Then she ran.

“Before what?” Leo demanded.

“So,” Leo said, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Are you gonna take that guy’s money or what?”

“No, I can’t do that,” his mother hissed. “The casino is two states over. If Leo needs me—”

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.

Claire sighed, the weight of ten years of perfect baking sliding off her shoulders. “Sit down, sweetheart. I think it’s time you knew your mother’s juicy secrets.”

“You brought it?” she asked, sliding a slice of lemon cake across the table.