Malice

“Okay, you fools, untie her.” The black girl was very tall and very cool, and strangely good-looking. And the whites of her eyes looked enormous in the light of the flashlight. “You've got five seconds to get her out of here, or Sally's going to the Man. If I'm not outta here in three minutes, she's gone. And I guess maybe you babes are in the hole until Christmas.”

“Bullshit, Luana. Get your black ass outta here before we kill you.” Jane was addressing her and flashing the switchblade at her and Brenda looked furious, but she seemed somewhat distracted. The cocaine had taken hold and she wanted to proceed with Grace, without their damn interruptions.

“Why don't you cunts go fight someplace else?” Brenda said with a small groan as she moved away from Grace for a moment.

“You got two minutes left,” Luana said icily. “I said untie her.” Luana looked terrifying as she stood staring at them in the light of the flashlight. She had muscles almost like a man's and the long sinewy legs of an Olympic runner. She was the prison's female karate and boxing champ, and she was someone that no one wanted to mess with. Jane always swore she wasn't afraid of her, and she'd said more than once that she would have liked to carve her face off. But the rest of them knew it was more talk than action. Luana had powerful connections.

There was a long moment of hesitation, and then one of the other women untied Grace's hands and arms, and another began to untie her legs, as Brenda whined in unfulfilled passion.

“You bitch. You want her for yourself, don't you?”

“I've got what I want. Since when do you have to fuck with babies?” But Luana knew as well as they did that Grace was a beauty. Lying there, all sprawled out, she had almost made them drool with anticipation.

“She's old enough,” Brenda spat at the black girl in frustrated fury. “What are you now, the Lone Ranger? Go fuck yourself, Luana.”

“Thanks.”

Grace was on her feet, and struggling into her clothes, and trying to button her shirt with trembling hands again a moment later. She didn't even dare look at them, for fear that they would kill her.

“Party's over, girls,” Luana announced with a smile. “You touch her again, and I'll kill you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Brenda said with a tone of complete annoyance.

“She's mine. You heard me?”

“Yours;?”For once, Brenda looked stunned. No one had told her that. That might have made things a little different.

“What about Sally?” Brenda asked suspiciously.

“We don't owe you any explanations,” Luana said coldly, as she shoved Grace toward the door. She was wheezing and shaking, and Luana pushed her so hard she almost fell. This was not a woman to mess with. None of them was. Grace was way out of her league, and she realized now that she'd been crazy to think she could be safe here. All the stories were true. They had just been waiting.

“Christ, you guys are into threesomes now?” Brenda whined at her.

“You heard me. She's mine. Stay away from her. Or there's gonna be trouble. You got that?” No one answered her, but the message was clear, and Luana was too important in the political scheme of things to be worth annoying. With a single word from her, a riot could come down. Two of her brothers were the most powerful Black Muslims in the state, and the two others had staged the biggest riots in the history of Attica, and San Quentin.

Having warned them to stay away from Grace, Luana quickly opened the door, and shoved Grace outside. She grabbed her arm, and growled at her to stroll along, chatting with her as though nothing had happened. Five minutes later, they were in the gym, and Grace was deathly pale and wheezing, and she no longer had her inhaler. Sally was waiting for them there, with a look of concern. And when she saw Grace, she looked really angry.

“What the hell were you doing with Brenda?” she asked in an irate undertone, as Luana watched them.

“She came into our cell. I thought it was you at first, I didn't even look up until she was nose to nose with me, and Jane was flashing a knife right behind her.”

“You've got a lot to learn.” But she'd been impressed that she'd been smart enough to leave a message on her bunk, with the single scrawled word Brenda. “Are you okay?” She wondered how far it had gone, and she glanced at Luana for an answer.

“She's okay. Stupid, but okay. They didn't get too far. Brenda was too busy getting coked up to do a whole lot of damage.” Over the years they had all seen girls raped and ruined for life by baseball bats and broomsticks. But Luana was still annoyed that this kid had almost dragged Sally into it. It was Luana who had insisted on going herself, and leaving Sally to tell the guards, if she had to. Luana took good care of her. They had been together for years and no one dared to bother either of them, because of Luana's brothers who came to see her when they could. Two lived in Illinois, one in New York, and the other in California. All four were on parole, but everyone knew who they were, and what they could do, if they ever got angry. Even Brenda and her friends wouldn't dare mess with them, or with Luana or Sally. Now Grace was going to be under their protection.

“What did you tell them?” Sally asked Luana conversationally as they walked back to the cell she shared with Grace.

“That she was ours now,” Luana said quietly, looking at Grace with annoyance. She had told Sally to watch out for her. The kid was so green she was liable to bring the house down. And Luana didn't pull any punches with her when they got back to the cell and Grace started crying. She also knew she didn't dare ask for another inhaler till the next day, and she was wheezing badly.

“I don't give a shit how scared and sick you are,” Luana said, looking murderous. “If you ever put Sally's ass on the line again, I'll kill you. You don't leave her any notes, don't tell her who kidnapped you. Don't go whining to her about your medicine or who pinched your ass on the chow line. You got a problem, you come to me. I don't know what the hell you did to get sent here, and I don't want to know. But I can tell you one thing, you weren't sent here for having brains, and if you don't get them quick, you're gonna die, simple as that. So get smart real fast. Ya hear? And in the meantime, you do every goddamn thing Sally tells you. She tells you to lick the floor, or clean her latrine with your eyebrows, you do it. You got that, kid?”

“Yes, yes, I do … and thank you …” She knew that she was safe with them. Sally had already proven that to her. And from now on, if she was faithful to them, they would protect her. They wanted nothing from her, not sex, not money, they felt sorry for her, and they both knew she didn't belong there.

But from that day on, things changed. People stayed away from Grace, and treated her with respect. No one hassled her, no one whistled or jeered. It was as though she didn't exist. She led a sort of charmed life, going her own way in the jungle, amidst the lions and the snakes and the alligators. And her only friends were Sally and Luana.

She had gotten religious while she was there. And her asthma was troubling her less than it had in years. She had started her correspondence course from the local junior college. She could finish in two years, and go to school at night to get her B.A. once she got out. She was taking secretarial classes too, to help her find a job when she got out and went to Chicago.

Even David saw a change in her in time. When he visited her, he saw that there was a quiet confidence, and an odd peace about her. It allowed her to accept the news philosophically when he told her that they had lost the appeal, and she would have to serve her full two-year sentence. It had been exactly a year since her conviction, and David could barely bring himself to believe that they had lost again, but she took it very calmly. It was Grace who consoled him, when he told her how badly he felt to have failed her yet again, but she reminded him that it wasn't his fault. He had done his best. And all she had to do now was survive another year there. It wasn't easy, but all she could do now was look forward. It touched him more than ever as he listened to her, but it pained him too. He found that he came to see her less often because seeing her always reminded him of all that he hadn't been able to accomplish for her. He still had an odd kind of obsession with her. She was so beautiful, so young, so pure, and she had had such rotten luck in her short life, and yet, despite all he felt for her, he had been able to do nothing to change it. It made him feel helpless and angry and inadequate. Sometimes, he wondered if he had won the appeal for her, would things have been different? If, maybe then, he would have had the guts to tell her he loved her. But as things stood, he had never said it, and Grace never suspected his feelings for her.

Molly had been aware of his feelings for Grace for a while, but she had never said anything to him about it. But the young lawyer David had been taking out recently had said plenty. She had sensed long since how obsessed he was with Grace. He talked about her constantly. His new friend had called him on it more than once, and told him it wasn't healthy. She told him he had a “hero complex” and was trying to save her. She told him a lot of things, some of which were truly painful. But the simple fact was, in his own mind, he had failed Grace. Knowing that made him feel worse each time he saw her. And in her second year at Dwight, he came to see Grace less and less often. He had less reason to now. There was no appeal. There was nothing he could do for her anymore, except be her friend. And his girlfriend kept telling him he had to get on with his own life.

Grace missed seeing him, but she also understood that there was nothing he could do. And she knew that he was seeing someone who meant a lot to him. He had said something to Grace about it the last few times he'd seen her, and Grace had sensed that somehow he felt guilty now when he came to see her. She wondered if maybe his girlfriend was jealous.

Molly still came, not as often as she would have liked, but as often as her busy life allowed, and it always cheered Grace when she saw her. And other than that, Grace was comfortable with her only other two friends, Luana and Sally. She spent her second Christmas at Dwight with them, in their cell, sharing the chocolates and cookies that Molly had sent her.

“You ever been to France?” Luana asked as Grace shook her head and smiled. They asked her funny things sometimes, as though she came from another planet. And in some ways she did. Luana was from the ghettos of Detroit, and Sally was from Arkansas. Luana loved teasing her and calling her “the Okie.”

“Nope, I've never been to France,” Grace smiled at them. They were an odd trio, but they were good friends. In a strange way, they were like the parents she had never had. They protected her, they watched over her, they scolded her, and taught her the things she needed to know to survive there. And in a funny way, they loved her. She was just a kid to them, but there was hope for her. She could have a life someday. They were proud of her when she got good grades. And Luana told her all the time that one day she'd be someone important.

“I don't think so,” Grace laughed at them.

“What are you gonna do when you get outta here?” Luana always asked her, and she always said the same thing.

“Go to Chicago, and look for a job.”

“Doin’ what?” Luana loved hearing about it, she was in for life, and Sally had three more years to do. Grace would be out in a year, and then she had a life ahead of her, a future. “You should be one of those models, like on TV. Or maybe on a game show?” Grace always laughed at their ideas, but there were things she wanted to do. She loved psychology, and sometimes she thought about helping girls who'd been through what she had, or women like her mother. It was hard to know. She was only nineteen, and she had another year to do in prison.

Then right after the first of the year, David Glass came to see her. He hadn't been to see her in three months, and he apologized for not sending her anything for Christmas. He seemed to feel uncomfortable with her, and it was one of those visits that felt awkward right from the beginning. At first, she wondered if something was wrong, if something had changed for the worse about her release date. But when she asked, he was quick to reassure her.

“That's not going to change,” he said gendy, “unless you start a riot, or hit a guard. And that's not likely. No, it's nothing like that.” But he knew he had to tell her. He hesitated for a long moment, fantasizing again, and then, as he looked at her, he knew that his fiancee was right. His obsession with Grace was crazy. She was just a kid, she had been his client, and she was in prison. “I'm getting married,” he said, almost as though he owed her an apology, and then he felt foolish for his unspoken feelings.

Grace looked pleased for him. She had suspected, from little things he'd said, that he was pretty serious about his current girlfriend. “When?”

“Not till June.” But there was more, and as she looked at him, she knew it. “Her father has asked us both to join his law firm in California. I'm going to be leaving next month. I want to get settled in L.A. I have to pass the California bar, we want to buy a house, and I have a lot to do before we get married.”

“Oh.” It was a small sound, as she realized that she probably wouldn't see him again, or at least not for a very long time. Even after her two years of probation when she could leave the state, she couldn't imagine going to California. “I guess it'll be nice for you out there.” She looked suddenly wistful at the thought of losing a good friend. She had so few, and he had been so important to her.

As he looked at her, he took one of her hands in his own. “I'll always be there if you need me, Grace. I'll give you my number before I go. You'll be fine.” She nodded, but they sat there in silence for a long time, holding hands, thinking of her past and his future, and suddenly for that brief moment in time, the girl from California seemed a lot less important to David.

“I'm going to miss you,” she said so openly that it tore at his heart. He wanted to tell her that he would always remember her, just the way she was now, so young and beautiful, her eyes were huge and her skin was so perfect it was almost transparent.

“I'm going to miss you too. I can't even imagine what life is going to be like in California. Tracy seems to think I'll love it.” But he sounded a little less sure now.

“She must be pretty terrific to make you want to move.” Grace's eyes met his, and he had to steel himself against her.

He laughed then, thinking that leaving Illinois was not exacdy a heartbreak, but leaving Grace was. As little as he saw her now, he liked knowing that he was still near enough to help her if she needed him. “You call me in L.A. if you need anything. And Molly will still be coming to see you.” He had spoken to her only that morning.

“I know. She thinks she might be getting married too.” He had heard that too. It was time for all of them to settle down. And in another eight months it would be time for Grace to start her life. They were already on their way. They had careers, they had histories, they had mates. For Grace, it would all be a fresh beginning when she got out of prison.

He stayed with her longer than usual that afternoon, and he promised he'd come back again before he left town, but when he said goodbye to her, Grace somehow knew that he wouldn't. She heard from him again a couple of times, and then he was gone, apologizing profusely in a letter from L.A. that he hadn't had time to visit her again before he left. But they both knew that he hadn't had the courage. It would have just been too painful, and it was time to leave her. His fiancee wanted it that way too. She had been very definite with him about it. But Grace couldn't know that. She wrote him a few letters that spring, and then she stopped. She knew instinctively that her relationship with David Glass was behind her.

She talked to Molly about it once or twice, about how sad she felt sometimes when she thought of him. She had so few friends that it really hurt to lose one. And he had been so important to her too. But it seemed as though he had another life now.

“Sometimes you have to let people move on,” Molly said quietly. “I know how much he cared about you, Grace, and I think he felt pretty bad about not being able to get you off, or win the appeal for you.”

“He did a good job,” Grace said loyally. Unlike most of the inmates at Dwight, she didn't blame her lawyer for her winding up in prison. “I just miss him, that's all. Did you ever meet his girlfriend?”

“Once or twice.” Molly smiled. She knew that Grace still had no idea of the feelings David had had for her after the trial. In some ways, she had been like a little sister to him, in others like a dream he knew he could never have, but still wanted. But his fiancée had been smart. She had sensed it too, and Molly didn't think it was a complete accident that she had asked him to move to California. “She's a very bright young woman,” the young doctor said diplomatically. She didn't want to tell Grace that she hadn't really liked her. But she was probably good for him. She was smart and tough and ambitious, and according to people who knew her, a damn good lawyer.

“What about you? When are you and Richard getting married?” Grace teased her.

“Soon.” And then finally in April, she and Richard set the date. They were getting married on July first, and going to Hawaii for their honeymoon. She and Richard had spent six months trying to coordinate their vacations. And two and a half months after that, Grace would be free. It was hard to believe almost two years had passed. In some ways, it seemed like moments, in others an entire lifetime.

The day before her wedding, Molly went to visit Grace, and she had asked her to come and stay with them for a few days when she got out of prison, and before she went to Chicago. Grace had already promised to spend Thanksgiving with them, and maybe even Christmas. And on their wedding day, Grace sat in her cell most of the day, thinking about them, wishing them well, and knowing all their plans, all the details. She had seen photographs of the dress, she knew who would be there. She even knew the time of their flight to Hawaii. They were leaving at four o'clock, and flying from Chicago to Honolulu, arriving at ten o'clock, local time. And they were staying at the Outrigger Waikiki. Grace could envision all of it, and she felt as though she had actually been to the wedding herself, by the time she sat down and watched the news with the other inmates at nine o'clock, just before lockdown.

She was talking to Luana about working out with her the next afternoon, when she saw something about a plane crash out of the corner of her eye. They were talking about a TWA plane that had exploded and blown up an hour before, over the Rockies. The details were still unknown, but the airline feared a bomb, and there had been no survivors.

