Stolen Grace Page 7

  “I guess that’s something I’ll need to discuss with her.”

  “Well,” Marg said. “See you later, honey.”

  “Thanks a million. See you later, Marg.”

  The Coca Cola tasted good. It tasted of America, of everything Sylvia knew and trusted. This house had been her world. She, a nice Midwestern girl with her wholesome friends and a college degree from the University of Michigan, should have been content with her lot. But New York changed all that and she doubted she could ever return to Saginaw for good. Especially now. Poor Michigan. Once synonymous with growth and opportunity, now smashed hopes and run-down housing projects seemed to be the symbol to the outside world of this great state.

  She loved this house, though. It was considered a historic property, built in 1930, Spanish in style, with a red tiled roof and balconied windows. Could she ever live here again? It was too raw to even consider that now, but she couldn’t keep two homes going at once. The truth was, as Melinda had sensed, Sylvia would have liked to have moved back to Brooklyn. Get back her old life, or a semblance of it. They’d gone to Wyoming mainly for Grace’s sake. Fresh air, plenty of space, low crime—a place where her daughter could ride a horse and go hiking and camping. The first time Sylvia set eyes on Wyoming—when she and Tommy drove across the country and stopped by Yellowstone—she thought it was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen. Sweeping blue skies, mountains, and rivers with gushing crystalline whitewater, beckoned them to return. And they did return with open hearts.

  But it was challenging, she discovered, living in a state where international adoption was rare. Most people assumed Grace was of Native American heritage, but one little boy at kindergarten, a farmer’s son, had called Grace a “wetback,” something Sylvia assumed would never have occurred in a melting pot like New York City. Sylvia’s parents denied it later (falling in love with their grandchild the moment they saw her smile), but they had originally been scathing about trans-racial adoption, trying to convince Sylvia to choose, “a child who has something in common with you, who won’t raise questions”—e.g. a white-skinned baby. They argued that it wouldn’t be in the “best interest” of the child, and that Sylvia and Tommy would not be able to prepare her to effectively deal with racism in later life.

  Sylvia knew Tommy wasn’t feeling fulfilled with life in Wyoming either, despite his love for fly fishing, which was one of the main reasons they chose the town of Crowheart—so close to Wind River Canyon. Sylvia had never pegged herself as a career girl but she guessed she was; not having a proper job didn’t suit her. She missed communicating, being involved in several people’s lives at once. The “creative freedom” dream came with long, tangled strings attached and it was time to make a change. Melinda was right—they had a choice now.

  But how could she break up this house? It would be impossible. Sylvia wished she could airlift it to Brooklyn. Her mother’s dresses hung like ladies who lunch, gossiping in her walk-in closet. How was she meant to take them to Goodwill? Or find a new home for her dad’s faithful old golf clubs that sat like guardians by the backyard door? Having money in her bank account would be bittersweet. Parents die, she thought, they pass what’s theirs onto their children; that’s life, but her father’s death shouldn’t have happened the way it did. He had not “passed away,” he had killed himself. It didn’t seem right that she should be benefitting in any way, at all.

  She thought of Tommy, how he had always worked hard for privileges. He hadn’t grown up in a world of country clubs the way she had. He’d won a scholarship to Cambridge, one of the top universities in England, and his first Saturday job was when he was fifteen. He’d joined the Territorial Army, a part-time commitment. It helped with expenses and he learned how to parachute, one of his childhood dreams.

  Although they spoke the same language, they were from two different worlds, in a way. Tommy had that sarcastic British wit that caught her off-guard sometimes. Clever, quick. He was precise and it showed in his hobbies, the fly fishing (which he said needed “the touch of a surgeon and the spirit of a Zen master”), and his interest in precision shooting. He didn’t hunt, had never shot a living creature—as far as she knew—but he was attracted by long-range fire; something else he picked up in the Territorial Army. She’d observed how meticulous he was, the way he loved the ritual of setting up the shot, the millimeter accuracy, the importance of the rifle position. Sylvia presumed it wasn’t far removed from photography, honing in on a target with a critical, razor-sharp eye. Some people thought Tommy a nerd, his obsession for detail, his endless chitchat about angles, lenses and exposure. But she loved that about him. It kept her on her toes and she was thankful for not having a baseball fan for a husband, but a man whose own expertise and appetite for knowledge drove his passions.

