I nod. “When my mom is…at her worst, she thinks all kinds of things that make no sense. She doesn’t trust the people she should, and she does trust all the people she shouldn’t. She sees messages and signs where the rest of us just see a greeting card or a bird or a wad of gum on the ground. It’s like magical thinking on steroids.”

A lightbulb moment sends sparklers through my brain. Maybe my mom was already reading cards then. Maybe Moony thought my mother would only get worse if she opened herself to tarot—an innocent deck of cards in most hands but something more to Mary. Even then, the cards meant something different, something powerful to my mom, and Moony knew that.

“I guess this doesn’t really tell you anything about your original trigger theory yet.”

I take a breath. “No. I still need to figure out whatever I can about the baby in the picture.” How it got there. And how it was kept a secret for so long.

I look out the window at a blur of green and gray and brown. Who is the woman I call mother? Is she a young girl with a dead child? Is she a good little Catholic schoolgirl, complete with modest uniform? Is she Mary, the Madonna of New Orleans, reading people’s fortunes in the square for an easy buck? Is she the woman who was so happy to have me here, making terrible breakfasts and chattering like old friends? Or the one who seethed and pouted, believing I was capable of trying to steal her man? Or the one who left me at Moony’s so many years ago, her cheeks wet and pallid as she backed out the front door and drove away?

And how did she come across a deck like the one I’m holding from Fortune’s Gate?

I realize I don’t know her at all.

“Hey, you going to be okay with all of this?” Daniel asks. His face is etched with concern. I see it riding the peak of his brows and drawing down the corners of his mouth.

“I don’t know.” It is the truth.

“I’m sorry, Cat. I thought knowing more would help you. This was my idea, and I feel like it’s just made more of a mess of things.”

I realize he is feeling almost as awkward and uncertain about today as I am. “No, this isn’t on you. I’m the one who dumped my whole sordid family tale in your lap after only knowing you for…what? A few days?”

“I’m glad you told me. I know you better now. You’re real. I like that.”

I smile sheepishly. “Maybe you know me too well. It’s a little embarrassing. I don’t want you to think that…that I’m like her.”