Stolen Grace Read online

  “Michigan to Wyoming is a long way for an old man, honey.”

  She laughed nervously. He was right. He was getting older—he wouldn’t last forever. It still made her sick to her stomach that she hadn’t seen her mom before she died. Grace had come down with a fever so Sylvia wasn’t at her mother’s deathbed. Guilt lapped at Sylvia daily like a gentle wave—never too rough to unbalance her, but a constant reminder. She felt a twist in her chest but said gaily, “Oh please, so not old. Your aim is still the best out of all your golf friends.”

  “What friends I have left.” He chuckled. “The pickings are slim.”

  “Yeah, sorry about Jim—that’s so sad. I sent flowers. I wanted to call Susan but−”

  “How’s little Gracie?”

  “Bigger every day. You’d be amazed. So grown up and frighteningly smart. She plays with Tommy’s iPad, you know. Records her voice, draws pictures, makes paintings—well, virtual ones. She’s even learned to download books for her library of animal stories.”

  “Well she’s a smart kid, like her mom. And beautiful, too.”

  Sylvia laughed. “Grace is the opposite from me—she must take after Tommy. She’s so techy, Dad. So precocious for a five-year-old. She’s showing signs of a brilliant mind. But maybe that’s just because I’m her mom I think that.”

  Sylvia wondered if it was because of Tommy’s influence or because of her daughter’s genes. She half listened to her dad chat on about his day, and remembered how united she and Tommy had been during the whole Grace adoption process. The trips to India, the research they’d done about her origins. Grace was originally from Kashmir—hence her startling, golden-colored eyes and soft, gentle features—her little nose and her heart-shaped face that melted Sylvia every time Grace looked at her.

  Sylvia remembered how picky the agencies and countries had been with prospective parents, but how she and Tommy weathered the storm together, always a team, vying for the same goal: happiness. Creating a family unit. Finally, she had accepted the fact that a biological child just wasn’t their path in life. Tommy swore he didn’t care and championed the adoption all the way. The Indians had insisted upon the couple having been married five years. She and Tommy qualified, but the paperwork, the traveling, and all that twisting scarlet tape had been arduous, but the second they set eyes on Grace, they knew it had been worth every minute of the ordeal.

  But now their perfect family unit was fragmented. They’d have to fight equally hard to win it back again.

  “She’ll do well at school, mark my words,” Sylvia’s father went on. “You lucked out, honey.”

  Sylvia snapped back to attention. “We sure did. She’s my moon, my stars, and my sun.”

  “That’s how I feel about you sweetheart,” her dad told her. “I love you, honey.”

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  “I’m putting Melinda on, she’s right here. Bye, Sylvie, honey.”

  “Bye, Dad.” She rolled her father’s loving words around her tongue. I love you. I miss you. Those words rang sweetly in her ear. He had taken her by surprise and Sylvia could feel her eyes well up. She’d managed not to even hint about Tommy. She watched her husband out of the corner of her eye. He was still fiddling with the faucet.

  Melinda’s voice had its usual upbeat, bouncy ball tone. “Hey cuz.”

  “Hi Melinda,” Sylvia said into the receiver. “So glad you’re there. Thanks for making the effort. I feel so guilty living this far away. Wish we could visit Dad more often.”

  “Well don’t feel badly. Uncle Wilbur’s doing just great. It’s just a short plane ride from Chicago for me. No big deal.”

  “Well thanks, anyway, for taking time off work. How long are you staying?”

  “I have to get back tomorrow. Deadlines. There’s this report I have to do.”

  “He’s lonely without Mom, isn’t he?” Sylvia felt guilt gather like thick molasses in her throat.

  “Yes. But, hey, that’s life. He has the country club, he has his friends. How about you, Sylvia—everything okay now with Tommy?”

  Tommy was still there in the kitchen, his ears pricked up, probably. That was, if he truly gave a damn. “Well, you know,” Sylvia answered, twirling a lock of her thick blond hair.

  “Still pissed? Sylvia, it’s been over six months, hasn’t it? And remember, he never actually did anything.”