  That’s what made her so furious about that pouting Bel Ange whom he’d obsessed over, as if she were one of his projects or targets. Sylvia wanted to shake Tommy and shout in his ear, “She doesn’t give a damn about you or how your mind works, she wants to feed off you, use you to gratify her ego. Look at me, Sylvia. I’m here, I’m real! I care!”

  She prayed that he would put all that behind him and love her, his wife, the way he had before. She remembered how soon after they’d met, he took her face in his hands as if she were a delicate porcelain plate worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. He had examined her, tracing his fingers across her nose—remarking on how pretty it was—her curvy lips, stroking the line of her pale eyebrows. “You’re the most precious thing in the world,” he told her. A ripple of pleasure shimmied through her core now, remembering her first orgasm with him. Her first orgasm with anyone. She thought she would explode. Physically. Mentally.

  That was what she wanted: for them both to feel that all-consuming passion once more.

  To have her husband back. Truly back. For their little family to be as strong as a diamond.

  And shining just as bright.

  CHAPTER 8

  Grace

  Grace and Ruth crawled along in the car, waiting in line beside the burger drive-by window. For some reason it was a busy afternoon.

  “My mom never lets me eat this stuff,” Grace revealed, feeling jiggly inside.

  “Well, I thought we’d have a special treat today,” Ruth conspired in a whisper.

  “Mommy says we must always eat free-range meat and eggs when we can. She says all that Intensive Farming is bad.”

  “Does she now,” Ruth said.

  Grace nodded. “There’s danger of E. coli poisoning because they feed cows grain when they should be eating grass. It’s dangerous for human con . . .con . . .something . . . and it’s so cruel the way they treat animals in those Factory Farms.”

  “Human consumption.”

  “Yeah,” Grace agreed, her eyes wide and earnest. “A little girl once ate a take-out burger and died from E. coli poisoning.”

  “I buy free-range chicken because I can taste the difference,” Ruth told her. “But the eggs? The pork? The beef? I can’t taste the difference so I don’t bother.”

  “But what about the animals?” Grace asked.

  “I don’t care about the animals,” Ruth said quietly, “I care about my wallet!”

  Grace knotted her brow. How could a wallet have more feelings than a live animal?

  “You don’t have to tell your mom,” Ruth pointed out, putting Grace’s thoughts into her mouth. “There are such things as secrets.”

  LATER, GRACE SAT on her bed surrounded by her teddy bears. It was tricky for her to decide who got to be where on the bed so she rotated them every day so they wouldn’t get jealous of each other. Pidgey O Dollars always had the prime spot, though. She knew it wasn’t fair but then she had been told that life wasn’t always fair so she decided it was okay. Plus, Pidgey O Dollars had spent time in the hospital. She’d taken him to a friend’s house once, and their Jack Russell attacked him. His face was “Mauled Beyond Recognition” her Mom had said and announced he needed Emergency Plas
tic Surgery. Poor Pidgey O Dollars. Grace hadn’t understood why he had to have plastic put on his face when he was not a doll but a soft teddy bear, but her mom kept using that word. But in the end, no plastic was used. Her mom sewed on a whole new soft face, with a new nose and new, button eyes. The new face was whiter than the old one and the nose too pointy. The eyes were a glassy blue and not chocolate-brown like before. He had no legs and only one arm. It changed Pidgey’s personality. Secretly, Grace didn’t love him quite the same, which made her feel guilty so she decided to love him Double to make up for it. So she always gave him the best position on the bed.

  After Grace had rearranged the teddies, she took Carrot, her pajama-case teddy, and pulled apart the Velcro on the invisible seam on his back. She took out her light summertime nighty and unrolled her dad’s recording pen, hidden inside. Nobody knew. It was a secret she shared with her teddies. Her dad had forgotten all about this little machine because he used his iPhone to record instead.

  Finders keepers, losers weepers.