“What was that?” Grace asked, turning to the woman next to her. “Where were they?”

“It was over Denver, I think. They think it was terrorists blew it up. It was a flight from Chicago to Honolulu, via San Francisco.” Grace felt her skin grow cold and her heart ache. But it couldn't be. That wasn't it. It didn't work like that … not after all these years. Not both of them … on their honeymoon … her only friend … the only person she could rely on and go home to. She was looking deathly pale and she started to wheeze, and Sally saw it as she took out her inhaler. And she understood immediately what Grace was afraid of.

“It's probably not them, you know. There are a dozen flights a day to Honolulu.” Sally knew about Molly's honeymoon. She had been bored to death hearing about the wedding for weeks, but now she was worried for them, and wanted to reassure Grace. It really was unlikely that that was their plane. But a week later, after seven sleepless nights, and endless days, she knew it. She had written to the hospital, inquiring if Molly was okay, and had received a sad letter explaining to her that Dr. York and Dr. Haverson had died in the crash she'd heard about, on their honeymoon. The letter said that the whole hospital was in mourning.

Grace went to bed that day, and three days later she hadn't gotten up yet. Sally had covered for her as best she could, and so had Lu. They claimed it was her asthma again, and that she'd had a terrible time getting any relief, even from her pills and her inhaler. Her inhaler was familiar to everyone by now, and she no longer worried about using it. With Lu watching over her, no one was liable to take it from her, or steal it. But the nurse knew this time when she came to their cell that it wasn't asthma that was bothering her. Grace wouldn't even answer her. She just lay there, staring at the wall, and refusing to get up, or even answer.

Molly had been her only friend, and with David so far away, now she really had no one to turn to. Grace was alone again, except for her two friends in prison.

The nurse had told her she had to go back to work the next day, and she was lucky they hadn't already sent her to the hole for not showing up at work for two days. But she was pushing her luck now. And the next day, she made no effort to get up, in spite of all of Sally and Luana's threats and pleas. She just lay there, wishing herself dead, like Molly.

They took her to the hole that day, and left her there in the dark, with no clothes, and only one meal a day. And when she came back, she looked rail thin and very pale, but Sally could see from her eyes that she was alive again, deeply hurt, but she had turned the corner.

She never mentioned Molly again after that day. She never spoke of anyone in the past, not David, or Molly, or her parents. She lived only in the here and now, and now and then she would talk about moving to Chicago.

The day finally came, and she wasn't sure she was ready for it. She had no plans, no clothes, no friends, and a little money to last her for a lifetime. She had the AA degree she'd gotten from her correspondence course, and she had grown wise and patient and strong in prison. She was tall and thin and beautiful and stronger than she'd ever been. Luana had made her lift small weights and run, and she had really toned her figure. She was very beautiful, with her dark auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a white shirt and jeans when they released her. She looked like any other college girl, so fresh and young, just twenty, but there was a lifetime of experience there, lodged in her soul, a handful of people in her heart she would never forget, like Molly, and Luana and Sally.

“Take care,” she said hoarsely when she left. She had hugged each of them, and held them tight. And Luana had kissed her on the cheek like a little girl they were sending out to play.

“Be careful, Grace. Be smart. Look around, trust your gut … go someplace, girl. Be someone. You can do it.”

“I love you,” she whispered to her. “I love you both so much. I couldn't have made it without you.” And she meant it. They had saved her, She kissed Sally on the cheek too, and Sally was embarrassed by it. “Just don't do anything stupid.”

“I'll write to you,” she promised, but Sally shook her head. She knew better. She had seen a lot of friends come and go. When you left, it was over, until next time.

“Don't,” Luana said brutally. “We don't want to hear from you. And you don't want to know us. Forget us. Go have a life. Grace, put all this behind you. Start fresh and new … go out there and don't ever look back. You don't have to take any of this with you.”

“You're my friends,” she said, with tears in her eyes, but Luana shook her head again.

“No, we're not, girl. We're ghosts. All we are is memories. Take us out once in a while, and then be glad you're not here. And don't you come back again, ya hear!” She wagged a finger at her, and Grace laughed through her tears. Some of what Luana had said was good advice, but she couldn't just leave them there, and forget them. Or was that what you had to do? Did she have to leave them all behind in order to move forward? She wished she could have asked Molly. “Now get lost!” Luana had given her a little shove forward, and a few minutes later she was going through the gate in a van on the way to the bus station in town. They were standing at the fence waving at her, and she turned and waved from the window until she couldn't see them any longer.

Chapter 6

The bus trip from Dwight to Chicago took just under two hours. They had given her a hundred dollars cash when she left the correctional center. And David had set up a small checking account for her before he moved west. It had five thousand dollars in it, and the rest was in a savings account she had vowed not to touch.

In Chicago, she had no idea where to stay, or where to go. She had to tell the authorities where she was going and they had given her the name of a parole officer in Chicago. She had to check in with him within two days. She had his name and address and phone number. Louis Marquez. And one of the girls at Dwight had told her where to go for a cheap hotel.

The bus station in Chicago was on Randolph and Dearborn. The hotels they'd told her about were only a few blocks away from it. But when she saw the kinds of people on the street by the hotels, she hated to go inside them. There were prostitutes hanging around, people renting rooms by the hour, and there were even two cockroaches on the desk in one hotel when she rang the bell for the desk clerk.

“Day, night, or hour?” he asked, shooing the cockroaches aside. Even Dwight hadn't been as bad as that. It was a lot cleaner.

“Do you have prices by the week?”

“Sure. Sixty-five bucks a week,” he said without batting an eye, and it sounded expensive to her, but she didn't know where else to try. She took a single room with private bath on the fourth floor for seven days, and then she went out to find a restaurant to get something to eat. Two bums stopped her and asked her for change, and a hooker on the corner looked her over, wondering what a kid like her was doing in this neighborhood. Littie did they know that a “kid like her” had just been at Dwight. And no matter how seedy the neighborhood was, she was glad to be free. It meant everything to walk the streets again, to look up at the sky, to walk into a restaurant, a store, to buy a newspaper, a magazine, to ride a bus. She even took a tour of Chicago that night, and was stunned by how beautiful it was. And feeling extravagant, she took a cab back to her hotel.

The prostitutes were still there, and the johns, but she paid no attention to them. She just took her key, and went upstairs. She locked her door, and read the papers she'd bought, looking for employment agencies. And the next day, with the newspaper in hand, she hit the streets and started looking.

She went to three agencies, and they wanted to know how much experience she had, where she'd worked before, where she'd been. She told them she was from Watseka, had graduated from junior college there, and had taken secretarial courses in shorthand and typing. She admitted that she had no experience at all, hence no references, and they told her that they couldn't help her find work as a secretary without them. Maybe as a receptionist, or as a waitress, or salesgirl. At twenty with no experience and no references, she didn't have much to offer and they weren't embarrassed to say so.

“Have you thought of modeling?” they asked her in the second agency. And just to be nice, the woman jotted down two names. “They're modeling agencies. Maybe you should talk to them. You've got the look they want.” She smiled at Grace, and promised to call her at the hotel if any jobs opened up that didn't require experience, but she didn't hold out much hope to her.

Grace went to see her probation officer after that, and just seeing him was like a trip back to Dwight, or worse. It was incredibly depressing, and this time she didn't have Luana and Sally to protect her.

Louis Marquez was a small, greasy man, with beady litde eyes, a severely receding hairline, and a mustache. And when he saw Grace walk in, he stopped what he was doing and looked at her in amazement. He had never seen anyone who looked like that in his office. Most of his time was spent with drug addicts, and prostitutes, and the occasional dealer. It was rare for him to handle juveniles, and rarer still to see someone with charges as major as hers, who looked like Grace, and seemed as young and wholesome.

She had bought herself a couple of skirts by then, a dark blue dress to go job-hunting in, and a black suit with a pink satin collar.

She was wearing the dark blue dress when she visited him, because she'd been out looking for work all day, and her feet were killing her from the high heels she was wearing.

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking puzzled, but intrigued. He was sure that she had come to the wrong office. But he was glad she had. He was happy for the distraction.

“Mr. Marquez?”

“Yes?” He gazed hungrily at her, unable to believe his good fortune. And his eyes grew wide, as she reached into her handbag and pulled out the familiar forms for probation. He glanced at them summarily, and then stared at her, unable to believe what he was reading. “You were at Dwight?” She nodded, looking calm. “That's a pretty heavy place,” he looked really startled. “How did you manage that for two years?”

“Very quietly.” She smiled at him. She looked very wise for her years. In fact, looking at her now in the dark blue dress, it was hard to believe she was only twenty. She looked more like twenty-five. And then he looked even more surprised when he read the file notes on her conviction.

“Voluntary manslaughter, eh? You have a fight with your boyfriend?”

She didn't like the way he asked her that, but she answered him very coolly. “No. My father.”

“I see.” He was enjoying this. “You must be no one to mess with.” She didn't answer him, and he was taking her measure with his beady little eyes. He was wondering just exactly how much he could get away with. “You have a boyfriend now?”

She wasn't sure what to say, or why he was asking. “I have friends.” She was thinking of Luana and Sally. They were her only friends in the world now. And of course David, far away in California. She still felt Molly's loss terribly. They were all her only friends. And she didn't want him to think she had no one.

“You have family here?”

But this time she shook her head. “No, I don't.”

“Where are you living?” He had the right to ask her those questions, and she knew that. She told him the name of the hotel, and he nodded and jotted it down. “Not much of a neighborhood for a girl like you. Plenty of hookers. Maybe you noticed.” And then with an evil glint in his eye, “If you get busted, you're back to Dwight for another two years. I wouldn't get any ideas about picking up some extra money.” She wanted to slap him, but prison had taught her not to react, and to be patient. She said nothing. “Are you looking for work?”

“I've been to three agencies, and I'm checking the papers. I have some more ideas. I'm going to check them out tomorrow, but I wanted to come here first.” She didn't want to be late reporting in, or he could make trouble for her. And she had no intention of going back to Dwight. Not for two years, or two minutes.

“I could give you some work here,” he said thoughtfully. He'd love having someone like her around, and he was in an ideal situation. She'd be scared to death of him, and she'd have to do anything he wanted. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. But Grace was too smart for that now. She wasn't falling for the Louis Marquezes of the world. Those days were over.

“Thank you, Mr. Marquez,” she said quietly. “If some of my opportunities don't pan out, I'll call you.”

“If you don't find work, I could send you back,” he said nastily, and she forced herself not to answer. “I can violate you anytime I want, and don't you forget it. Failure to find work, failure to support yourself, failure to stay clean, failure to follow conditions of parole. There are plenty of grounds to ship you back there.” Someone was always threatening her, trying to spoil things for her, wanting to blackmail her into doing what they wanted. And as she stared at him unhappily, thinking of what a pig he was, he reached into a drawer in his desk, and handed her a plastic cup with a lid. “Give me a specimen. There's a ladies’ room across the hall from my office.”

“Now?”

“Sure. Why not? You been getting loaded?” He looked evil and hopeful.

“No,” she said angrily. “But why the specimen? I've never been in trouble for drugs.”

“You been in trouble for murder. You been in the joint. And you're on probation. I got a right to ask you for anything I think is called for. I'm calling for a urinalysis. Okay with you, or you gonna refuse? I can send you back to the joint for that too, you know.”

“All right, all right.” She stood up, holding the cup, and headed for the door to the hallway, thinking what a bastard he was.

“Normally, my secretary would have to watch, but she left early today. Next time, I'll have it observed. But I'll give you a break this time.”

“Thanks.” She looked at him with barely hidden fury. But he had her by the throat, just the way everyone had for years, her parents, Frank Wills, the police in Watseka, the guards at Dwight, even bitches like Brenda and her friends, until Luana and Sally had rescued her. But there would be no rescuers now. She had to rescue herself, and hold her own against vermin like Louis Marquez.

She came back five minutes later with a full cup, and balanced it precariously on his desk, with the lid barely closed. She was hoping he would spill it all over his papers.

“Come back in a week,” he said casually, eyeing her again with obvious interest. “And let me know if you move, or find a job. Don't leave the state. Don't go anywhere unless you tell me.”

“Fine. Thanks.” She stood up to leave, and with a leer, he watched her slim hips and long legs disappear out of his office. And a minute later, he stood up and poured her urine out in his sink. He wasn't interested in doing a drug test. All he wanted to do was humiliate her and let her know that he could make her do anything he wanted.

Grace was steaming when she took the bus back to her hotel. Louis Marquez represented everything she had been fighting all her life, and she wasn't going to give in to it now. She wasn't going to let him send her anywhere. She would die first.

She checked the Yellow Pages that night for all the modeling agencies in town. She had liked the woman's suggestion to try them, but not for modeling. She thought maybe she could work as a receptionist, or someone in the office. She had a long list of places to try, and wished that she knew which one was the best one. But she had no way of knowing. All she could do was try them.

She got up at seven the next day, and she was still in her nightgown and brushing her teeth when she heard someone pounding on her door, and wondered who it could be. It had to be a hooker, or a john, maybe someone who had the wrong room. She put a towel around her nightgown and opened the door, with her toothbrush still in her hand, and her dark coppery hair cascading past her shoulders. It was Louis Marquez.

“Yes?” For an instant, she almost didn't recognize him, and then she remembered.

“I came to see where you live. A probation officer is supposed to do that.”

“How nice. I see you got an early start too,” she said, looking angry. What did he think he was pulling? It was her father all over again, and just thinking about that made her tremble.

“You don't mind my coming by, do you?” he said smoothly. “I wanted to be sure you really lived here.”

“I do,” she said coldly, holding the door wide. She was not going to invite him in, or close the door behind him. “And whether or not I mind depends on what you have in mind to do here.” She looked at him without flinching for an instant.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Why did you come here? To see where I live? Fine. You've seen it. Now what? I'm not planning to serve breakfast.”

“Don't get smart with me, you little bitch. I can do anything I want with you. And don't you forget it.”

But the way he said it made something snap deep inside her, and she took a step closer to him, and put her face close to his with a look of fury. “I shot the last man who said that to me, and tried to act on it. And don't you forget that, Mr. Marquez. Are we clear now?” He was fuming, but he was also out of line, and he knew it. He had come here to see just how much he could get away with, and how scared she was of him. But Luana had taught her well, and she wasn't buying.

“You'd better watch what you say to me,” he said in a malevolent tone as he hesitated in the doorway.

“I'm not going to take any shit from some little punk kid who shot her old man. You may think you're tough, but you won't know what tough is till I send your skinny little ass back to Dwight for another two years, and don't think I won't do it.”

“You'd better have a reason before you try, Mar-quez, or I'm not going anywhere, just because you show up at my hotel at seven o'clock in the morning.” She knew exactly why he was there, and so did he. And she had just called his bluff, and he knew it. Actually, she had surprised him. He had thought she would scare more easily, and he was more than a little disappointed. But it had been worth a try, and if she ever looked like she was weakening, he was going to pounce on her just like a little cockroach. “Anything else I can do for you? Want me to pee in a glass for you? Happy to oblige.” She looked at him pointedly, and without saying another word, he turned and hurried down the stairs of her hotel. It wasn't over yet. She was stuck with him for two years, and he had plenty of time to torment her.

