Blessing in Disguise (13 page)

But instead of getting undressed and climbing right into bed, Nola found herself sinking onto the low ottoman in front of her dressing table as she remembered Florene telling her that Grace had called. Again.

What did the woman want?
Really?
Would Grace try to pry out of her the thing Mama had made her promise never to tell?

Nola looked around her, at the walls papered in an extravagant design of birds and trellises twined with leaves, and at the starkly modern bed with its hand-rubbed mahogany-and-black-lacquer finish. The whole room, this whole apartment, was like that, like
her,
a study in sharp contrasts—like that turn-of-the-century oil of a woman sewing by lamplight, which she and Marcus had gotten at a terrific price at an auction at Lubin’s—hung next to the Matisse print that Tasha said looked like an upside-down Gumby. And the ancient, balding Turkish rug on which sat a stack of oval Shaker boxes, a halogen floor lamp of green oxidized brass, a vaguely Arts and Crafts dresser she’d found at a flea market.

Leftovers from another life, she thought. Once upon a time, when he’d been trading Government-backed mortgage bonds, Marcus’s commissions had made it possible for her to go back to school
and
for them to buy all this nice stuff. Now it served as a vivid reminder of a time when, instead of conning herself into believing the money would keep on coming, she ought to have been socking it under her mattress.

This unfinished business with Grace—it was a reminder, too. Of long-ago promises that should never have been made. Of childhood years when Mama had often worn the anxious look of someone running scared—which, in a lot of ways, she had been.

She’d been fooling herself, thinking that if she ignored her Grace Truscott would eventually go away. Now Nola was remembering the little girl who had forced her way into Mama’s house that day. No. Grace Truscott was not going to just fade away.

Suddenly it hit Nola, as if she’d been slapped. It was as clear as if she’d glimpsed into a crystal ball. The time had come to stop playing hide-and-seek. She had to face up to this. Look Grace Truscott in the eye and beg her, if she had to, to back off, for the love of God,
just back off.

It was late—after eleven—but Nola knew that, if she allowed herself to sleep on this, by tomorrow she might chicken out. And maybe this was one time when gut instinct had to prevail. She picked up the phone and quickly punched in Grace’s number. She didn’t have to look it up. Grace had left it on her answering machine so many times, she knew it by heart.

Nola chose Colombe d’Or on Twenty-sixth Street, just off Lexington. It was chic, and too pricy for her, but she was sure she’d never be spotted here by anyone she knew.

Stepping out of a brisk wind into the garden-floor restaurant’s burrowlike warmth, ducking slightly to clear the low entrance, she felt an odd mix of cozy familiarity coupled with mounting dread. She scanned the tables along the exposed-brick wall beyond the bar, and immediately spotted a woman sitting by herself who looked somewhat familiar.

Yes, it
was
her. All grown up, yet the features Nola remembered from so many years ago were clearly recognizable. She had known Grace was pretty. But, Lord, so
tiny.
Even seated, she looked as if she couldn’t be much more than five feet. A doll-sized woman, wearing a filmy white aviator’s blouse tucked into close-fitting black jeans, with a chic little tapestry vest and jangly gold necklace like a Brobdingnagian charm bracelet. Nola, in her tailored camel slacks and blocky houndstooth jacket, felt like an NFL linebacker by comparison.

She checked her coat and started over toward the table, savoring these few moments of being able to observe without being observed. Grace’s hair was dark and silky, she saw, whereas hers had to be raked into a knot at the back of her neck to keep it from frizzing. And Grace’s hands—so small they made her silver rings look absurd somehow, like a child playing dress-up.

But despite her size, everything about Grace, even the way she sat—insouciantly slouched back on her tailbone, one foot in an impossibly tiny suede boot balanced across her opposite knee—seemed to give off the message:
I know what I want, and how to get it.

Watching Grace casually take a sip from the goblet of Perrier and lime in front of her, Nola felt a tug in the pit of her stomach, as if she were being pulled toward Grace against her will.
Damn her. Damn her to hell for dragging
me
into this.

Could Grace possibly know how shaken she’d been? All those messages that she couldn’t bring herself to answer, Nola had played them back, over and over. Searching ... for what? Some clue that would tip her off to the trap Grace might be setting?