  She carefully took the clever pen—that looked just like a normal pen and even wrote like one too—out of the back. She was going to make stories, and a diary of her life. Her writing, she knew, wasn’t grown-up enough yet. She could almost do joined-up writing but it wasn’t perfect. Recording was better. It was fast and she could listen to it afterwards and laugh at her voice which sometimes sounded like Donald Duck.

  She pressed down on the pocket clip and saw the tiny red light flash on. She whispered so Ruth couldn’t hear her because this recording was private:

  “Me and Mommy Skyped. She looked sad. But she wasn’t wearing her Wolfy Face. It was more like the Ground Dog Face. Ground Dog is a sad dog that I made up. His belly is close to the floor and his tail goes between his legs and he has long sad ears. Mommy had Ground Dog Face but she was trying to hide it. She kept smiling but I know my mom, the kind of feelings inside her tummy, like if I get told off sometimes my tummy makes a little jump inside. Or if I see a dead animal by the road that’s been run over by a car, I get that funny feeling like a piece of me is missing. Like I have a hole inside of me.

  Today I did so many things that I’ve forgotten! Let me see. Auntie Ruth—she told me to call her Auntie Ruth but she said it’s a secret as Mommy may not like it as it could hurt her feelings—took me to the drive-by! I had a burger and fries but then I felt sick after. I went to school and Auntie Ruth talked to Mrs. Pitt for half an hour and they laughed and laughed. I don’t know what they were laughing about but they sure looked happy.

  I love school. I did a painting of a pony. Mrs. Pitt showed us how to mix colors. She showed us how to mix red and white and it comes out pink! It was like magic. Red and blue goes purple! But then I mixed green and red and it came out brown. So in the end my pony was brown but Ruth said it was pretty anyway, and she put it on the fidget rator door with my painting of Mrs. Paws.

  Oh YES! There is a beautiful, beautiful blackbird who has had babies and she made a nest in the barn. These babies are called chicks. Daddy once told me that in England men used to call women ‘Birds’ and that in America, men call women ‘Chicks.’ Daddy says it is Dee Rog Tree but I don’t know what that means. Auntie Ruth told me that I mustn’t touch the nest or my human smell will make the mommy bird fly away and then the babies would die. Let’s hope that naughty Mrs. Paws won’t find them. Auntie Ruth talked a lot about Mrs. Paws being dangerous and said that cats were bad. She said she had ‘just the tonic’ for Mrs. Paws but I don’t know why she talked about tonic. Daddy drinks tonic water when he makes a gin and tonic. But I don’t think Mrs. Paws would drink something so yukky.

  Daddy Skyped me today. He’s coming home very late in the middle of the night and we’ll be going to Saginaw together to see Mommy soon.

  Auntie Ruth did lots of writing today. She says she is going to make a million dollars with her book. When she came to school to pick me up, I saw that she was wearing a pin just like Mommy’s. And a dress like Mommy’s too. Isn’t that funny? But she told me not to say anything, just in case. She said that for every secret I keep she would give me a dollar. So far I’ve made two dollars! In one day! I’ll be rich and can buy myself the Computer Engineer Barbie Doll.

  I don’t usually have secrets from Mommy, only that time when I wet my bed and then on purpose I spilt milk on the sheet so that she didn’t know I had peed. Maybe she knew and that was her secret too but she never said. Anyway, Auntie Ruth says it’s okay to have little secrets from Mom, that it shows I’m a grown-up and a big girl. I don’t care about being a big girl but I do want to be a grown-up so I can invent something and buy my own pony.

  When me and Mommy Skyped she took the laptop around Grandma and Grandpa’s house so I could see. I wish Mommy could fly on a magic carpet and come and get me in the night so I could be with her at Grandma’s. I have to go now, I hear Auntie Ruth calling me for dinner. We’re having popcorn and she said we could watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Yipeee!”

  CHAPTER 9

  Sylvia

  Sylvia sat cross-legged on the sofa-that-saved-her-life and picked up the old telephone. She dialed Tommy. She felt odd knowing that everything she touched or looked at was now hers. The dial telephone. The big old icebox that hummed away too loudly in the kitchen. The spiders that spun their webs in high corners that nobody could reach. All these belonged to her.