After he left, she put on the black suit with the pink collar and she was particularly careful when she did her hair and dressed. She wanted to look just right for the modeling agencies. She wanted to look cool and sure and well dressed, but not so flashy she competed with the models.

The first two agencies told her they had no openings, and they hardly seemed to notice her at all, and her third stop was Swanson's on Lake Shore Drive. They had a luxurious-looking waiting room and big blown-up photographs of their models everywhere. The place had been designed by an important decorator, and Grace was more than a little nervous when they called her in to one of the offices for Cheryl Swan-son to meet her. She met all their potential employees personally, and so did her husband, Bob. There was a definite look to the Swanson employee. Their models were the best in town, for runway and photography, as well as commercial. And everything about the agency suggested success and high style and beauty. Looking around the office where she waited for Cheryl, Grace was particularly glad she had worn the little Chanel knockoff.

And a moment later, a tall, dark-haired woman walked into the room with a long stride, and a neat bun at the back of her neck. She wore huge glasses and a sleek black dress. She wasn't pretty, but she was very striking.

“Miss Adams?” She smiled at Grace, and sized her up immediately. She was young, and scared, but she looked bright, and she had a good look to her. “I'm Cheryl Swanson.”

“Hello. Thank you for seeing me.” Grace shook her hand across the desk, and sat down again, feeling her asthma start to fill her chest, and she prayed she wouldn't have an attack now. It was so terrifying walking in cold, asking for interviews, and then trying to talk them into hiring her. She'd been at it for almost a week, and so far there was no hope yet. And she knew that if she didn't get a job by the following week, her probation officer really would give her trouble.

“I hear you're interested in a job as a receptionist,” Cheryl said, glancing at a note her secretary had given her. “That's an important job here. You're the first face they see, the first voice. Their very first contact with Swanson's. It's important that everything you do represents who and what we are, and what we stand for. Do you know the agency?” Cheryl Swanson asked, taking off her glasses and scrutinizing Grace more closely. She had good skin, great eyes, beautiful hair. It made her wonder as she looked at her. Maybe she was just trying to get in the back door. Maybe she didn't even have to. “Are you interested in modeling, Miss Adams?” Maybe that's what this was all about, and it was all a ploy, but Grace was quick to shake her head in answer to the question. That was the last thing she wanted, guys pawing all over her, thinking she was easy because she was a model, or photographers chasing her around in a bathing suit, or less. No, thank you.

“No, I'm not. Not at all. I want a job in the office.”

“Maybe you should look beyond that,” she glanced at her note again, “Grace … maybe you should think about modeling. Stand up.” Grace did, reluctantly, and Cheryl was very pleased to see how tall she was. But Grace looked like she was about to cry, or run screaming from the office.

“I don't want to model, Mrs. Swanson. I just want to answer the phone, or type, or run errands for you, or do whatever I can … anything but model.”

“Why? Most girls are dying for a modeling career.” But Grace wasn't. She wanted a real life, a real job, a real family. She didn't want to start her new life chasing rainbows.

“It's not what I want. I want something … more … more …” she groped for the right word and then found it,“… solid.”

“Well,” Cheryl said regretfully, “we do have a job open here, but I think it's a terrible waste. How old are you, by the way?”

Grace thought about lying to her, and then decided not to. “Twenty. I have an AA degree, I can type, but not very fast. And I'll be good, and work hard, I swear it.” She was begging for the job, and Cheryl couldn't help smiling at her. She was a sensational girl, it was just such a waste to have her answering phones behind a desk. But on the other hand, she certainly set the right tone for what Swanson had to offer. She looked like one of their models.

“When can you start?” Cheryl looked at her with a motherly smile. She liked her.

“Today. Now. Whenever you like. I just came to Chicago.”

“From where?” she asked with interest, but Grace didn't want to tell her that she was from Watseka in case she had heard of her father's murder two years before, nor did she want to say she'd just come from Dwight, in case she knew about the prison.

“From Taylorville,” she lied. It was a small town two hundred miles from Chicago.

“Are your parents there?”

“My parents both died when I was in high school.” It was close enough to the truth, and vague enough not to get her in any trouble.

“Do you have any family here at all?” Cheryl Swan-son asked, looking worried about her. But Grace only shook her head.

“No one.”

“Normally, I'd ask you for references, but with no prior experience, there really isn't much point, is there? All I'd get is a nice letter from your high school gym teacher and I can see what you're made of. Welcome to the family, Grace.”

Her new boss stood up and patted her arm in warm welcome.

“I hope you'll be happy here for a long, long time, at least until you decide to start modeling,” she laughed. They had offered her the receptionist's job at a hundred a week, which was all she wanted.

Cheryl took her out into the hall, and introduced her to everyone. There were six agents, and three secretaries, two bookkeepers, and a couple of people Grace wasn't quite sure who they were, and at the end of the hall, Cheryl walked into a sumptuous office done in gray leather and suede, and introduced her to her husband. They both looked as though they were in their mid-forties, and Cheryl had already explained that they had been married for twenty years, but had no children. The models are our kids, she had said. They're our babies.

Bob Swanson sized Grace up from behind his desk, and looked at her with a warm smile that really did make her feel part of the family, and then he got up and walked around his desk to shake her hand. He was about six feet four, very rugged-looking with dark hair and blue eyes and movie star handsome. He had been a child actor in Hollywood as a kid, and a model, of course, as Cheryl had been, in New York. And eventually, they had moved to Chicago, and opened the business.

“Did you say ‘receptionist,’ “he asked his wife, “or new model?” He beamed down at her, and Grace felt as though she was home at last. They were really nice people.

“That's what I said.” Cheryl smiled at him, and it was obvious immediately that they liked each other, and worked well together. “But she's a stubborn one. She says she wants a desk job.”

“What makes you so smart?” he laughed as he looked at Grace. She was really a pretty girl, and his wife was right She could have done well as a model. “It took us years to figure that out. We learned the hard way.”

“I just know I'd never be good at it. I'm happy behind the scenes, making things work.” Just like she'd run her mother's house, and made the supply room hum at Dwight. She had a knack for organizing things, and she was willing to work long hours and do anything she had to, to get the job done.

“Well, welcome aboard, Grace. Get to work.” He sat back down at his desk again, waved at them both as they left, and sat staring at them going down the hall for a few minutes. There was something interesting about the girl, he decided as he looked at her, but he wasn't sure what it was yet. He prided himself on having a sixth sense about people.

Cheryl asked two of the secretaries to take Grace under their wings, and show her how the phone system worked, and the office machines. And by noon, it seemed as though she had always been there. Their last receptionist had quit the week before, and they'd been making do with temps in the meantime. It was a relief for everyone to have someone efficient on hand, to take calls, make appointments, and register their bookings. It was a complicated job, and required a lot of juggling at times, but by the end of the first week, she knew she loved it. The job was perfect.

When Grace reported to Louis Marquez at the end of the week there was nothing for him to complain about. She had a good job, a decent salary. She was leading a respectable life, and she was planning to move as soon as she could find a small apartment. She would have loved to live closer to work, but the apartments around Lake Shore Drive were unbelievably expensive. She was scouring the paper, looking for one, when four of the models were hanging around one afternoon, waiting to hear about a go-see. Grace was always overwhelmed by how beautiful they were, and how exquisitely put together. They had fabulous hair, perfect nails, their makeup always looked like it had been done by professionals, and their clothes made her stare at them with envy. But she still had no desire to do the kind of work they did. She didn't want to trade on her looks, or her sex appeal, or draw that kind of attention to herself. It was too much for her, emotionally. She couldn't handle it, and she knew it. After everything she'd been through in her life, her survival had depended on her ability not to attract attention. And even at twenty, it was too late for her to change that now. She liked nothing better than not being the center of attention. But the models always included her in their conversations. This time they were talking about renting a town house they'd seen. It sounded fabulous to her, but also way out of reach, they were talking about a thousand dollars. It had five bedrooms, though, and they only needed four. Maybe even fewer since one of them was thinking about getting married.

“We need someone else to come in with us,” a girl called Divina said, sounding disappointed. She was spectacular-looking, and she was Brazilian. “Any interest?” she asked Grace casually, but she couldn't imagine living with them, or being able to afford sharing a rent they could manage.

“I'm looking for a place,” she said honesdy, “but I don't think I can afford the kind of rents you'd want to pay,” she said glumly.

“If we cut this one five ways, it's only two hundred apiece,” the twenty-two-year-old German model, Brigitte, said matter-of-factly. “Could you afford that, Graze?” Grace loved her accent.

“Yeah, if I stop eating.” It meant giving up half her salary, which wouldn't leave her much for food or fun, or any other needs she might have. And she hated to dip into her savings, but she knew she could if she had to. And maybe living in a nice place, in a good neighborhood, with decent people, would be worth it. “Let me think about it.”

One of the two American girls laughed and looked at her watch. “Great. You have till four o'clock to make up your mind. We have to go look at it again, and tell them by four-thirty. Want to come?”

“I'd love to, if I can leave by then. I have to ask Cheryl.” But when Grace asked, Cheryl was thrilled. She'd been horrified to hear that Grace was living in a fleabag hotel while looking for an apartment. She had even invited her to stay in her apartment, with her and Bob, on Lake Shore Drive, until she found something, but Grace hadn't accepted.

“Thank God!” Cheryl exclaimed, and practically shoved Grace out the door with the others. They were nice girls, and she also thought that maybe if Grace lived with them, she might decide to become a model. Cheryl hadn't given up on that yet, but on the other hand, she had discovered that Grace's unfailing sense of organization was a godsend.

The town house turned out to be spectacular. It had five good-sized bedrooms, and three baths, a decent-sized kitchen, a patio, and a sunken living room with a view of the lake. It had everything that each of them wanted, and they signed the lease that afternoon. For a long time, Grace stood there and stared at it, unable to believe that this was her home now. It was partially furnished with a couch and some chairs, and a dining room set, and the other girls all claimed that they had enough stuff to fill it. All Grace had to do was buy a bed, and some furniture for her own bedroom. It was incredible. She had a job, she had a home, she had friends. As she stood and looked at the lake, tears filled her eyes, and she turned away and pretended to check out the patio so they wouldn't see them.

Marjorie, one of her new roommates, had followed her outside. She had seen the emotional look on Grace's face, and she was worried. Marjorie was the mother hen of the group, and the others always teased her that she fussed over them too much. She was only twenty-one, but she was the oldest of seven children. “You okay?” she asked. Grace turned to look at her as Marjorie walked up to her with a look of concern, and Grace sighed and smiled through her tears. It was impossible to conceal them.

“I just … it's like a dream … this is everything I ever wanted. And a lot more.” She only wished she could have shown it to Molly. She would never have believed it. The poor, beaten, miserable creature she had been had flowered, even in the dismal barrenness of Dwight Correctional Center over the past two years. And now she had a new life, a new world, it was like a dream. David and Molly had been right. If she hung on long enough, the ugliness of the past would be behind her forever. And now, finally, she was past it.

She had sent Luana and Sally postcards only a few days before, telling them that she was okay and Chicago was great. But she knew them both well, and she suspected they'd never write her. But she still wanted to let them know that she was safe and well, and had reached a safe harbor. And that they weren't forgotten.

“You looked so upset a few minutes ago,” Marjorie pursued it, but Grace was smiling now.

“I'm just happy. This is like a dream come true for me.” Marjorie would never know how much so. The one thing she didn't want anyone to know here was that she had killed her father and served time in prison. She wanted to leave that behind her.

“It's like a dream for me, too,” Marjorie confessed. “My parents were so poor I had to share my only good pair of shoes with two of my sisters. And they had feet two sizes smaller, and Mom always bought them in their size. I never lived in a place like this, till I came here. And now I can afford it, thanks to the Swansons.” It was thanks to her own good looks, and she knew that. She was planning to move on to New York when her contract was up, and do some modeling there, or even Paris. “It's fun, isn't it?”

“It's terrific.”

The two girls chatted for a while, and eventually Grace went back to her hotel and packed. She didn't care if she had to sleep on the floor until her furniture arrived. But she was not going to spend one more night in that cheap hotel, killing cockroaches, and listening to old men spit and flush toilets. She moved out the next day, and dropped her bags off on her way to work. And at lunch time, she went to buy a bed and some furniture at John M. Smythe on Michigan Avenue. She even bought herself two little paintings. They promised to deliver it all on Saturday, and in the meantime, Grace had every intention of sleeping on the carpet.

She had never been happier in her life, and the job was going splendidly. But on Friday, when she reported to Marquez, she found she was in trouble, and he loved it.

“You moved,” he accused her, pointing a finger at her, almost as soon as she walked into his office. He'd been waiting for her for days. And the only reason he knew was that he dropped by at the hotel again, and they told him she'd checked out for good on Tuesday.

“Yeah? So? What's the problem?”

“You didn't notify me.”

“The probation papers say I don't have to notify you for five days. I moved three days ago, and I'm notifying you right now. Does this take care of it, Mr. Marquez?” He was out to get her, and she knew it. But there was nothing he could say to her, she was right. She had five days to notify him that she had moved, and she had only moved on Tuesday.

“So what's the address?” he snarled at her, prepared to write it down, but as she looked at him, she realized what was going to happen.

“Does this mean you'll be dropping by on me from time to time?” she asked, looking worried, and he loved it. He liked making her uncomfortable, catching her off guard, frightening her, if possible. She brought out all his basest sexual instincts.

“It might. I have a right to drop by, you know. Do you have something to hide?”

“Yes. You.” She looked right at him and he flushed all the way to his receding hairline.

“What's that supposed to mean?” He dropped his pen and stared at her in irritation.

“It means that I have four roommates who don't need to know where I've been for the past two years. That's what.”

“You mean incarcerated for murder?” He glowed. Now he had a wedge he could use on her. He could threaten to expose her to her roommates.

“I guess that's what I mean. You make it sound so charming.”

“It is pretty charming, I'm sure they'd be fascinated to know your history. And by the way, what do you mean four roommates. Sounds like a bunch of call girls.”

“You wish.” She wasn't afraid of him, but he worried her a little bit, and she disliked him intensely. “They're models.”

“That's what they all say.”

“They're registered at the agency where I work.”

“Too bad. I need the address anyway … unless you want me to violate you, of course.” He looked ever hopeful.

“Oh for chrissake, Marquez.” She told him the address then, and he raised one nasty little eyebrow.

“Lake Shore Drive? How are you going to pay for that?”

“Split five ways it's costing me exactly two hundred dollars.” She had no intention of telling him about the money she'd gotten in her settlement with Frank Wills. Louis Marquez had absolutely no reason to know that. And the truth was, with the salary she earned, if she was willing to economize a little bit, she could afford the new town house.

“I'm going to have to look at this place,” Marquez growled at her, and she shrugged.

“I figured you'd say that. Want to make an appointment?” she asked hopefully. But he wasn't inclined to be that accommodating.

“I'll just drop by.”

“Great. Just do me a favor,” she looked at him unhappily, “don't tell them who you are.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“I don't care. Tell them you're selling me a car. Tell them anything. But don't tell them I'm on probation.”

“You'd better behave yourself, Grace,” he looked pointedly at her, and his meaning was not lost on her, “or I might have to.” And as she looked at him, for reasons she couldn't quite sort out, the ugly little man reminded her of Brenda in prison. He had her legs tied. And this time there was no Luana to save her.

