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when she was a helpless, newly orphaned baby. Her brother had been driving the car, but Theresa Iatoni had let Lucy’s mother be buried in a pauper’s grave.
    â€œYou know she’s in California visiting the grandkids, right?” said the raspy voice in the receiver. “They don’t got winter there. Ain’t natural.”
    â€œCalifornia?” said Lucy, biting her lip.
    â€œYeah. ’Til the first. You want the number out there?”
    Lucy’s heart sank. The first of May was nearly a month away! She supposed she could call Theresa Iatoni in California, but how likely would it be for the woman to open up over the phone in a house full of surfer grandchildren? No, Lucy had to see the woman in person.
    â€œI think I’ll try her when she gets back. And if you happen to talk to her, don’t mention I called, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”
    â€œSure, no problem.”
    Lucy replaced the receiver in its cradle and stood up, wondering if coming to New York had been such a good idea. Fantasies of finding her family had helped Lucy through some tough, lonely times. Did she really want to find out the truth? She might be just an illegitimate Cicarillo whose own aunt had abandoned her.
    Outside, a symphony of sirens, garbage trucks, and what sounded like gunfire rose from the streets. Lucy’s stomach rumbled like thunder, but something inside her relaxed. She had made her decision.
    Whatever the truth was, Lucy was going to find it. She had to know who she really was.

FIVE
    L ucy spent the next few days exploring New York, gawking at the buildings and shops, but mostly just watching the people—break dancers and street musicians; stick-thin models dressed to the nines; Arabs with thousand-dollar briefcases; beggars pushing shopping carts full of litter. It was like window-shopping at the circus. After watching a teenager snatch a purse from a woman in front of Tiffany’s, Lucy even bought herself a bag of peanuts from a vendor.
    She finally found herself standing in front of the main library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, staring up at a matching pair of stone lions. Lucy trotted up the long stairs into the cavernous entrance hall of gleaming white marble, twelve-foot-high marble candelabra, vaulted ceilings so vast that she could barely hear the echo of her footsteps.
    â€œWhere can I find old telephone books?” Lucy asked a guard.
    â€œMain reading room, two flights up,” mumbled the man.
    The stairs took her into a rotunda of dark wood and frescoed ceilings, the white marble giving way to red. She passed book catalogues and computers and walked into a room the size of a football field divided by a center partition. There were wooden tables and chairs with reading lamps every few feet. Halfway into the huge space was the microfilm department.
    â€œI’m looking for old phone books.”
    The bored teenager at the desk gave her a slip to fill out. Lucy requested the phone books of Manhattan and Brooklyn of thirty years ago. The boy returned in a minute with a stack of battered, square boxes.

    â€œYou can view these over there,” he said, pointing at rows of ancient projectors. Lucy took the boxes over to an empty projector and opened one box. Inside was a thick roll of film, about the size of a can of tuna fish.
    Lucy struggled with the projector for ten minutes. Finally she turned to the boy beside her, a redhead about thirteen years old.
    â€œCan you show me how to thread this thing, please?” she mumbled. The boy rolled his eyes.
    â€œYou never went to school or nothin’?” he said and installed the microfilm in a matter of seconds.
    â€œRotten kid,” Lucy muttered to the projection of phone listings after the boy returned to the computer magazine he was scanning. No wonder she had flunked out of college.
    There were no Trelaines in any of the reels. Lucy went back to the desk again and again, until she had