  Tommy answered his cell. “Hello.”

  “Hi, honey, it’s me.”

  “Sylvie, darling, hi, I’m on my way to the airport now. So glad you called. I have great news. Are you sitting down?”

  “I’m sitting on my special sofa.” He called her Darling. And Sylvie. That felt good.

  “I’ve been offered the job.”

  “The job? What job? I thought it was just a two-week assignment. And that it was all about to go to the dogs because of you having to come home.”

  “No, it was a job interview. But I thought that you might think it a bit excessive to go all the way out to LA for just an interview, so I didn’t say.”

  Sylvia was mute. She didn’t know how to react. Why couldn’t he have just been straightforward with her? She conjured up possible images of the nubile Bel Ange doing a photo shoot with him, and a wave of mistrust shot through her, making her stomach churn.

  “Sylvia? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here.”

  “Are you cross with me?”

  “No, of course not. How can I be mad at you for getting a job offer?”

  “But if it hadn’t worked out. If I hadn’t been offered the job, then you’d be pissed off, wouldn’t you.” His voice had a downward inflection at the end of the sentence, no question mark, just a statement—disappointed with her. As usual, she’d said the wrong thing. Reacted in the wrong way.

  “I would have wished you’d told me. I mean, I still wish you’d told me,” she offered.

  “But you might not have wanted me to go all the way to LA if it wasn’t a sure thing.”

  “I wish you had more faith in me.” She took in a sharp intake of breath, and exhaling said, “You always pre-empt what my reaction will be.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad you called as I’ve just heard back and I wanted to share the good news.”

  “It is good news. What is the job, exactly?” she asked brightly.

  “In-house photographer on Image Magazine. It’s well paid, too.”

  “Great, Tommy. Congratulations.”

  “How are you faring? Gracie told me you two Skyped.”

  “You Skyped her too?”

  “Of course. God I love that little minx. She’s just the best and I’m not just saying that because she’s my daughter.”

  “Yes you are!” Sylvia joked. “So Daddy’s Little Princess.”

  “Too right she’s Daddy’s Little Princess. I’ve bought her a mini electric guitar.”

  “An electric guitar? What gave you that idea?”

  “She’s got a really good ear, you know that. T
he way she picks up accents and languages. It must mean she’s musical. You’ve heard her do all those different voices and songs for her teddies and dolls. Didn’t you see that music school she set up for them?”

  “But an electric guitar. Tommy. Really. You couldn’t be happy with a regular, classical guitar?”

  “It’s made for her. A mini, pink, metallic guitar with flecks of gold sparkles, set beneath the paintwork. Designed for a child her size. And it’s good quality, too. It even comes with a little amp.”

  Sylvia laughed. “Only in LA would they come up with such a thing. I bet you’re planning to make another video of her and post it on YouTube again.”

  “Too right I am. We could get her ready for America’s Got Talent,” he teased. “But don’t say a word—it’s a surprise.”

  “Well you’ll see her in the morning, right?”

  “Yup, can’t wait. How’s it been going with Ruth? Gracie seems happy.”

  “Yeah, it sounds as if they’ve been having a ball.”

  “Seems very reliable.”

  “Absolutely. She’s great with Grace. But I still wish I hadn’t had to leave her behind. I miss her.”

  “You did what you had to do. Anyway, it sounds as if she hasn’t even noticed we’re gone. As long as this Ruth woman is genuinely being nice to her and isn’t some sort of lesbian pedophile.”

  Thanks Tommy, for putting that sweet idea into my head. “So you’re still both coming to the funeral? You think that’s okay for a five-year-old?”

  “If it’s too weird, Grace can have a play-date instead. Have you set a day?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Okay, good,” Tommy said.

  “And then what?”

  “Well, the sooner I start at the magazine, the sooner I begin earning. So after the funeral, I’ll head back to LA. I’ll look for an apartment for us, just a two bedroom to start with, and then you and Gracie can come out the minute it’s ready.”