Chapter 7

The group at the apartment got along splendidly. They never fought over bills, everyone paid their share of the rent, they were each nice to the other girls. They bought each other small gifts, and were generous with groceries. It was really the perfect arrangement. And Grace had never been happier in her life. Every day she wondered if it was real, or if she was dreaming.

The girls even tried to fix her up with their friends, but she drew the line at that. Groceries were one thing, but gifts of men were of no interest. She had no desire to go out with anyone, or complicate her life. At twenty, she was perfectly content to stay home and read a book, or watch TV at night. Every little freedom she had was a gift to her, and she wanted nothing more from life. Certainly not romance. Just the thought of it terrified her. She had no desire to go out with anyone, possibly ever.

Her roommates teased her about it at first, and then eventually, they decided she had a secret life. Two of them were sure she was seeing a married man, particularly when she started going out regularly, three times a week, on Monday and Thursday nights, and all day Sunday. During the week she would leave direcdy from work, and change there, and more often than not, she was home after midnight.

She had thought of telling them the truth, but eventually the fantasy that she was seeing someone worked a lot better for her. It made them leave her alone and stop trying to fix her up with their friends. In fact, in terms of how she wanted to live, it was perfect.

And the truth was that her three-times-a-week trysts were the heart and soul of her existence. Once she'd gotten settled in the town house with the girls, she had started looking for a place to work three times a week. Not for pay, but to give back some of what she had gotten out of life. She felt too fortunate not to do something to help others. It was something she had always promised herself, as she lay on her bunk at night, chatting with Sally, or while she worked out with Luana.

It had taken her a month to find the right place to volunteer. There had been no one she could ask, but she had read a number of articles, and there had been a special on TV about St. Mary's. It was a crisis center for women and children in an old brownstone, and when she'd first gone there, she was shocked at the condition it was in. Paint was chipping off the walls, there were bare bulbs hanging from sockets. There were kids shouting and running around everywhere, and dozens of women. Most of them looked poor, some were pregnant, all were desperate. And the one thing they had in common was that they had all been abused, some to within an inch of their lives. Many of them were scarred, some no longer functioned normally, or had been in institutions.

The place was run by Dr. Paul Weinberg, a young psychologist who reminded her of David Glass, and after the first time she'd been there, Grace found herself aching for Molly. She would have loved to talk to her, and tell her all about it. It had been a deeply moving experience just being there. The place was mostly staffed by volunteers, and there was only a handful of paid employees, most of them doing internships for psych degrees, some of them registered nurses. The women and children living in the crisis center needed medical care, psychological help, they needed a place to live, they needed clothes, they needed tender loving care, they needed a hand to get out of the abyss they were in. Even for Grace, going to St. Mary's every week was like a light shining in the darkness. It was a place where souls were restored, and people were made whole again, as whole as they ever would be.

Just helping them helped her. It made her whole life worth something just to go there. She had volunteered for three shifts a week of seven hours each, which was a tremendous commitment. But it was a place where Grace felt at peace herself, and where she could bring peace to others. The women there had experienced many of the same things she had, and so had the children. There were pregnant fourteen-year-olds who had been raped by their fathers or brothers or uncles, seven-year-olds with glazed eyes, and women who didn't believe they would ever be free again. They were the victims of violence, and most of the time of abusive husbands. Many of them had been abused as children, too, and they were continuing to perpetuate the cycle for their own children, but they had no idea how to break it. That was what the loving staff at St. Mary's tried to teach them.

Grace was tireless when she was at St. Mary's. She worked with the women sometimes, and most of all, she loved the children. She'd gather them close to her, hold them on her lap, and tell them stories she made up, or read to them by the hour. She took them to clinics at night, to see the doctor for injuries they'd had, or just to get exams or shots. It gave her life so much more meaning. And at times it hurt too. It hurt terribly, because it was all so familiar.

“It breaks your heart, doesn't it?” one of the nurses commented a week before Christmas. Grace had been putting a two-year-old to bed. She had been brain-damaged by her father, who was in jail now. It was odd to think that he was in jail, and her father, who had done things that were almost as bad, had died a hero.

“Yes, it does. They all do. But they're lucky.” Grace smiled at her. She knew this story well. Too well. “They're here. They could still be out there getting battered. At least, for now, it's over.” The real heartbreak was that some of them went back. Some of the women just couldn't stay away from the men who beat them, and when they went back, they took the children with them. Some were hurt, some were killed, some never recovered in ways that couldn't be seen. But some got it, some learned, some moved on to new lives and came to understand how to be healthy. Grace spent hours talking to them, about the options they had, the freedom that was theirs, just for the taking. They were all so frightened, so blinded by their own pain, so disoriented by everything they'd been through. It made her think of the condition she had been in herself nearly three years before, when she'd been in jail and Molly tried to reach her. In a way, Grace was doing this for her, to give back some of the love that Molly had shared with her.

“How's it going?” Paul Weinberg, their chief psychologist, and the head of the program, stopped to chat with her late one night. He had been working shoulder to shoulder with the volunteers and employees, doing intakes. Most of them came in at night. They came in hurt, they came in frightened, they came in injured in body and mind, and they needed everything the team had to give them.

“Not bad.” Grace smiled at him. She didn't know him well, but she liked what she'd seen. And she respected the fact that he worked hard. They had sent two women to the hospital that night, and he had driven them there himself, while she cared for the children. Each of them had had four kids, and they were all in bed now. “It's a busy night.”

“It always is right before Christmas. Everyone goes nuts over the holidays. If they're going to beat their kids and wives, this is the time to do it.”

“What do they do? Run ads? ‘Beat your wife now, only six more days to do it before Christmas.’ “She was tired but still in good humor. She liked what she was doing.

“Something like that.” He smiled at her, and poured her a cup of coffee. “Ever think of doing this for real? I mean, on a paid basis?”

“Not really,” she said honestly, but she was flattered by the question, as she sipped the steaming coffee. Paul had the same woolly hair as David Glass, and the same kind eyes, but he was taller, and better-looking. “I used to think about getting a psych degree. I'm not sure I'm that good at this. But I like what I do here. I love the people, and the idea that we might make a difference. I think doing it as a volunteer is good enough for now. I don't need to get paid for it. I love it.” She smiled again, and he seemed to be studying her carefully. She intrigued him.

“You're good at what you do, Grace. That's why I asked. You should think about that psych degree some more, when you have time.” He was impressed by her, and he liked her.

She had worked until two o'clock that night. Half a dozen new women had come in, and there was just too much going on for her to leave them. When everyone was settled, Paul Weinberg had offered to drive her home, and she was grateful for the ride, she was exhausted.

“You were great tonight,” he praised her warmly, and she thanked him. And he was surprised to see where she lived. Most people on Lake Shore didn't bother to volunteer three days a week at St. Mary's. “What's the deal?” he asked her, as they pulled up outside her house. “This is a pretty fancy place, Grace. Are you an heiress?” She laughed at the question, and she knew he was teasing her, but he was curious too. She was a very interesting young woman.

“I share a town house with four other girls.” She would have invited him in but it was late. It was after two-thirty. “You'll have to come by sometime, if you can get away from St. Mary's.” She was friendly, but he sensed that she wasn't flirting with him. She treated him like a brother, but his interest in her was definitely not platonic.

“I get away once in a while,” he smiled. “What about you? What do you do when you're not helping women and kids in crisis?” He wanted to know more about her, even though it was late, and they were both tired.

“I work at a modeling agency,” she said quietly. She liked her job, and she was proud of it, and he raised an eyebrow.

“You're a model?” He wasn't surprised, but he thought it was unusual that someone who'd have to spend so much time on themselves would give so much to others. Because she did give a lot, to the women, and the kids. He had watched her.

“I work in the office,” she smiled at him, “but my roommates are all models, all four of them. You're welcome to come back and meet them.” She was trying to tell him she had no interest in him. Not as a man, at least. It made him wonder if she had a boyfriend, but he didn't want to ask her.

“I'd like to come back and see you,” he said pointedly. But he didn't have to do that. She was at St. Mary's three times a week, and he was always there when she was.

She volunteered for extra duty on Christmas Eve and couldn't believe how many women came in that night. She worked tirelessly, and she didn't get home till four a.m. And she managed to go to the Swansons’ the next day for their annual Christmas party for all their photographers and models. It was fun, and much to her own surprise, Grace actually enjoyed it, when she went with the others. The only thing that bothered her was that Bob had danced with her several times, and she thought he held her a little too close, and once she couldn't have sworn to it, but she felt him brush her breast with his fingers as he reached for an hors d'oeuvre. She was sure it had been an accident and he hadn't even noticed. But one of her roommates made a comment later that night which made her worry. It was Marjorie who had noticed it, mother hen that she was. She was always checking on all of them, and she knew his tricks from her own experiences with him.

“Was Uncle Bobby warming up-tonight?” she asked Grace, who looked startled.

“What's that supposed to mean? He was just being friendly. It's Christmas.”

“Oh God, sweet innocence,” she groaned, “tell me you don't believe what you're saying.”

“Don't be a jerk.” Grace was defending him. She didn't want to believe that Bob cheated on Cheryl. But he was certainly surrounded constantly by temptation.

“Don't be naive. You don't think he's faithful to her, do you?” Divina added to their conversation. “Last year he chased me around his office for an hour. I almost broke my knee on that damn coffee table of his, getting away from him. Oh yes, Uncle Bob is a busy boy, and it looks like you're his next target.”

“Oh shit.” Grace looked at them with dismay. “I thought maybe something was going on, and then I figured I'd imagined it. Maybe I did.”

“In that case, so did I.” Marjorie laughed at her. “I thought he was going to tear your clothes off.”

“Does Cheryl know he does that stuff?” Grace asked unhappily. The last thing she wanted was to get caught in the middle, and she had no intention of inviting his advances, or of having an affair with Bob Swanson. She didn't want to have an affair with anyone. Not now anyway, and maybe never. It just wasn't what she wanted.

Paul Weinberg had called her several times to invite her to dinner, but she had declined. But on New Year's Eve, when she was working at St. Mary's again, he insisted that she at least sit down with him for ten minutes, and share a turkey sandwich.

“Why are you avoiding me?” he accused her as she sat there with her mouth full of turkey. It took her a minute before she could answer.

“I'm not avoiding you,” she said honestly. She just wasn't returning his phone calls. But she was perfectiy happy eating a sandwich with him at St. Mary's.

“Sure you are,” he objected. “Are you involved?”

“Yup,” she said happily, and his face fell, “with St. Mary's, and my job, and my roommates. That's about it, but it's enough. More than enough. I hardly get time to read a newspaper or a book, or go to a movie. But I like it.”

“Maybe you need to take some time off from here.” He smiled at her, relieved that she hadn't mentioned a boyfriend. She was a great girl, and he really wanted to know her better. He was thirty-two years old, and he had never met anyone like her. She was bright, she was fun, she was deeply caring, and yet she was so shy and so distant. In some ways, she seemed very old-fashioned and he liked that. “You ought to at least get to a movie.” But he hadn't been to one in months either. He had dated one of the nurses for a while, but it hadn't worked out. And he had had an eye on Grace since she'd started coming to St. Mary's.

“I don't want to take time off. I love it.” She smiled at him, as she finished her sandwich.

“What are you doing here on New Year's Eve?” he questioned her, and she smiled at him again.

“I could ask you the same question, couldn't I?”

“I work here,” he said smugly.

“So do I. You just don't pay me.”

“I still think you should think about becoming a professional,” but before he could say any more to her, they were both called away in separate directions. It was another late night for her, and she didn't see him until the following Thursday. And that night he offered to drive her home again, but she took a cab. She didn't want to encourage him. But he finally cornered her on Sunday at St. Mary's.

“Will you have lunch with me?”

“Now?” she looked startled. They had four new families to talk to.

“Not now. Next week. Whenever you want. I'd like to see you.” He looked boyish and embarrassed when he asked her.

“Why?” The word just slipped out, and he laughed at the question.

“Are you kidding? Have you looked in the mirror this week? Besides which, you're intelligent and you're fun, and I'd like to get to know you.”

“There's not much to know. I'm actually pretty dull,” she said, and he laughed again.

“Are you brushing me off?”

“Maybe,” she said honestly. “Actually, I don't date.”

“You just work?” He looked amused, and she nodded in answer to his question. “Perfect. We ought to get along fine. All I do is work too, but I figure one of us has to break the cycle.”

“Why? It suits us.” She suddenly seemed very distant and a little frightened, which made him wonder about her.

“Will you just have lunch with me once for heaven's sake? Just try it. You have to eat. I'll come uptown if you want, during the week. Whatever you like.” But she didn't like. She liked him, but she didn't want to date any man, and she didn't know how to tell him.

Eventually, she agreed to have lunch with him the following Saturday. It was a freezing cold day and they went to La Scala for pasta.

“All right, now tell the truth. What brought you to St. Mary's?”

“The bus.” She grinned at him, and she looked very young and playful.

“Very cute,” and then suddenly he wondered. “How old are you anyway?” He figured her for twenty-five or -six, because she was so mature in handling the battered women and children.

“I'm twenty,” she said proudly, as though it was a major accomplishment, and he almost groaned as she said it. That explained a lot of things, or at least he thought so. “I'll be twenty-one next summer.”

“Great. You make me feel like I'm robbing the cradle. I'll be thirty-three in August.”

“You remind me a lot of someone I once knew, a friend of mine. He's an attorney in California.”

“And you're in love with him?” Paul Weinberg asked unhappily. He knew that somewhere in her life there was an explanation for why she remained so distant. Her extreme youth was possibly part of it, but he knew there had to be more to it.

But she was laughing at him, explaining about David Glass. “No, he's married, and he's having a baby.”

“So who's the lucky guy?”

“What guy?” she looked puzzled. “I told you, there's no one.”

“Do you like guys?” It was an odd question, he knew, but these days, it was worth asking.

“I don't know,” she said honestly, looking up at him, and for an instant his heart fell, and then he saw something else as he watched her. “I've never dated.”

“Not at all?” He didn't believe her.

“Nope. Not at all.”

“That's quite a record at twenty.” It was also quite a challenge. “Any particular reason why not?” They had ordered pasta and were enjoying lunch by then as he asked her questions.

“Oh, a few reasons, I guess. I guess mostly I don't want to.”

“Grace, that's crazy.”

“Is it?” she said cautiously. “Maybe not. Maybe it's how I need to live my life. No one else can judge what's right for me.” And then as he watched her, he knew it, and he realized what a fool he'd been. That was why she'd come to St. Mary's. To help others like her.

“Did you have a bad experience?” he asked gently, and she trusted him, but only to a point. She wasn't going to tell him all her secrets.

“You could say that. Pretty bad. But no worse than what you see every day at St. Mary's. It takes a toll, I guess.”

“It doesn't have to. You can get over it. Are you seeing anyone? Professionally, I mean.”

“I was. We were good friends. She died in an accident last summer.” He was sorry for her, as she said it, she looked so lonely.

“What about your family? Have they been any help?”

