive lasted fifteen minutes. She got out of the taxi in front of the stately gray office building where Valerie worked. She had walked by it many times, although she had never gone in. They only ever met at the café. But today, for the first time, she pushed open those heavy glass-and-metal doors and walked to the security desk.

  “My name is Margaret Jean, and I’m here to see the Manhattan DA, Valerie Mann. Please tell her it’s urgent. Please tell her it cannot wait.”