"Mom, I spent years worrying you'd get taken in by those health-supplement hustlers, always trying to wise you up. And you still went and got played by some street-level con girl."
"I looked into her, just briefly, and the truth came right out."
"Anybody tells you anything and you just swallow it whole. A stranger says I'm not your daughter—something that insane—and you're ready to believe her over me."
"Why is it so easy for you to trust a stranger but not me?"
Her tears came in a rush, her face crumpling, lashes dark and wet—the picture of someone breaking down because she'd been wronged by the one person who was never supposed to doubt her.
My hands shook as I took the phone from her, eyes locked on the screen.
The video began to play.
It was the same blind girl I'd met at Saint Mercy Monastery, pressing notes into people's hands every time someone passed.
She hadn't only fooled me. She'd fooled plenty of older women just like me.
And she'd been detained by police multiple times.
"Mom, look. This is the alert the police posted."
"For that same blind girl. They've been looking for her for months."