She smiled, she knew he wanted to help her, but only time could do that. And she knew she had to help herself now. “I don't have any family. But it's not as bad as it sounds. I have friends, and a great job. And all the nice people at St. Mary's/’

“I'd like to help, if you think I can.” But the kind of therapy he had in mind frightened her too much. Although she knew that he would have seen her as a therapist too, if she'd wanted. But what he really wanted was to date her. And she knew she wasn't ready, and maybe never would be.

“I'll call if I need help.” She smiled at him, and they both ordered coffee. They spent a lovely afternoon, walking around the lake, and talking about many things. But he knew now that he couldn't pursue her. It was too dangerous for her. Just knowing how he felt had already made her step back and put some distance between them.

“Grace,” he said when he dropped her off at her place again, “I don't ever want to hurt you. I just want to be there, if you want a friend,” and then he smiled boyishly, and he looked almost handsome. “I wouldn't mind more than that too, but I don't want to push you.” And she was so young. That was part of it. He didn't dare press her if she wasn't ready.

“Thanks. I had a great time.” She had, and they had lunch a few more times after that. He wasn't ready to give up completely, and she enjoyed his company, but it never grew to be more than a warm friendship. In some ways he had taken David's place in her life, if not Molly's.

Between work, her roommates, and her volunteer work, things rolled along smoothly until the spring. And then Lou Marquez started giving Grace trouble again. She didn't know it, but he had just broken up with his girlfriend and he was looking for trouble. He started showing up at Grace's apartment. The others always teased her about him. He never explained who he was, nor did Grace, she just said he was a friend of her father's. But whenever he came around, he asked all the girls a lot of questions. Did they do drugs? Did they like modeling? Did they meet a lot of guys that way? He even asked Brigitte for a date once, and Grace had raised hell with him when she reported to him at his office.

“You have no right to do that to me. You have no right to show up and harass my friends.”

“I can harass anyone I want. And besides, she'd been giving me the eye for half an hour. I know what girls like that want. Don't kid yourself, sweetheart. She ain't no virgin.”

“No, but she's not blind either,” Grace flung at him, and he was madder than ever. She was getting braver with him mostly because he was so outrageous.

“Just be grateful I haven't told them that I'm your probation officer, and about your time in prison.”

“You do that, and I'll report you. I'll sue you for embarrassing me and causing me to lose face in my own home, and with business associates.”

“Bullshit. You're not gonna sue anyone.”

She knew she wouldn't, but she had to stand up to him. Like most bullies, she knew, he'd back off if she really pressed him. He stopped coming around as often after that, and she continued to report to him weekly in his office.

When Brigitte took a three month modeling job in Tokyo in May, they found another girl to take her place. This time it was Mireille, a French girl. She was from the South of France, from Nice, and she was nineteen. And everyone really liked her. She had a passion for all things American, particularly popcorn and hot dogs. And she loved American boys, but not as much as they loved her. She was out every night from the moment she got there. Which left Divina, Marjorie, Allyson, and Grace to hang out with each other whenever they weren't busy.

The Swansons gave a party on the Fourth of July at their country house in Barrington Hills, and all the models drove out there for the day and evening. Grace invited Paul, and he had a field day ogling the models. Her roommates thought he was very nice, and wanted to know if he was the guy she spent all her time with.

“More or less,” she said coyly. And they loved it.

And the girls gave her a birthday party after that. It was a big surprise, and they invited everyone from the agency, and Paul of course. It was Grace's twenty-first birthday. And afterwards, they and Paul sat in the patio, and she couldn't help thinking how far her life had come in the past year. He didn't know it, of course, but she had spent her last two birthdays in prison. And now she was here, with him, living with a bunch of beautiful girls, and working for a modeling agency. It was staggering when she thought about it sometimes. It made her think of Luana and Sally, and Molly and David. And it made her sad when she realized that she was doing just what Luana had said she should. She was taking them out, like memories, touching them widi her heart from time to time, but only for a fleeting moment. And then she'd go back to her own life, and remember them briefly. But they were gone, all of them. Forever. She hadn't heard from David since his son was born in March, and she had finally stopped writing to Luana and Sally. They'd never answered her letters.

She looked up and saw a falling star, and without waiting, she closed her eyes, and thought about them, and then she made a wish that one day, it really all would be behind her. For the moment, Lou Marquez was still there, threatening to reveal her secrets to her friends. There was still someone with a leash on her. And she just hoped that one day she'd be free at last, for the first time in her life, with no one to be afraid of.

“What did you wish for just then?” Paul asked, watching her. He had never forced her to move ahead to a relationship she didn't want. But he still hoped that one day she'd be ready for him. He knew what he would have wished on a falling star. He would have wished for her to want him.

“I was just thinking about some old friends,” she smiled sadly at him, “and hoping that one day all the bad times will be a distant memory.” His heart went out to her as she said it.

“Aren't they by now?” He didn't know how far behind her the bad times were, or how close. She had never told him, and he hadn't pressed her. “Aren't they gone?” he asked gently.

“Almost,” she smiled at him, glad that he was her friend,“… almost … Maybe next year.”

Chapter 8

The Swansons continued to try to talk Grace into modeling for them, but instead she got a fat raise and became Cheryl's secretary, and both Swan-sons claimed that it was really Grace who ran the agency for them. She was efficient, she was fast, she was organized, and bright and quiet. She knew all of the girls who worked for them, and most of the men, and everyone liked her. Things were lively at the apartment too. Brigitte was back from Tokyo by then, but she had moved in with a photographer, instead of the girls at the town house. Allyson had gone to L.A. for a part in a movie. And Divina was modeling in Paris. Only Marjorie and Grace were left, and Mireille, who was threatening to move in with her latest boyfriend. Two new girls moved in as fast as the first two left. And at Christmas, Marjorie announced her engagement. But it was never a problem for Grace to find new roommates. Girls arrived in Chicago constantly, to find modeling work, and they always needed an apartment.

Louis Marquez, her probation officer, came to check her out regularly. And at least once a month, he forced Grace to take a drug test. But she was always clean, which was a disappointment to him. Out of sheer meanness, he would have liked to bust her.

“What a little shit he is,” Marjorie said, when he showed up again after Christmas, to check out their new roommates. “Your father sure had some sleazy friends,” she said, annoyed that he had put a hand on her behind again, while pretending to reach for an ashtray. He reeked of cigarettes and sweat, and every single piece of clothing he had was polyester. “Why don't you just tell him to get lost?” she said, shuddering, after he left. He made you want to take a bath every time you saw him. Grace would have liked nothing better than to tell him not to come to the house anymore. But she had no choice. She had another nine months of probation, and then the nightmare would be over.

In March, the Swansons invited her to go to New York with them, and she had to tell them that she couldn't. She asked her probation officer for permission to go with them, and he absolutely refused to let her do it. And she had to tell them that she had another commitment. She was disappointed not to go, but she managed to keep busy anyway. She still spent two nights a week and Sundays at St. Mary's. She saw Paul Weinberg whenever she went, and she was very fond of him, but she also knew that he had given up waiting for her and was seriously involved with one of the nurses.

Cheryl Swanson tried to fix her up with dates from time to time, but Grace continued to have no interest in that direction. She was too afraid, and too deeply scarred by everything that had happened. Going out with anyone always reminded her of the horrors she had experienced with her father.

Until June. When Marcus Anders walked into the agency to see Cheryl. He was one of the best-looking men Grace had ever seen, with thick blond hair and a boyish smile, and freckles. He looked half man, half boy, and at first Grace thought he was one of their models.

He had just arrived from Detroit, and his portfolio was very impressive. He had done a lot of commercial work, and he was heading for the big time. He had thought about going to L.A. or New York, but he wanted to make it to the top in stages, which was smart of him. He was very cool, and very sure of himself, and he had a great sense of humor. He teased Grace a little bit, after his interview, and chatted with her about where to look for an apartment. She recommended some rental agencies, and introduced him to some of the models as they came in. But he didn't seem particularly interested in them. He saw models constantly. It was Grace who really caught his eye, and before he left, he asked about photographing her, just for fun, but she laughed and shook her head. She had had similar offers before, and she had no interest in them.

“No, thanks. I keep well away from cameras.”

“What's that all about? Wanted by the cops? Hiding something?”

“Absolutely. I'm wanted by the FBI,” she grinned easily. He was fun to talk to, but she didn't want to be snowed by him, or anyone. A lot of the photographers used their cameras to lure women. “I'm just not hung up on having my picture taken.”

“Smart girl.” He admired her, and he sat across her desk from her, looking breathtakingly young and healthy and handsome. “But you'd photograph incredibly. You have fabulous bones, and wonderful eyes,” and as he looked at her, he could see there was more there than he had first suspected. There was sorrow in her eyes, an old deep pain that she hid from the world, but not from him. Marcus could see it plainly, and she turned away with a laugh and a shrug, sensing that he was coming too close to her, and she didn't want that. “Why don't we just play sometime, and see what we come up with? You might put the rest of these girls out of business.” It was the only thing he understood, the only thing he truly loved. He had had a lifelong love affair with his camera.

“I wouldn't want to frighten them,” Grace teased, turning to look at him again. She was wearing a tight black skirt and a black sweater. She had learned to dress with a certain amount of big city sophistication, after nearly two years of being with the Swansons.

“Give it a thought.” Marcus smiled at her, and unreeled his long legs from the black leather chair in her office. “I'll be back on Monday.”

But he called her again the next day, just to chat and tell her about the studios he'd looked at. According to him, they were all terrible, and he was really lonely. Grace laughed at him, and pretended to be sympathetic, and then he asked her out to dinner.

“Sorry. Can't,” she said curtly, she was used to fending off men. It was never a problem. “I'm busy tonight.” She always made it sound as though there were men in her life, but of course all there were were battered women and children.

“Tomorrow then.”

“I've got to work late. We're shooting a big commercial with nine girls, and Cheryl wants me to be there.”

“No prob. I'll come too. Come on.” He sounded like a kid again, and it touched her a little bit, in spite of her resolve not to let it. “I'm a new boy in town, I don't know anyone. I'm lonely”

“Oh come on … Marcus … don't be a spoiled brat.”

“But I am,” he said proudly, and they both laughed. In the end, in spite of herself, she let him go to the commercial with them, and he was very helpful. There were so many people there that no one even noticed an extra body on the set. All the models seemed to like him a lot. He was bright, he was fun. and he wasn't as arrogant as a lot of the photographers were. He seemed like a terrific guy, and after he had shown up at the agency every day for a week, Grace finally relented and let him take her out to dinner. It was the first date she had had since Paul Weinberg.

Marcus couldn't believe she was only twenty-one when she told him, she was so mature for her age, and she had a sophisticated look to her that made her seem older. She still wore her thick auburn hair pulled straight back, but she often wore it in a chignon now, and she wore the kind of clothes she saw the models wear, whenever she could afford them. But Marcus was used to young girls who looked older than they were. Once or twice, he'd even been foolish enough to go out with fifteen-year-old models, thinking they were older.

“So what do you do yourself when you're not working?” he asked with interest over dinner at Gordon. He had just found a studio, it was a sensational loft, he'd explained, with living quarters and everything he needed.

“I keep busy enough.” She had started bicycling, and one of her new roommates was teaching her to play tennis. They were pastimes she'd never had time for before. The only sports she'd ever done were a little weight lifting and some jogging in prison, but she wasn't about to tell him about her two years at Dwight. She never intended to tell anyone that, for the rest of her life. She had taken Luana's advice to heart, and left it firmly behind her.

“Do you have a lot of friends?” he asked, intrigued by her, she was very closed and very private, and yet he sensed that there was a wealth of woman within her.

“Enough,” she smiled, but the truth was, she didn't, and he had already heard that. He had asked a lot of people about her. He already knew that she never went out with men, that she kept to herself, that she was very shy, and she did some kind of volunteer work. He asked her about it over coffee, and she told him a little about St. Mary's.

“Why that? What's so intriguing to you about battered women?”

“They need help desperately,” she said in a serious tone, “women in that situation think they have no way out, no options. They stand on the edge of a burning building and you have to pull them out of it, they won't just jump to freedom.” She knew better than anyone. She had never thought there was any way to get free of her own situation. She had had to kill to save herself, and then at what cost. She wanted others to have to go to less extreme measures than she did.

“What makes you care about them so much, Grace?” He was so curious about her, and she gave away so little. He had been conscious all through dinner how cautious she was, how outwardly friendly, but inwardly guarded.

“It's just something I want to do. It means a lot to me, especially working with the kids. They're so helpless, and so damaged by everything they've been through,” just as she was, and she knew it. She knew fully how scarred she was, and she didn't want them to be too. It was her gift to them, and it made her life worth living, knowing that her pain would serve someone else, and keep them from traveling the same agonizing road she had. “I don't know, I guess I have a knack for it. I think about going back to school, and getting a psych degree sometimes, but I never seem to have time, with work and everything … maybe someday.”

“You don't need a psych degree,” he grinned, and she felt something for him she'd never felt before, and it frightened her more than a little. He was very appealing. “You need a man,” he concluded.

“What makes you so sure?” She smiled at him. He was like a big beautiful kid, as he reached out and took her hand in his own.

“Because you're lonely as hell, in spite of everything you say, and all the bravado about how great your life is. My guess is you've never had a real man at all, in fact,” he narrowed his eyes and looked at her appraisingly, as she laughed, “I'd bet my last ten cents you're a virgin.” She made no comment and took her hand away gently. “I'm right, aren't I, Grace?” There was so much he didn't know, and she shrugged noncommit-tally. “I am,” he said, with confidence, sure of exactly what she needed. Tutored by the right man, he sensed that she could be an extraordinary woman.

“Standard solutions are not the answer for everyone, Marcus,” she said, sounding a lot older than twenty-one again. “Some people are a little more complicated than that.” But Marcus thought he knew her and she was just scared, and shy, and very young, and she probably came from a very straitlaced background.

“Tell me about your family. What are your parents like?”

“Dead,” she said coolly. “They died when I was in high school.” That explained some of it to him, she had had a major loss, and had been alone for several years. That was some of the loneliness, he suspected.

“Any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope. Just me. No relatives at all, in fact” No wonder she seemed so grown up, she had obviously been on her own for years, he surmised. He had painted a portrait of her, entirely of his own invention.

“I'm surprised you didn't run out and marry your high school sweetheart,” he said with new respect in his voice. “Most people would do something like that, if they found themselves all alone at your age.” She was a strong girl, in fact she wasn't a girl at all, she was a woman. And he liked that.

“I didn't have a high school sweetheart to marry me,” she said matter-of-factly.

“What did you do? Live with friends?”

“More or less. I lived with a bunch of people.” In prison and jail … she wondered what he would say if she told him the truth. She couldn't even begin to imagine his reaction. He would surely be horrified if she told him she'd killed her father. And somehow the irony of it made her laugh. He really had no idea who she was. or what she was about. No one did. The people who knew her were all gone now, like Molly, or David, and Luana and Sally. She had stopped sending postcards to them and she didn't hear from David anymore. There was no point writing to him anyway. Her life was her own now. All she could do for the people she had cared for, and all the others, was the kind of work she was doing at St. Mary's. It was her way of paying back all the people who'd been kind to her over the years. There were so few, but in their memory, she wanted to help others.

“It must be rough for you on holidays,” he said sympathetically. “Like Christmas.”

“Not anymore,” she smiled. Not after Dwight. Christmas could never be as bad as that again, no matter where she was. “You get used to it.”