  Sylvia cradled the telephone to her ear and slipped out of the kitchen. She made her way through the large hallway of their log-lined house, and into the guest bathroom. She sat on the lid of the toilet seat and contemplated her reflection, sidelong in the mirror. Those telltale lines. She plucked a lone gray hair from her temple, while still hugging the telephone between her ear and shoulder.

  Getting older was no picnic.

  Melinda went on, “You can’t milk this grudge forever. Marriage is about forgiveness. All he did was flirt, give the guy a break.” Trust Melinda to tell it how it is, Sylvia mused. No bullshit; straight to the point.

  “It’s . . . just . . . he’s going off to LA so the whole thing is coming up all over again, you know . . . feelings. I’ve been so insecure about myself lately.”

  “Oh please, with your looks?”

  “I guess I’d never dwelled on our age difference before and . . . well . . . I just don’t—trust him.”

  Sylvia relayed to her cousin the ramblings in her head that were still eating away at her, but admitted that it hadn’t even been the young girl’s fault (the “Bel Ange”). Sylvia—her mind working like a detective at the time—remembered how she had clicked on this Mystery Woman’s Facebook page, after she had made her discovery that Tommy was in contact with her—this beautiful doe-eyed stranger. Sylvia sent the girl a friend request. To her surprise, the Bel Ange complied. Sylvia was in. They were Facebook “friends” (“Keep your enemies closer.”)

  Her stomach churned again, recalling how it made her feel at the time. She remembered drawing her hands up to the edges of her eyes and feeling the faint ridges of her thirty-six year-old crow’s feet, as she perused the girl’s online photos.

  Marie, she was called.

  She was breathtakingly beautiful. Worse, she seemed aware of her power. Sylvia had pored over dozens and dozens of her profile pictures: the young woman looking off into the distance, her bedroom lids half-hidden by the sweep of thick, maney hair. Full lips slightly parted, a hint of sexual innuendo, coupled with a schoolgirl, “but you can’t have me” innocence. Provocatively sweet.

  Lolita.

  Tommy hadn’t been the only one to drool over her photos; she had reams of male fans. Beneath the lovely pictures there were comments—Tommy’s the keenest of them all. Accompanied by hearts, his read:

  Ravishing, Marie. You’re a real stunner, that’s for sure ♥ . . . and:

  Yet another gorgeous photo, your charm and talent are beguiling ♥ and:

  Amazing! Wow, Marie, that would make a fabulous album cover. Eat your heart out American Vogue! You really are superb, so classy, with a naturally profound look in your beautiful eyes – so rare, so unusual. Where can I buy the poster? LOL. ♥♥♥

  “Profound?” Sylvia sniggered. “Talent?” As if being pretty was a “talent.” She remembered flicking desperately through more online photos, with messages that seemed like they’d been written by a teenage boy, not Sylvia’s thirty-two year-old husband.

  Yes, yes and yes! ♥ And I have a fabulous idea for a project, Marie, can’t wait to tell you all about it.

  The messages, Sylvia saw from the dates, had been piling up for over a year and a half. There were about thirty of them. These were not private messages but public—right there on Marie’s main page for anyone who was her Facebook friend to see. The comments had begun around the same time Sylvia felt her marriage had started flaking apart. Like filo pastry. Crumbling into little morsels, still there to taste, but fragmented. Separate. No longer one whole.

  “But Tommy loves you so much,” Melinda offered, her telephone voice i
rritatingly positive. “He’s not going to jeopardize your marriage. Or Gracie. You should be more confident.”

  Sylvia wet a sponge and started cleaning the bathroom sink. Cleaning, scrubbing. She used to be so glamorous, and now look. And yes, she had always been confident about Tommy. Then. He’d been crazy about her. The Bel Ange had been a wake-up call, an alarm bell screeching in her ear. Sylvia smiled at Melinda’s encouraging words but then caught sight of herself in the mirror and her smile faded. “I know I should be more forgiving, for Grace’s sake if nothing else.”

  It was true what Melinda said, though. Tommy hadn’t slept with the girl, hadn’t—as far as she knew—even kissed her. But the intention was there. The mental betrayal. Still, she needed to get over it.

  “You don’t want this silly Third Party saga screwing things up again,” Melinda warned.

  Sylvia looked into the mirror again and pushed her shoulders back. Grace. Poise. Stand tall, woman!