Wondering now if she
were
walking into a trap, Nola paused a moment in the midst of winding her way among the packed tables and adjusted the front of her jacket. Then she stepped into full view.

“Hello. You must be Grace.”

Nola took a grim sort of pleasure in watching Grace start in surprise, nearly knocking over her drink as she rose to shake Nola’s hand. Nola slipped into the empty chair across the table, feeling Grace’s eyes on her, taking inventory.

She wasn’t uncomfortable being stared at. People had been staring at her since she was twelve, a scrawny kid as tall as some men, with legs up to her navel and dresses that were always a few inches too short. Not that Mama, with her needle and thread, didn’t always pretty much keep up with her; but Mama swore that, every night she stayed up late to take a hem down, Nola would be an inch taller by morning.

Gone now was the slouch she’d affected as a teenager to look shorter. Nola sat straight as a T-square, neck extended, her gaze as level as a surveyor’s line.

“I was so afraid I’d be late that I got here ten minutes early,” Grace said with a nervous laugh that made Nola want to like her in spite of herself. “If I’d somehow missed you, after all this, I’d have kicked myself from here to kingdom come.” Just a trace of a Southern accent, like a pinch of sugar in a cup of strong, brewed coffee.

“And here
I
am ... late.” Nola managed a small, tight smile.

Don’t apologize. Don’t explain.
Nola willed away the usual half-assed excuses that sprang to mind.
Let Grace do the explaining.

“Nice place,” Grace commented, looking about her. “I read somewhere that the food is good.”

“I don’t know, I’ve never eaten here,” Nola replied with the wry half-smile of a working woman on a tight budget who scarcely has time to scan the morning paper, much less bother with reviews of pricey restaurants. She settled her handbag squarely on her lap, noting with disdain Grace’s oversized leather tote, slung haphazardly over the back of her chair for any pickpocket to come along and help himself to. Only someone born into money would be so careless.

Nola watched Grace take another sip of Perrier. “Oh. Well ... the truth is, anything would taste good to me right now. Last night, after you called”—again, that disarming smile that made Nola, against every instinct, want to like her—“I guess I didn’t get much sleep. All I could manage for breakfast was black coffee.”

“Join the club. Uninterrupted nights of sleep are definitely a thing of the past for me.”

Grace looked at her blankly.

“I have two girls,” Nola explained. “Tasha’s ten, and Dani just turned to six.”

“I remember when my son was six.” Grace sounded wistful. “I wish I’d found some way to bottle that age and store it up for later.”

“Teenager?” It wasn’t such a wild guess—Grace’s expression suggested that she’d recently weathered a few storms on that front.

“And how!” Grace laughed, but Nola detected a note of tension there. “Chris is at that
age.
I’m not sure whether it’s him being thirteen, or me being over thirty. Either way, there are days when I think I’m going to go right through the roof.”

“Mine has a few of those holes in it,” Nola sympathized, rolling her eyes. “And Tasha’s still got a ways to go before she really hits her stride.”

“I hope I get a chance to meet your girls someday,” Grace said.

Nola could feel herself withdrawing from the spontaneous warmth that had sprung up between them as if from a fire that had gotten too cozy. She had to stay alert, on edge, none of this we’re-in-the-same-boat bullshit.

Leveling her gaze at Grace, she said, “I’m not sure what the point would be.”

Grace abruptly leaned forward on her elbows, fixing Nola with a clear, knowing gaze. In a low voice, all pretense at polite banter laid aside, she said, “I know what you’re thinking. You didn’t come here to listen to me make small talk.” She was the first to look away, toying with the red plastic straws from her drink, rolling them absently between her palms, hard and fast, like a determined Girl Scout trying to make a fire with two sticks. “God, I can’t believe you’re here! We were just kids, I know, but I remember absolutely everything about you ... and about ...” She faltered, then picked up: “... that day.”

Now Nola was leaning forward, too. “Why can’t you just let it be? Why drag it out in the open after all these years? For God’s sake, they’re
dead,
both our fathers. My mother, too. They’re not here to defend themselves.”