“You're a brave girl, Grace.” Braver than he knew. Much, much braver.

They went out for drinks after dinner that night, to a place he'd discovered that had an old jukebox and fifties music. And on Sunday they went bicycling around the lake. It was a beautiful warm June afternoon and everything was blossoming. And in spite of all her warnings to herself, she loved being with him. He was very patient with her, and didn't try to rush anything. He seemed to understand that she needed time, and a lot of tender loving care before moving forward. But he was willing to spend the time with her, and he didn't do anything more than kiss her. He was the first man she had ever even been kissed by, other than her father. And even that was frightening at first, but she had to admit, she liked it.

But as usual, Marjorie was full of warnings when Grace came home after spending a Saturday afternoon with him three weeks after he'd come to town. They had been out buying secondhand equipment for his studio. The agency had already started assigning work to Marcus, and the Swansons were very pleased. He had a lot of talent. “Enjoy him while you can,” Cheryl had said with a smile, “he won't be here long. I'll bet he's in New York within a year, or Paris. He's too good to last here.”

But Marjorie had other things to say about him. She had a network of friends all over the world, who were all models. And a friend of hers in Detroit had had some ominous things to report about Marcus.

“She told me he raped some girl a few years ago, Grace. Watch it. I don't trust him.”

“That's nonsense. He told me all about that. She was sixteen and she looked twenty-five. And according to Marcus, she practically raped him.” Marcus had told her she had practically torn his clothes off. It had been four years earlier and he had been naive and foolish. And he had seemed genuinely embarrassed when he told her.

“She was thirteen, and her father tried to have him put in jail,” Marjorie said sternly. She didn't like stories like that. There were lots of stories of abuse of young models. “Supposedly, Marcus bought his way out of it. And there was some other story like that, maybe that was your sixteen-year-old. And Eloise said he did a lot of porno work to pay the rent. He doesn't sound like such a nice guy to me.”

“That's bullshit,” Grace said, defending him tardy. He wasn't that kind of guy. She could tell. If there was one thing she had learned from her experiences, and working at the agency, it was people. “People always say stuff like that when they're jealous. She probably had the hots for him, and he didn't go for her so she's pissed off,” Grace said matter-of-factly, annoyed that Marjorie was being so unfair to him. He didn't deserve that. She was so hard on people sometimes, and so uptight. She was like a real house mother. But Grace knew she didn't need one.

“Eloise isn't like that,” Marjorie said, defending her friend in Detroit. “And you'd better watch yourself. You're not as smart as you think you are. You don't go out with enough guys to be able to smell out the bad ones.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.” It was the first time she had gotten really furious at Marjorie, and her eyes were blazing. “He's a really decent guy, and he's never done more than kiss me.”

“Great. I'm glad for you. I'm just telling you, the guy has a lousy reputation. Listen to that, Grace. Don't be stupid.”

“Thank you for the warning,” she said, with a tone of irritation. And five minutes later she went to her room and slammed the door behind her. What rotten things to say about poor Marcus. But their business was like that sometimes. People who didn't get jobs blamed photographers, and photographers who wanted to score and didn't said terrible things about models, claiming that they were drug addicts, or had come on to them. Models claimed they'd been raped. There were a lot of stories like that in the business, and Grace knew it. But so did Marjorie. She knew better than to listen to that kind of gossip. And shooting porno was really a lot of nonsense. He had told Grace that he had even waited on tables at times in order to pay the rent on his studio in Detroit. He had never said a word about porno, and even as unattractive as that was, Grace knew instinctively that he would have. He was a very open, straightforward person, and he was very honest about confessing his faults and past sins to her. She had never trusted anyone in recent years as much as she trusted Marcus.

They went to the Swansons’ Fourth of July party together in Barrington Hills, and Cheryl begged him openly to get Grace to let him take some shots of her. She was growing prettier by the day, and she thought that Marcus was just the right man to break the ice and get Grace to do it But Grace laughed at them both, and shook her head, as she always did. She had absolutely no interest in being a model.

Marcus talked to a lot of the models at the party that afternoon, and he seemed to get along with everyone, and that night Marjorie told her pointedly that he had made dates with two of them, and she thought Grace should know it.

“He's not married to me,” she said, defending him again. They weren't sleeping with each other after all. He had asked her to, and she had said she wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment. But she was close to it. She just needed more time with him, although she trusted him already. She thought she might be falling in love with him. In a way, Marjorie's telling her about the other girls pushed her a little further in that direction. But she didn't dare ask him about it when she saw him the next day, and he asked about taking her pictures.

“Come on, Grace … it's not going to hurt anything … just for us … for me … you're so beautiful … let me take some shots of you. I won't show them to anyone if you don't like them. I promise. Cheryl is right. You'd be fabulous as a model.”

“But I don't want to be a model,” she said, and really meant it.

“Why not, for heaven's sake? You've got everything it takes. Height, looks, style, you're thin enough, young enough … most girls would give anything to have what you've got, and have a chance. Grace, be sensible … or at least just try it. What could be easier than to do it with me? Besides, I want to have some pictures of you. I've been seeing you for a month, and I miss you when you're not around.” He teased, and nuzzled her neck, and much to her own amazement, by the end of the afternoon, she relented, just for him. And she made him promise not to show anyone the pictures. They made a date for a shoot the following Saturday, and he warned her that she'd better not cancel.

“I don't know what you're so shy about.” He laughed as they made spaghetti in his kitchen in the loft. And that night they came closer to making love than ever before, but in the end, she said she needed to wait. It was the wrong time of the month for her, and that wasn't the way she wanted to start their relationship. Besides, she wanted to buy a little more time, and a week wouldn't hurt anything. The way she felt about him, it would only make it better.

She worried about their photo session all week, she hated the idea of being the center of attention like that, and of being a sex object. She hated everything it stood for. She liked working with the models at the agency, but she had never wanted to be one of them. It was really only for Marcus that she was doing it, and for fun. He made everything fun to do, as long as she did it with him. And the next Saturday she turned up promptly at ten o'clock, at the studio, as she'd promised. She'd been at St. Mary's the night before, she'd worked late, and she was tired.

He made her some coffee when she arrived, and he had already set up. There was a huge white leather chair, and a white fox throw covering part of it, and all he wanted was for her to sprawl on it in her jeans, and a white T-shirt. He made her untie her hair, and it fell over her shoulders lavishly, and then he exchanged the T-shirt for his own starched white shirt, and little by little he got her to unbutton it, but the shots were all very chaste and modest. And she was surprised by how much fun it was. He took her in a thousand poses, he had great music on, and each shot was almost like a caress as he danced around her.

They were still taking photographs at noon, and he handed her a glass of wine, and promised her a huge lunch of homemade pasta when she was finished.

“You know the way to a girl's heart at least,” she laughed, and he stopped inches from her and peered around the camera sadly.

“I wish I did … I've been working awfully hard at it,” he confessed, and she blushed and looked demure as he took a shot of her that he was thrilled with. Cheryl was going to love these. “Am I getting any closer, Grace? … to your heart, I mean,” he whispered sensually, and she felt a hot flush shoot through her. The wine had made her feel woozy, and she remembered that she hadn't bothered to eat breakfast. It had been stupid to drink wine on an empty stomach, and he'd already poured her a second one, and she was halfway through it. She didn't usually drink wine in the daytime, and she was surprised at how strong this was, when he asked her shyly to take off her jeans, pointing out that the shirt was long enough to cover her completely. In fact it was halfway to her knees, but she balked at taking her jeans off. But finally, when he promised her again that he wouldn't even show Cheryl the shots, she slipped them off, and lay back against the fur again with bare legs and feet and only his shirt covering her, unbuttoned to the waist, but not revealing anything. Her breasts were covered. She felt herself drift off to sleep slowly then, as she lay on the chair, and when she woke up he was kissing her, and she felt his hands caressing her all over. She felt his lips and hands, and she kept hearing clicks, and seeing flashes, but she couldn't tell what was happening, everything was swirling around her, and she kept drifting off and waking up. She felt sick, but she couldn't move, or stop, or get up, or open her eyes and he kept kissing her, and then she felt him touching her, and for a minute she thought she felt an old familiar feeling of terror, but when she opened her eyes again, she knew she had been dreaming. Marcus was standing there, looking down at her, and smiling at her. Her mouth felt dry, and she felt strangely nauseous.

“What's happening?” She felt frightened and sick, and there were spots in front of her eyes now, and he was just standing there, laughing.

“I think the wine got the best of you.”

“I'm really sorry.” She was mortified, but then he knelt down next to her and kissed her so hard it made her dizzy again. But she liked it. There was a heady feeling to what was happening, she wanted it to stop, and yet she didn't.

“I'm not sorry at all,” he whispered from between her breasts. “You're gorgeous when you're drunk.” She lay back and closed her eyes then, and his tongue trailed tantalizingly down her stomach to her underwear, and then forced its way inside it, licking lower and lower, until suddenly her eyes flew open, and she jumped. She couldn't. “Come on, baby … please …” How long did she expect him to wait? “Please … Grace … I need you …”

“I can't,” she whispered hoarsely, wanting him, but too afraid to let him take her. All she could think of now was the night her father had died, as the room spun around, and she felt sick again. The wine had really done her in, and suddenly she felt like throwing up and she was afraid to say it. Marcus was touching her then, and feeling places where no one had been in years, no one had ever been except her father. “I can't …” she said again. But she couldn't muster the strength to stop him.

“Oh for chrissake, why not?” For the first time since he'd known her, Marcus lost his temper, but as he did, she felt the wine take over again, and with no warning, she swooned and fainted. And when she woke up, he was lying beside her on the huge white leather chair covered in the white fur, and he had all his clothes off. She was still wearing his shirt and her underwear, and he was smiling at her. And all she could feel was a sudden wave of terror. She couldn't remember anything except passing out. She didn't know how long she'd been out, or what they'd done, but it was obvious that something had happened.

“Marcus, what happened?” she asked him in a terrified voice, feeling very sick now, as she pulled his shirt tight around her.

“Wouldn't you like to know.” He looked amused, he was laughing at her. She had been completely unconscious. “You were great, babe. Unforgettable.” He sounded cold and hard and angry.

“How can you say that?” She started to cry. “How could you do that with me passed out?” She felt her stomach rise to her throat again, and her chest tightened with asthma, but she felt too sick to look for her inhaler. She couldn't even sit up and look around her.

“How do you know what I did?” he said evilly, as he walked across the room, his splendid body exposed for her to see it. “Maybe I always work like this. It's so much cooler.” He turned to face her then, so she could see all of him, and she looked away, trying not to see it. This was not how she had wanted their first time to be, and she didn't know if she was more hurt than angry. It was what it had always been for her. Rape. It was what he had wanted. “Actually,” he went on, as he strolled slowly back toward her, “nothing happened, Grace. I'm not a necrophiliac. I don't go around fucking corpses. And that's what you are, isn't it? You're dead. You go around pretending you're alive, and teasing men, but when it gets down to the big time, you just roll over and play dead, and dish out a lot of excuses.”

“They're not excuses,” she said, sitting up awkwardly. She had found her jeans on the floor, and she pulled them on and then stood up unsteadily. She felt awful. And she turned away a moment later to take his shirt off and put her own on. She didn't even waste time putting her bra on. She felt too sick to worry about it. Her head was both pounding and reeling. “I can't explain it, that's all,” she said in answer to his accusations. She was too sick to discuss it, and she kept having the feeling that something terrible had happened. She remembered kissing him, and his saying things to her, and for some reason she remembered lying there with him, but she couldn't remember anything else. She kept hoping it was all a nightmare induced by too much wine on an empty stomach. She kept having flashes of him tantalizing her with his body. But she had no memory of his raping her. And she was almost certain that he hadn't.

“Even virgins fuck eventually. What makes you think you're so special?” Marcus was still furious at her. She was a tease and he was bored with it. There were plenty of other girls he could have had, and he had every intention of having all of them. He had had it with Grace Adams.

“I'm just scared, that's all. It's hard to explain.” Why was he so angry at her? And why did she keep remembering him naked above her?

“You're not scared,” he said, picking up his camera and making no effort whatsoever to put his clothes on. “You're psychotic. You looked like you were going to kill someone when I put a hand on you. What is it with you anyway? Are you gay?”

“No, I'm not.” But he wasn't far from the truth about her killing someone, and she knew it. Maybe she would always be that way. Maybe she would never be able to have sex with anyone. But she wanted to know more than anything now, for sure, if anything had happened while she was unconscious. She wasn't sure at all what he had done while she was passed out. And she didn't like the feeling of the flashes she was having.

“Tell me the truth. What did you do to me? Did you make love to me?” she said with tears in her eyes.

“What difference does it make? I told you I didn't do anything. Don't you trust me?” After what had just happened, not really. He had taken advantage of her while she was out cold. He had gotten her to undress, almost nude, but not entirely, and had taken his own clothes off. It certainly didn't look like a wholesome scene when she woke up, but nor did she feel as though she'd been raped. She knew that would have been a familiar feeling. Remembering that comforted her. Maybe he had done nothing more than she remembered. A lot of fondling and kissing and touching. And she had liked most of it, but she knew that it had scared her. She had the feeling that he'd been close to making love to her, but then he hadn't. Maybe that was why he was so angry. It was plain old frustration.

“How can I trust you after what you just did?” she said softly, fighting a fresh wave of nausea.

“What did I do? Try to make love to you? It's not against the law, you know. People do it every day … some people even want to … And you're twenty-one, aren't you? So what are you going to do? Gall the cops because I kissed you and took my pants off?” But she felt raped anyway. He had taken photographs she hadn't wanted him to take, and seduced her into exposing more of herself than she wanted, and he had tried to take advantage of her sexually when she was drunk. The odd thing was that she had never gotten drunk on a glass and a half of wine before. And even now, she felt ghastly. “I'm sick of playing games with you, Grace. I've invested a lot of time, and patience, and Saturday afternoons and pasta dinners. We should have been in bed two weeks ago. I'm not fourteen. I don't do shit like this. There are lots of other girls out there who are normal.” It was a mean thing to say to her, but as she watched him now, in his natural habitat, so full of himself, as he finally put his pants on, she realized that he wasn't the man she'd thought he was. He had a real mean streak, and it was obvious he didn't love her. He had only been nice to her in order to get what he wanted.

“I'm sorry I wasted so much of your time,” she said coldly.

“So am I,” he said nonchalantly. “I'll send the contact sheets to the agency. You can pick the shots you like.”

“I don't want to see them. You can burn them when you get them.”

“Believe me, I will,” he said acidly. “And you're right, by the way. You'd make a lousy model.”

“Thanks,” she said unhappily, as she put on her sweater. In a single instant, he had become a stranger. And then, she picked up her bag and walked to the door, and looked back over her shoulder at him. He was standing at a table taking film out of his camera, and she wondered how she could have been so wrong. But then, standing there, looking at him, the room spun around again and she almost fainted. She wondered if she was coming down with the flu, or just upset over everything that had happened. “I'm sorry, Marcus,” she said sadly. He just shrugged, and turned away from her, acting as though he were the injured party. He had had fun with her for a while, but it was time to move on. Pretty girls, in his life, were a dime a dozen.