  Melinda was right. Tommy had been Sylvia’s second chance. The Third Party saga had messed up her life when she was at college. Sylvia’s then boyfriend, Lance, had kissed another girl. So she, in retaliation, kissed another boy. Lance was devastated. He got drunk and spent the night with a girl called Judy Merchant, a senior. So Sylvia did the same with a fraternity boy. The irony was that Lance was so sozzled with vodka when he was in bed with Judy Merchant, that nothing happened. But the damage had been done. Sylvia broke his heart and the relationship was over. They both had broken hearts. All for nothing. All because of that silly kiss with the first girl. Sylvia didn’t want history to repeat itself. What’s more, she had a child to think of now.

  “You’re right, Melinda. Listen, I have something in the oven.”

  Melinda rippled with laughter. “That, I really believe!” Then she said in a serious tone, “Why are you shrugging off this conversation, Sylvie?”

  “I swear, I’m not kidding, I’m baking an apple pie.”

  “Okay, so you really are trying to make things work between the two of you?”

  “I’m trying, yes.”

  “Well good for you!”

  “Bye,” Sylvia said. “Send a kiss to Aunt Marcy, will you? And give Dad a big hug from me. Thanks again for spending so much of your vacation time with him.”

  “A pleasure, my dear. Go, go. You have your apple pie to think of and that drop-dead gorgeous husband of yours. We’ll speak soon.”

  Sylvia sauntered back to the kitchen, feeling momentarily uplifted by Melinda’s belief in Tommy. Yes, she could do this.

  Grace skipped into the room, one of her teddies tucked under her arm, his mangy torso, poor thing, devoid of legs. One arm clung on—forlorn but loved. Sylvia heard her say to Tommy, “Don’t you know that Mommy likes your natural smell, Daddy?”

  Sylvia laughed. Doesn’t miss a trick, that one. Her daughter was hugging the solid legs of her beloved dad, clinging to his trousers with her tiny nails. Those small five-year-old hands were such a marvel, and Sylvia pitied Tommy for missing out on even a week of their growth. It seemed like yesterday that she was a baby and now she was a proper person, a separate entity who had her own vision of life.

  Grace pummeled her dad’s rock-hard legs. “Why do you have to go away, Daddy? You promised we’d go to the river and swim. You promised!”

  “We will, Bunnykins, we will. When the water’s warmer. And we’ll do some fly fishing, too. But Daddy has to work. I’ll bring you back a present from LA.”

  “What’s LA?”

  His arms were clasped about his little girl. “It’s a place, darling. With lots of palm trees and a very blue sky.”

  “What present will you get me?”

  The edges of Sylvia’s lips tipped up. She loved that word, “present,” instead of gift. Grace had picked up British expressions from him, the cadence of his voice, the lilts, the inflections. Sylvia wasn’t sure of all the nuances of the tiered English class system, but Tommy was well spoken. Educated, too. He’d got a double first at Cambridge University in Engineering and had been head hunted for a job in Silicon Valley as a techie, deep in the world of IT. That’s what brought him to the States. Then he moved to New York, where they met. Sylvia still didn’t understand exactly what it was he did back then, but she knew that only super-smart people had those kinds of jobs.

  She observed him, hugging Gracie. Yup, he was smart, alright—not so smart to not be caught by her, though. Women’s intuition always wins in the end. But in other ways he was a genius. His job title had been something like, “Oracle Designer.” Sometimes he’d spout off about this program or that—a clever new app—but she wasn’t on his level when it came to technology, and found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. She knew the basics but had always switched off with anything that reminded her of a math class. Switching off—a terrible habit she wished she could break. She still hadn’t even changed her cell. What was the point? Her life in Wyoming was so simple; she really didn’t need to be checking e-mails and Facebook on a Smartphone every five minutes.

  Sylvia observed her daughter cling to her dad with such devotion, she felt ashamed for harboring suspicion. Tommy was a wonderful father—surely he wouldn’t risk their family life?

  But the Bel Ange thing made her wonder if he felt incomplete, if he was secretly wishing to sow his seed, father a biological child of his own. The threat of a young, fresh twenty-year-old, ovaries pumping away, had made Sylvia more vulnerable than she believed possible, and she felt Tommy had betrayed their child, even though he had not seen his fantasy through.

