“Hello, ladies. Okay if I serve myself?” O’Malley needn’t have asked for permission. Babe adored him and he knew the diner’s setup better than some of her employees. He poured himself a coffee and slid onto the counter stool beside me, a smug look on his face.

“Okay. What?”

“State police didn’t need to chase your friend too far-he drove straight into an overpass on the Merritt. Sheared off the top of his rig.

“Oh, and there’s something else. Caroline Sturgis is coming home.”

Twenty-nine

Home. Was it here in Michigan where this cell was; Oregon where my fictional grandmother lived and died; or Springfield, where everyone knew me as Caroline Sturgis? Bland, boring, stay-at-home, faintly amusing and to-be-pitied Caroline Sturgis, who drank a little too often and rarely finished her crafts projects but was otherwise just like any of the other suburban moms who spent their days chauffeuring kids from one structured activity to the next with only the occasional break for spa treatments or Wednesday matinees in New York City.

The last weeks had been a far cry from soccer matches and afternoon theater dates. I no longer knew or remembered how I’d managed to keep track of all the lies for so many years. It was as if I’d kept an internal bulletin board just like the slick white one in my kitchen that told me where everyone was. Some days the schedules were as complicated as the landing at Normandy, but the bulletin board gave me the illusion of order-Molly at soccer, Jason at hockey practice, Grant gallivanting all over the world, Caroline in Connecticut, not to be confused with Monica in Michigan. Never to be confused with that girl I used to be.

They put me in solitary confinement for my own safety. No one seriously thought that I’d hang myself with an Hermès scarf, but they’d never had a resident like me before and frankly didn’t know what to do with me. Oddly enough, I might have welcomed the company of the other women. As it was, I heard them only once a day when I was let out for my forty-five-minute exercise break. Some jeered and some cheered as I was led past their cells. I heard everything from “skinny bitch” to “hockey mom, can you hook me up with some blow?”

I tried to focus on Grant and the kids. Was Molly keeping up with her piano lessons in Tucson? Was Jason wearing his helmet for the pickup hockey games he’d be playing in? I didn’t imagine anyone else in the building was thinking about hockey pucks, and it was difficult for me to do it. I kept drifting back to the path that had led me here.

Sherry, the girl I’d met at the soup kitchen, had been around the block at least a couple of times. She was a user, and I knew it, but I learned a lot from her-good and bad. We spent two weeks together, my total-immersion apprenticeship into a life of petty crime. She and I took full advantage of all the social services agencies in the city, offering different names and different sad stories to each and moving on before too many questions were asked. We stayed away from personal details, even with each other.

On her own, Sherry inspired others, inside the shelter system and out, to grip their handbags and backpacks as if she was about to snatch them and make a run for it. It was an understandable reflex. She had the look of a female Artful Dodger, eager to give them the pitch, slick and practiced and knowledgeable of which buttons to push for maximum, sympathetic effect.

With my cherubic face, we made a good team. I gave her credibility. People were more trusting of us. As a duo, we got the benefit of the doubt, until one day she did snatch someone’s bag while waiting for her turn at a communal shower. She ran off and left me, her presumed accomplice, to face the music alone. It took all the vestiges of my Midwest charm to convince the others at the shelter I’d had nothing to do with the robbery.

But it was a sign I should move on before I slipped up and gave something away. I’d lost my cicerone, my guide to the strange city, where every ten-block neighborhood was larger than my entire hometown.

I was sitting on a bench in Central Park, eating a bologna sandwich on squishy white bread for breakfast, when Sherry reappeared, jumping out from behind the statue of Balto, a hero dog who’d saved a bunch of people during a diphtheria outbreak.

“Ta-da!”

She laughed and boogied around the statue as if we were two friends who’d planned to meet for a movie or an afternoon in the city and she’d been a few minutes late. I tightened my hold on my bag and kept eating, eyes down. The sandwich was rubbery and tasteless, but I’d been happy to score four of them last night when the do-gooder truck made its rounds circling the park. I made them last for two meals.

“C’mon,” she said. “You’re not really sore, are you? I knew they wouldn’t call the cops on you. Look at you. You’re clean as a bar of soap.”

That’s what she thought. Where was she when my crap attorney was looking for jurors? I almost blurted that out but bit my lips. If Sherry knew I was wanted and there was any kind of reward for my capture, I’d be in custody before I finished my bologna sandwich.

“What do you want?” I said, trying to sound tougher than I felt.

Sherry reached into her stash and pulled out something that looked frighteningly familiar to me. My passport. I dropped the sandwich and fumbled around in my bag to see what else she’d stolen. Squirrels miraculously appeared to make off with the few scraps of bread and bologna at my feet. I kicked them away as if they were rats.

She held her hands up. “Nothing else, I swear. Take it,” she said, flapping the passport up and down, “before I change my mind. I could have gotten a nice chunk of change for it. It’s a testament to your good influence on me that I brought it back.” She gently placed the passport on the wax paper my breakfast had been wrapped in, trying to avoid the mustard.

I was in shock. After my experience with Kate and Eddie, I knew enough not to trust anyone completely, but apparently I was still a stupid kid from Michigan who could be suckered into any setup and left holding the bag.

A discarded newspaper fluttered underneath the park bench. Sherry pulled it out and tore off a corner of the masthead. She scribbled a name and a number on it with a pencil stub she fished out of her pocket.

“Max will offer you a thousand dollars for it, but tell him I sent you.” She handed me the scrap of paper. “Hold out for two; he’s going to sell it for four anyway. And make him give you a fake driver’s license for free. He’s got tons of them. Pick a name you like. Pick a state.”

She walked away swishing the bag she’d ripped off from the other girl. “I’d love to stay and chat,” she yelled, “but if I spend any longer with you, you’ll have me going straight. And that would be a terrible waste of talent. One last piece of advice. Wise up, trust no one.”

That was the last time I saw her.

Max did offer me $1,000, but, as instructed, I negotiated and got him up to $2,500. He fanned out driver’s licenses like a deck of cards. When I saw Oregon, I knew I had the beginnings of my new life story. It was perfect-I’d lied about it so many times I already felt as if I was from Oregon. I tapped it with one finger and Max plucked it from the stack as if he were doing a card trick.

“You have to come back tomorrow with a passport-size picture, chica. Then I give you the money.”

“No. Money today and picture this afternoon.”

“Okay, okay, I tried. How do you know Sherry?” Max asked, his nose running from who knew what substance he’d just inhaled. Sherry had said he was a dealer, but she didn’t say in what. Whatever it was, he managed to stay under the radar of most law enforcement types. According to Max, they hassled him only when things were really slow.