He never said a word to her as she left, and she practically crawled downstairs from his loft, hailed a cab, and gave the driver the address of the town house. And when they got there, the driver had to shake her to wake her up and tell her what the fare was.

“I'm sorry,” she said thickly, feeling sick again. She was feeling really awful.

“You okay, miss?” He looked concerned as she handed him the fare and a good tip, and he watched her go inside. She was weaving.

And as she closed the door behind her, once she got in, Marjorie looked up from the couch. She'd been doing her nails, and she was horrified when she saw Grace. She was so pale she was green, and she looked as though she was going to pass out before she got to her bedroom.

“Hey! … are you okay?” Marjorie asked, jumping up and going to her, as Grace started to collapse in her arms. Marjorie helped her to her bed, and Grace lay there, feeling like she was dying.

“I think I have the flu,” she said, slurring her words again. “Maybe I've been poisoned.”

“I thought you were with Marcus,” she said with a frown. “Weren't you going to shoot with him today?” Marjorie vaguely remembered.

Grace only nodded. She felt too sick to tell her the details, and she wasn't sure she wanted to anyway. But as she lay on her bed, she started to drift off again, just the way she had in the white chair, and then when she'd woken up and found him naked beside her. Maybe when she opened her eyes again, Marjorie would be naked, too. She laughed out loud, with her eyes closed, and Marjorie stared at her and went to get a flashlight and a damp cloth. She was back two minutes later, and put the cold cloth on Grace's forehead. Grace opened an eye but only briefly.

“What happened?” Marjorie asked firmly.

“I'm not sure,” Grace said honestly with closed eyes, and then she started to cry softly. “It was awful.”

“I'll bet it was,” Marjorie said angrily. She could figure it out for herself, even if Grace couldn't. She turned the flashlight on, and told Grace to open her eyes.

“I can't,” she said miserably. “My head hurts too much. I'm dying.”

“Open them anyway. I want to see something.”

“Nothing's wrong with my eyes … 's my stomach … head …”

“Come on, open them … just for a second.”

Grace fought to open her eyes, and Marjorie shone the flashlight in them, which felt like daggers in her head to Grace, but Marjorie had seen what she wanted.

“Where were you today?”

“I told you … with Marcus …” Her eyes were closed again, and the room was spinning.

“Did you eat or drink anything?” There was silence. “Grace, tell me the truth, did you do any drugs?”

“Of course not!” She opened her eyes long enough to look insulted, and then fought to prop herself up on her elbows. “I've never done drugs in my life.”

“You have now,” Marjorie said angrily. “You're loaded to the gills.”

“With what?” Grace looked frightened.

“I don't know … coke … Spanish fly … downers … LSD … some weird mixture. God only knows … what did he give you?”

“All I had was two glasses of wine … I didn't even finish the second one.” She laid her head back on the pillow again. It made her feel too sick to sit up. She felt even worse than she had at the loft. It was as though the effect of whatever he had given her had heightened.

“He must have spiked it. Did you feel weird while you were there?”

“Oh did I …” Grace moaned. “It was so strange.” She looked up at her friend and started to cry. “I couldn't tell what was a dream … and what was real … he was kissing me and doing things … and then I was asleep, and when I woke up he was naked … but he said nothing happened.”

“Sonofabitch, he raped you!” Marjorie wanted to kill him, on behalf of Grace, and their entire sex. She had never liked him. She hated bastards like that, particularly the ones who took advantage of kids or greenhorns. It was such easy sport, and so damn vicious. But Grace just looked confused as she went on.

“I don't even know if he did … I don't think so … I don't remember.”

“Why did he have his clothes off then?” Marjorie said suspiciously. “Did you have sex with him before you passed out?”

“No. I just kissed him … I didn't want to … I was scared … I did want to … but then I tried to stop him. And he was really mad at me. He said I was psychotic, and a tease … he said he wouldn't make love to me because it would be like … like doing it to a dead body …”

“But he let you think he did, is that it? What a nice guy.” Marjorie was dripping venom for Marcus. “Did he take pictures of you with your clothes off?”

“I was wearing underpants and his shirt when I passed out,” or at least that was what she remembered and she'd been wearing the same when she woke up. She couldn't remember her clothes ever coming off, even when he'd touched her.

“You'd better ask him to give you the negatives. Tell him you'll call the cops if he doesn't. If you want, I'll call and tell him.”

“No, I'll call.” She was too mortified to have anyone else involved. It was bad enough telling Marjorie what had happened. But it was comforting too to have her there. She brought Grace another damp cloth and a cup of hot tea, and half an hour later, she felt a little better, as Marjorie sat on the floor next to her bed and watched her.

“I had a guy do that to me once, when I first started working. He slipped me a Mickey in a drink, and the next thing I knew, he wanted me to do porno shots with some other girl who was as drugged out as I was.”

“What did you do?”

“My father called the cops on him, and threatened to beat the crap out of him. We never posed for the shots anyway, but plenty of girls do. Some of them don't even have to be drugged. They're too scared not to. The guys tell them they'll never work again, or God knows what, and they do it.”

Listening to her made Grace's blood run cold. She'd been falling in love with him. She'd trusted him. And what if he had taken photographs of her with her clothes off while she was passed out?

“Do you think he did something like that?” she asked in a terrified voice, remembering what Marjorie's friend from Detroit had said, and she hadn't believed, that Marcus had shot porno.

“Was there anyone else in the studio with you?” Marjorie asked worriedly.

“No, just the two of us. I'm sure of it. I think I was only out for a few minutes.”

“Long enough for him to get his pants off anyway,” Marjorie said, angry all over again. “No, I don't suppose he did. At worst, he got a couple of nude shots. And there's not much he can do with them without a release from you, if you're recognizable. He can't show your face in shots like that, without having you sign a release. The only use they'd be to him would be to blackmail you, and that's not worth much. What's he going to get out of you?” She smiled at her friend. “Two hundred dollars? Besides, it takes time and some cooperation to set up those pornos. They usually use a couple of girls, some guys, or at least one guy. Even if they drug you out, you've got to be alive enough to play the game. Sounds like you weren't a lot of fun after he hit you with his magic potion,” Marjorie laughed, and Grace smiled for the first time in hours, “sounds like he overestimated his victim, you must have gone over like a tree in the forest.”

They both laughed out loud, and it was a relief to laugh about it. It had been such an awful scene, and a brutal disappointment, but she couldn't help wondering if he hadn't drugged her or tried to force it, would she have been able to do it? Maybe she never would. But she certainly had no desire to try again, and certainly not with Marcus.

“I don't drink very much, and I've never done drugs. It just made me feel really sick.”

“So I noticed,” Marjorie smiled sympathetically, “you were the color of St. Patrick's Day when you got in.” And then she decided to make a suggestion. “I think the photographs are pretty much under control, or they will be when you ask him for the negatives. But maybe you'd like to check out something else. You want to make a quick trip to my doctor? She's real nice, and I'll take you, Grace. I think you ought to know if he did anything. They can tell. It's kind of embarrassing, but you ought to know. Maybe he just played around a little bit, or he could have done a lot worse while you were out cold. At least you should know it.”

“I think I'd remember … I remember being scared and telling him not to.”

“So does every rape victim in the world. It doesn't stop anyone if they don't want to stop. Wouldn't you feel better knowing for sure? And if he did rape you, you could press charges.” And then what? Start the nightmare all over again? She dreaded that, dreaded the attention, the stories in the news. Secretary accuses fashion photographer of rape … he says she wanted it, posed for nude photographs … the very thought of it made her skin crawl. But Marjorie was right. It would be better to know at least … and what if she got pregnant … it wasn't impossible, and the thought terrified her. She resisted at first and then finally she let Marjorie call the doctor for her, and at five o'clock they went to her office. Grace was a little more clearheaded by then, and the doctor confirmed that she'd been drugged with something.

“Nice guy,” she commented, and Grace flinched at the exam. It reminded her of the police exams after she killed her father. But the doctor looked surprised at what she saw. There was no evidence of recent intercourse, but there was a lot of old scarring. She suspected what it meant, and she was very gende when she asked Grace some questions. She reassured her that however great a cad the guy had been in drugging her, there was no sign of penetration or ejaculation.

“That's something at least.” So all she had to worry about was the pictures. And what Marjorie had said was reassuring. Even if he had taken pictures of her that were compromising, if she was recognizable, he couldn't use them without a release, and if she wasn't, who cared. And with any luck at all, he'd give back the pictures. It was still disgusting to think he'd taken them if he had, but she was beginning to think he had just staged the whole thing to punish her for balking at sleeping with him. But the drugs hadn't helped, they had only made her more frightened.

“Grace, have you ever been raped?” the doctor asked, but she already knew the answer when Grace nodded. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen … fourteen … fifteen … sixteen … seventeen …” The doctor wasn't sure what she meant at first.

“You were raped four times?” That was certainly unusual. Maybe she'd had psychological problems that had led her to put herself at risk repeatedly, but Grace shook her head with a woeful expression.

“No. I was raped pretty much every day for four years … by my father …”

There was a long moment of silence as the doctor absorbed it. “I'm sorry,” she said quietly. She saw cases like that sometimes and they broke her heart, particularly with young girls like Grace had been. “Did he get help? Did someone intervene?” Yes, she said to herself, I did. She had intervened. She had saved herself. No one else would have helped her.

“He died. That stopped it.” The doctor nodded.

“Have you ever had intercourse … uh … normally … with a man, since then?” Grace shook her head in answer.

“I think that's what happened today. I think maybe he got overanxious, and wanted to make sure I'd play, so he put something in my drink … we'd been going out for a month, and nothing had happened … I was … I wanted to be sure … I was scared … he said I … he said I got really scared when he tried …”

“I'm sure you did. Drugging you is not the answer. You need time, and therapy, and the right man. This one certainly doesn't sound like he is,” she said calmly.

“I figured that out,” Grace sighed, but she was relieved to know that he hadn't raped her. That would have been adding insult to injury.

The doctor offered her the name of a therapist, and Grace took it from her, but she didn't intend to call him. She didn't want to talk about her past anymore, her father, her four years of hell, and two years at Dwight. She had talked to Molly about all of it, and then Molly had died. She didn't want to open it up to anyone again. All she wanted was what she had. A few friends like Marjorie, and her roommates, her job, and the women and kids at St. Mary's to give her heart to. It was enough for her, even if no one else understood it.

She thanked the doctor and went home with Marjorie, and slept off the drugs. She went to bed at eight o'clock and woke up at two the next afternoon, much to Marjorie's amazement.

“What did he give you? An elephant tranquilizer?”

“Maybe.” Grace grinned. She felt better. It had been a horrible experience, but she'd been through worse. And fortunately, she was resilient. She went to work at St. Mary's that afternoon, and that night, she called Marcus. She half expected to get his machine, but she was relieved when he picked up the phone himself. He sounded surprised to hear her.

“Feeling better?” he asked sarcastically.

“That was a lousy thing to do,” she said simply. “I got really sick from whatever you gave me.”

“Sorry. All it was was a few Valiums and some magic dust for chrissake. I figured you needed some help loosening up.”

She wanted to ask him just how loose she'd gotten, but instead she said, “You didn't need to do that.”

“So I noticed. It was a wasted effort. Thanks a lot for stringing me along for the past five weeks. I really enjoyed it.”

“I wasn't stringing you along.” She sounded hurt. “It's hard for me. It's difficult to explain, but …”

“Don't bother, Grace. I get it. I don't know what your story is, but it obviously doesn't include guys, or at least not guys like me. I get it.”

“No, you don't,” she said, getting angry. How the hell could he know?

“Well, maybe I don't want to. Nobody needs this shit. I thought you'd knock my head off when I laid a hand on you.” She didn't remember that at all, but it was certainly possible. Obviously, she'd panicked. “What you need is a good shrink, not a boyfriend.”

“Thanks for the advice. And the other thing I need are the negatives of the pictures you took. I want them back on Monday.”

“Really now? And who says I took any pictures?”

“Let's not play that game,” she said quietly. “You took plenty of pictures while I was awake, and I heard the camera clicking and flashing while I was woozy. I want the negatives, Marcus.”

“I'll have to see if I can find them,” he said coolly, “I have an awful lot of stuff here.”

“Listen, I can call the police and say you raped me.”

“The hell I did. I don't think anyone's been in that concrete box of yours in years, if ever, so you're going to have a hell of a time selling that one. I didn't do shit to you except kiss you a few times and take my own clothes off. Big fucking deal, Miss Virginal-don't-lay-a-hand-on-me. You can't go to jail for taking your clothes off in your own apartment. You never even had your pants off.” She wasn't sure why, but she believed him, and she was relieved to hear it.

“And what about the pictures?”

“What about them? All they are is a bunch of pictures of you in a man's shirt with your eyes closed. Big fucking deal. You weren't naked for chrissake. You never even opened the shirt. And half the time you were snoring.”

“I have asthma,” she said primly. “And I don't give a damn how chaste the pictures are. I want them. You can't do anything with them without a release anyway, so they're no good to you.” She was grateful for Marjorie's advice as she attacked him.

“What makes you think you didn't sign one?” he teased her as her heart sank. “Besides, maybe I want them for my scrapbook.”

“You have no right to them. And are you telling me I signed a release while I was drugged?” She was beginning to panic.

“I'm not telling you a damn thing. And for all the hoops you put me through, I have a right to anything I want. You're nothing but a prick tease, you little bitch. And you keep your hands off my fucking pictures. I don't owe you anything. Get lost, you got that?” He already had a date that night with one of the other girls from the agency, and Grace heard all about it on Monday morning.

Cheryl asked her how the shoot with Marcus had gone on Saturday and Grace was vague and said she'd had the flu and couldn't do it.

But on her birthday a few weeks after that, when she turned twenty-two, Bob Swanson took her to lunch to celebrate. Cheryl was in New York on business for the agency, and Bob had taken her to Nick's Fishmarket. He had just poured her a glass of champagne, when he turned to her with a smile and an appreciative look. Grace had always appealed to him, and he agreed with his wife, she was a godsend.

“I saw Marcus Anders the other day, by the way.” She tried to look unconcerned and sip her champagne while he chatted. It was Dom Pérignon and the first alcohol she had touched since Marcus had drugged her. And even now, the excellent French champagne made her feel faindy queasy.

Bob lowered his voice and looked at her, as he slipped a hand over hers and squeezed it. “He showed me some pretty sensational pictures of you, Grace. You've been hiding from us … I think you've got a real future. They were the hottest shots I've seen in years … there aren't a lot of models who can heat it up like that. You're going to have guys panting.” She felt sick as she looked at him, and tried to pretend she didn't know what he meant. But it was useless. What a bastard Marcus was to have shown him. He had never sent her either the photographs or the negatives, and he wouldn't return her calls now. He had never really answered her either about the release, but she was sure she had never signed one. She had been in no state to sign anything, and she didn't remember anything like that. He was just trying to scare her.

“I don't know what you mean, Bob,” she said icily, sipping her champagne, and trying not to look embarrassed or worried. “We only took a few, and then I got sick. I had the flu that day.”

“If that's how you look with the flu, you should get sick more often.”

And then she couldn't stand it any longer, and looked her boss squarely in the eye. It was like facing a hungry lion. He was a big man, and he had a big appetite, she knew from a number of the models.

“What exactly did he show you?”