Grace was shaking her head, flinging down her straw. “I’m not
accusing
anyone.”

“Maybe not, but you’re making him look bad all the same.”

“My father ... or yours?” Grace asked softly.

Nola could hear a humming deep in her eardrums, like a steel cable stretched too taut.

“This isn’t about them,” she shot back. “What it’s about is
you.
Why the sudden compelling need to rake it all up?”

“I had to,” Grace replied simply. “This thing, it’s been in my head all these years, like a bad movie that keeps replaying over and over. I can’t believe a tragedy as awful as that didn’t affect my father the same way. And how can I write about his life with any kind of honesty if I leave out something so important?”

“Okay, but what do you need me for?” Nola sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “You already know everything there is to know.” Her heart stepped up its frenzied beat, and she had a sudden, unwanted vision of herself being given a lie-detector test, her arm cuffed and wired, the needle on the graph fluctuating wildly.

“Who are you protecting, Nola?” Grace pressed, leaning closer.
“Is
it your father? The fact that he might have ended up a murderer if he hadn’t been stopped?”

Nola suddenly felt as if she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. Her head grew light, and black specks floated across her field of vision.

Then she reminded herself.
The best defense is a good offense.
Gripping the edge of the table, she demanded, “What right do you have to come barging into my life, asking questions that are none of your damn business?”

“She made you promise, didn’t she? Just the way Mother and Daddy made
me
promise.”

“I don’t know what you’re talk—”

“Oh, yes, you do. I can see it in your face. You’re afraid to talk about it, even to someone who was there. Someone, I’m guessing your mother, drilled it into you that you had to keep quiet or something really terrible would happen.” The smile on Grace’s pretty, heart-shaped face was grim. “I know because they did it to me, too.

Only they didn’t exactly
say
I wasn’t supposed to tell. My mother ... she has a way of just
looking
at you where you know you’d rather walk over hot coals in your bare feet than have her come out with what she’s thinking.”

“It wasn’t that way with me. Mama, she—” Nola stopped herself. “Look, this isn’t going to get us anywhere. I’m all grown up now. I make my own decisions. Doing show-and-tell for a bunch of reporters doesn’t happen to be one of them.” She brought a cool, trembling hand to a cheek that felt as if it had been scalded.

She was glad for the distraction when their waiter brought the ginger ale she’d ordered.

“Not
a bunch of reporters,” Grace corrected her. “Me, just me. I want to be able to explain so people will truly understand.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Then that’s what I need to know.
Why
it’s not simple.”

“What about what
I
need?” Nola felt something hard and bright flash inside her.

Grace sat back suddenly, her face pale and earnest. Then, pressing forward again, she touched the back of Nola’s hand, lightly. “I know you’ll probably find this hard to believe, but all these years ... I’ve wondered about you. Even before I started the book, I thought about calling you, just to ... well, so I’d have someone to talk to about this.”

Nola felt the same tug as before, pulling her toward Grace against every instinct that was telling her to resist.
Admit it
—
you’ve felt the same way.
Longing for someone to confide in, share this awful burden with, a burden far greater than Grace could begin to imagine ...

Careful,
she warned herself.

“You want the truth?” She spoke with the cold precision of a cleaver thudding into butcher block. “I was
glad
when my father died.”

Nola could see that Grace was taken aback—more than that, actually
shocked
—and she felt a strange sort of triumph.

“My God,” Grace said in a soft rush, almost an exhalation.

“Before Dad died, the only good times Mama and I had were when he was away at sea,” Nola went on. “He’d be gone for weeks, months sometimes. When he got back, it’d be okay for a little while ... but then he’d get these crazy ideas in his head, and start acting ugly, accusing Mama of things.”

“What things?” Grace asked.

“Most of the time it was little stuff,” Nola continued, almost as if she were talking to herself, or dreaming aloud. “Dad yelling that she’d gotten ‘uppity’ working up there on Capitol Hill, that he didn’t know anymore if she was black or white. Then he’d get it into his head that she was cheating on him. Oh, the men! Once, it was supposed to have been nice Mr. Crosley, who worked at the market where Mama shopped. Another time it was Uncle Lester, Dad’s own
brother.”