“I love you and your father more than anything,” she said, stopping by the old oak tree at the edge of the fairgrounds. “But I forgot who I was. The woman who likes to run in the dark. The woman who gets a rush when the cards fall just right. I’ve been hiding her in junk drawers and pantry closets.”
Before Leo, before Dad, before the white picket fence—Claire “The Knave” Marshall was the best underground poker player on the Eastern seaboard. She’d won her first tournament at nineteen, using psychology and a perfect memory for cards. She’d once bluffed a Russian mobster out of his watch. The flip phone belonged to her “handler,” a man she owed a favor to. The night runs? She was training for a charity triathlon—a secret life she’d started six months ago because she was bored out of her skull.
She didn’t go to Debra’s house, where the book club met. She drove to the edge of town, parked behind an abandoned drive-in theater, and got out. Claire—the woman who wore heels to the grocery store—pulled a sleek, black racing suit from her trunk. She peeled off her cardigan and khakis like a snake shedding skin. Underneath, she wore nothing but a sports bra and running shorts.