  Yet Melinda was right. In reality, he had done nothing except take the young woman out to lunch one time, promising her a portfolio of free headshots. But Sylvia’s unwavering trust was betrayed, her puppy-dog faith broken.

  That St. Valentine’s Day duplicity was still a half-open wound. She never wore red anymore even though he loved her in red. She’d punished him, by kicking him out of the house. Punished him for making her feel like a fool in her red dress, make-up, and heels. She remembered how much she had toiled over that intricate, Valentine dinner of Milanese chicken, how she’d chilled the pink champagne, and laid the table with her late mom’s white damask tablecloth, and decorated the place mats with glittery, crimson hearts. Tommy seemed nonchalant about the whole affair. Not uninterested, but disinterested, as if he had no part to play. After dinner, he was using his iPhone, and the next day, despite Sylvia’s threats and tears from the weeks before, she saw that he had used his phone to send a goddamn message to the Bel Ange. (That darn Facebook again—public, for all to be read as if he subconsciously wanted to be caught. Who knew? Maybe he’d been sending private messages as well?) It was nothing romantic, just an “I’ll call you soon, take care, Marie,” but still, that was it, as far as Sylvia was concerned. She, standing in uncomfortable heels for his benefit, too cold in her thin red dress, while he was busy thinking about someone else, the egg dripping down her Valentine’s Day face.

  Now Tommy was back. She’d forgiven him for his schoolboy, mid-life crisis crush.

  And now she was baking apple pie, wasn’t that proof enough? They were a family, and she was prepared to endure the bumps along the path of marriage.

  For Grace’s sake.

  And her own, if only she could shed that hurt the way a snake sheds its skin.

  Sylvia turned off the oven, took out the pie, set it on the table, and breathed in the homey aroma. She looked out the window but the moose had moved on. It was lonely living in the middle of wild, Wyoming countryside. Sylvia assumed her love of the red-ochre-colored hills, the sweep of valleys and creeks, the blue-ribboned rivers, and skies bigger than God, would last forever. But she reminisced about her old life in New York, sparkling with friends and parties. Trips to art galleries, delicious take-out food, buying shoes for shoes’ sake that now clustered up closets, unworn.

  She often wondered when it was, exactly, that she and Tommy had made the decision to sell their Brooklyn apartment. Was it that one C
hristmas when they were drinking eggnogs by the fire in Saginaw with her parents, when her mother was still alive? Or the summer afterwards, crammed onto Jones Beach, clawing for their patch of sand? Whose idea had it been to cash in the profit from the apartment and sink it into an environmentally friendly log cabin in Wyoming? Hers? Tommy’s? She asked herself that now, as she stared into space—into the never-ending view. Sylvia had a talent for decoration and had made their humble apartment a showpiece, but restoring a house in the countryside was a different story. They had not reckoned on the toil that eco country living would demand. It had all seemed so romantic at the time; moving to the heart of Native America—the two of them leveling out the garden and building their year-round greenhouse for their organic vegetables.

  But the novelty wore thin. They ran out of stamina. The eco-friendly heating system had left them shivering. The furnace broke. It was freezing (they’d bought the house in summer, wide-eyed as they were). The snow fell thick, and the wind, like a howling wolf, yowled relentlessly about their chilled ears—so strong even Tommy, with his heavy frame, could sometimes lean against it, his weight supported.

  Sylvia’s horse fantasy was pushed aside. The stables that came with the property stood empty. Just paying the bills was tough, never mind supporting an expensive equestrian hobby. Tommy had once been handsomely paid working in IT. She, too, made a good income from her job as a theatrical agent in New York. Yet both of them decided to turn their lives around, to live at one with nature and explore their creativity. Lord knows, she’d read enough movie scripts. She knew the format. She could write one too. Why not? And Tommy had always dreamed of being a photographer. They packed it all in, packed it all up, and drove out West to rolling skies and nights the color of indigo. They could live like cowboys, fulfill their dreams, and then sell the house in a few years with a nice chunk of profit if things didn’t work out. They could always return to their old jobs in New York. Or even start up afresh in California.