“I'm sure you remember the shots he took. Looked like you were wearing a man's shirt, it was open all the way down, and your head was thrown back … looked pretty passionate to me, like you'd just had sex with him, or were about to.”

“I was dressed, wasn't I?”

“Yeah, pretty much. You had the shirt on anyway, for what that was worth. You couldn't see anything you shouldn't have, but that look on your face told the whole story.” At least Marcus hadn't taken her shirt off. She was grateful for small favors.

“I was probably asleep. He drugged me.”

“You didn't look drugged to me. You looked sensual as hell. Grace, I mean it. You really should be modeling, or in movies.”

“Pornos maybe?” she said angrily.

“Sure,” he said happily, “if that turns you on. You like pornos?” he said with interest. “You know, Gracie, I have an idea.” In fact, he had had the idea well before lunch. He had called to rent a suite upstairs in the hotel before they arrived, and it was waiting for them with more champagne at that very moment. Marcus had pretty much let him know that she looked prim, but she was easy. Bob lowered his voice when he talked to her, and squeezed her hand again. “I've got a suite waiting for us upstairs, the biggest one in the place. I even requested satin sheets … and they've got a video channel that offers every porno movie you could ever want to see. Maybe you should see a few before you go into the business.” She wanted to throw up listening to him, and she felt tears rise in her throat as she restrained a desire to slap him.

“I'm not going upstairs with you, Bob. Now or ever. And if that means you're going to fire me, then I quit. But I'm not a hooker, or a porno queen, or a piece of ass on the menu for you to grab like an hors d'oeuvre any time you want to.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” He looked annoyed. “Marcus said you were the hottest babe in town, and I thought maybe you'd like to have some fun … I saw those pictures,” he looked at her angrily. “You looked like you were about to come all over his lens, so what's the Virgin Mary routine? You afraid of Cheryl? She'll never know. She never does.” No, but everyone else in town did. She wanted to scream looking at him, and what a rotten thing for Marcus to tell him.

“I like Cheryl. I like you. I'm not going to sleep with you, and I never slept with Marcus. I don't know why he told you that, except maybe to get even with me. And I told you, he drugged me. I was asleep when he took most of those pictures.”

“In his bed apparently,” Bob said with a look of vast annoyance. He hadn't thought she'd be so difficult with him, after what Marcus had said about her. He'd always thought she was pretty straight, and he had left her alone, but Marcus had told him she did a lot of drugs and loved kinky sex, and Bob had believed him.

“I was in a chair in his studio.”

“With your legs three feet apart, I'd say.” He got excited again thinking about it.

“With my clothes off?” She looked horrified at what he'd just said, and he laughed.

“I couldn't tell, the shirttails were hanging between your legs, but the message was pretty clear. So what about it? How about a little birthday present upstairs between you and Uncle Bob? Just our little secret.”

“I'm sorry.” The tears welled up in her eyes, and spilled over. At twenty-two, she still felt like a child sometimes, and why did this keep happening to her? Why did men hate her so much that all they wanted to do was use her? “I just can't, Bob,” she said, crying at the table, which seemed to annoy him more because it attracted attention.

“Stop that,” he said brusquely, and then narrowed his eyes as he leaned closer to her. “Let me put it to you this way, Grace. We go upstairs for an hour or two, and celebrate your birthday, or you're out of a job as of this minute. Now is it ‘Happy Birthday,’ or ‘Happy Trails to You,’ which is it?” If it hadn't been so awful, she would have laughed, but Grace wasn't laughing, she just cried harder, as she looked him in the eye and told him.

“I guess I'm out of a job then. I'll pick my paycheck up tomorrow.” She left the table without saying another word and went back to her apartment in tears. And the next day she went back to the agency to pick up her things, and her last paycheck.

Cheryl returned from New York the next day, and she smiled broadly when she saw Grace come in that morning. Grace couldn't help wondering what Bob had told her. But it didn't matter anymore. She had made her mind up. She only had a little over two months left until her probation ended anyway, and then she could do anything she wanted.

“Feeling better?” Cheryl asked sunnily. She'd had a ball in New York. She always did. Sometimes she was sorry they didn't live there.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” Grace said quietiy. After twenty-one months of working for them, she was actually sorry to leave them, but she knew she had no choice now.

“Bob said you got a terrible case of food poisoning yesterday at lunch, and had to go home. Poor baby.” Cheryl patted her arm, and hurried back to her office. She seemed to have no idea that Grace had been fired, or was quitting. And at that moment, Bob came out, and looked at her blankly.

“Feeling better, Grace?” he asked as though nothing had happened between them. And she spoke quietly, so no one else could hear her.

“I came to pick up my check, and pack my things.”

“You don't need to do that,” he said with no expression whatsoever. “I think we can both forget it, can't we?” He looked at her pointedly, and she hesitated for a long moment, and then nodded. There was no point creating a scandal over it, it had happened, and now she knew what she had to do. It was time.

She waited another six weeks till Labor Day, and then gave them a month's notice. Cheryl was heartbroken, and Bob pretended to be too, and Marjorie cried when Grace told her. But in another three weeks she'd be free from probation, and she knew it was time to leave Chicago. She was pretty sure by then that the photographs Marcus had taken were not obscene, even Bob Swanson had said she was completely covered by the man's shirt and nothing was exposed, but they were unpleasant anyway, and he had it in for her. And so did Bob. Marcus was prepared to lie and tell people she was a cheap trick. And God only knew what Bob would say to protect himself, maybe that she'd put the make on him, if it ever served his purpose. She was tired of people like them, photographers who thought they owned the world, and models who were all too willing to be exploited. And she felt as though she had done all she could at St. Mary's. It was time for her to move on. And she knew it.

They gave her a farewell party at the agency, and lots of photographers and models came. One of the girls had already agreed to take her place at the town house. The day after her last day of work, Grace went to see Louis Marquez. She was two days late checking out with him, because she'd been too busy packing up, and finishing at the agency, and legally, she was already out of his jurisdiction when she went to see him.

“So where are you going now?” he asked conversationally. He was really going to miss her, and his occasional drop-in visits to her apartment.

“New York.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Got a job yet?” She laughed at the question. She no longer owed him any explanations. She owed nothing to anyone. She had fulfilled all her obligations, and Cheryl had given her a fantastic reference, which Bob had co-signed.

“Not yet, Mr. Marquez. I'll get one after I get there. I don't think it'll be too hard.” Now she had references and experience. She had everything she needed.

“You shouldda stayed here and been a model. You're as good-looking as the rest of those girls, and a whole lot smarter.” He actually said it almost kindly.

“Thanks,” she would have liked to feel at least civil to him, but she didn't. He had been rotten to her for the entire two years, and she never wanted to see him again. She signed all the necessary papers, and as she handed him his pen, he grabbed her hand, and she looked up at him in surprise, and then pulled her hand back.

“You wouldn't wanna … you know … knock off a quick one for old times’ sake, huh, Grace?” He was sweating noticeably, and his hand had been wet and slimy.

“No, I wouldn't,” she said calmly. He didn't frighten her anymore. He couldn't do anything to her. She had done everything she was supposed to. And he had just signed off on her papers, and she had them firmly clutched in her hand. She was just an ordinary citizen now. Her past was finally behind her. And this little bastard wasn't going to revive it.

“Come on, Grace, be a sport.” He came around the desk at her, and before she could move away, he grabbed her and tried to kiss her, and she pushed him back so hard, that he hit his leg on the corner of the desk and shouted at her. “Still scared of guys, huh, Grace? What are you going to do? Kill the next one who tries to fuck you? Kill 'em all?”

But as he said that to her, she moved toward him instead of away and grabbed him by his collar. He was probably stronger than she was, but she was a lot taller, and he was surprised when she grabbed him.

“Listen, you little shit, if you ever lay a hand on me again, I'm going to call the cops on you, and let them kill you. I wouldn't bother. You touch me, and you'll be doing time for rape, and don't think I wouldn't do it. Now don't ever come near me again.” She flung him away from her, and he watched without a word, as she grabbed her bag and strode out of his office, banging the door hard behind her. It was over. It was all history. The moment Molly had promised her years ago had come. Her life was her own now.

Chapter 9

Leaving Marjorie was hard for Grace, she was the only friend Grace really had. And leaving the people at St. Mary's was sad too. Paul Weinberg wished her luck, and told her that he was getting married over Christmas. She was happy for him. But for a lot of reasons, she was glad to leave Chicago. She was glad to leave Illinois, and the nightmarish memories she had there. There had always been the fear that someone from Watseka would turn up and recognize her.

In New York, she knew that would never happen.

She took a plane to New York this time, not like when she had come into Chicago by bus from Dwight. And most of her savings were still intact. She had never spent much money, and she'd been paid well by the Swansons. She'd even managed to save a little extra money, and her nest egg was back up to slightly over fifty thousand. She had already wired it ahead to a bank in New York. And she already knew where she wanted to stay, and she had a reservation. One of the models had told her about it, and thought it was a dumb place, because they didn't let you bring in guys, but it was exactly what Grace wanted.

She took a cab from the airport directly to the Bar-bizon for Women on Lexington and Sixty-third, and she loved the neighborhood the moment she saw it. There were shops and apartment houses, it was busy and alive and residential. It was only three blocks from Bloomingdale's, which she had heard about for years, some of the girls had modeled for them, and it was a block from Park Avenue, and three from Central Park. She loved it.

She spent Sunday wandering lazily up Madison, and looking at the shops, and then she went to the zoo and bought a balloon. It was a beautiful October day, and in a funny way, she felt like she'd come home finally. She'd never been happier in her life, and on Monday she went to three employment agencies to look for work. The next morning they called her with half a dozen interviews. Two at modeling agencies, which she declined. She'd had enough of that life, and the people who were in it. And the agencies were disappointed, since her reference from the Swansons was so good, and she knew the business. The third interview was at a plastics firm, which seemed boring and which she turned down, and the last one was at a very important law firm, Mackenzie, Broad, and Steinway. She'd never heard of them before, but apparently everyone in business in New York had.

She wore a plain black dress that she'd bought the year before at Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago, and a red coat she'd bought at Lord and Taylor that morning. And she looked terrific. She was interviewed by personnel, and then sent upstairs to see the office manager, and the senior secretary, and meet two of the junior partners. Her office skills had improved over the years, but she still didn't take proper dictation, but they seemed willing to accommodate her, as long as she was able to take fast notes and type. She liked everyone she met, including both of the junior partners she would work for, Tom Short and Bill Martin. They were both very serious and dry, one had gone to Princeton undergraduate and then Harvard Law, the other had gone all the way through Harvard. Everything looked predictable and respectable, and even their location suited her perfectly. They were at Fifty-sixth and Park, only eight blocks from her hotel, although now she knew she'd have to find an apartment.

The law firm took up ten floors, and there were over six hundred employees. All she wanted was to be a face in the crowd, and that's all she was. It was the most impersonal place she'd ever seen, and it suited her to perfection. She wore her hair tied back, very little makeup, and the same clothes she'd worn at Swanson's in Chicago. She had a little more style than necessary, but the office manager figured she'd tone it down. She was a bright girl, and he really liked her.

She had been hired as the assistant joint secretary for two of the junior partners. They shared two women, and Grace's counterpart was three times her age and twice her weight, and seemed relieved to have all the help she could get. She told Grace on her first day of work that Tom and Bill were nice guys and very reasonable to work for. Both were married, and had blond wives, one lived in Stamford, the other in Darien, and each had three children. In some ways, they seemed like twins to Grace, but so did most of the men there. There seemed to be a sea of young men working there who basically looked the same to her. And all they ever talked about was their cases. Everyone commuted to Connecticut or Long Island, most of them played squash, some belonged to clubs, and all of the secretaries seemed equally faceless. It was precisely the anonymous world that Grace had wanted. No one seemed to notice her at all as she started work. She fit in instantly, did her work, and no one asked her a single question about who she was, where she had worked, or where she'd come from. No one cared. This was New York. And she loved it.

And that weekend, she found an apartment. It was at Eighty-fourth and First. She could take the subway to work, or the bus, and she could afford the rent comfortably on her salary. She'd sold her bed and furniture to the girl who took her place in Chicago, and she went to Macy's and bought a few things, but was worried to find them so expensive. One of the girls at work told her about a discount furniture place in Brooklyn, and she went there one night on the subway after work, and smiled to herself as she rode alone. She had never felt so grown up and so free, so much the mistress of her own fate. For the first time in her life, no one was controlling her, or threatening her, or trying to hurt her. No one wanted anything from her at all. She could do anything she wanted.

She did a little shopping on Saturday afternoons, bought her groceries at the A&P nearby, and went to galleries on Madison Avenue and the West Side, and even made a few forays into SoHo. She loved New York, and everything about it. She ate dim sum on Mott Street, checked out the Italian neighborhood. And she was fascinated going to a couple of auctions. And a month after she'd arrived she had a job, a life, and an apartment. She'd bought most of her furniture by then, and it wasn't exciting or elegant, but it was comfortable. Her building was old, but it was clean. They had given her curtains and the place had beige wall-to-wall that went with everything she'd bought. The apartment had a living room, a tiny kitchen and dining nook, and a small bedroom and bath. It was everything she'd ever wanted, and it was her own. No one could take it away, or spoil it.

“How's New York treating you?” the personnel manager asked her when she saw him again one day at lunch in the firm's cafeteria. She only ate there in bad weather or when she was broke just before her next paycheck. Otherwise, she liked wandering around Mid-town at lunchtime.

“I love it” She smiled at him. He was little and old and bald, and he had told her he had five children.

“I'm glad.” He smiled. “I hear good reports about you, Grace.”

“Thank you.” The best thing about him, as far as she was concerned, was that he loved his wife, and had absolutely no interest in Grace. None of them did. She had never felt as comfortable in her life. People went about their business, and sex seemed to be the last thing on their minds. No one seemed to notice her at all, especially not Tom and Bill, the two young partners that she worked for. She could have been five times her age, and she suspected they would never have noticed. They were nice to her, but they were all work. They worked as late as eight and nine o'clock sometimes, and she wondered if they ever saw their children. They even came in on weekends when they had briefs to write for the senior partners.

“Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?” the secretary who worked with her asked in mid-November. She was a nice older woman with a thick waist and heavy legs, but a kindly face framed by gray hair, and she had never been married. Her name was Winifred Apgard and everyone called her Winnie.

“No, but I'll be fine,” Grace said comfortably. Holidays had never been her forte.

“You're not going home?” Grace shook her head and didn't mention that she didn't have one. Her apartment was home, and she was very self-sufficient.

“I'm going to Philadelphia to see my mother, or I'd have you over,” Winnie said apologetically. She looked like someone's maiden aunt, and she seemed to love her work, and the men she worked for. She clucked over them like a mother hen, and they teased her all the time. She told them to wear their galoshes when it snowed, and warned them of impending storms if they were driving home late.

It was a very different relationship from the one Tom and Bill had with Grace. It was almost as though they pretended not to see her. She wondered sometimes if her youth was threatening to them, or if their wives would have been annoyed, or if Winnie was less of a threat to them, and more comfortable. But it didn't seem to matter. They never said anything of a personal nature to Grace, and while they made jokes with Winnie sometimes, they were always poker-faced with Grace, as though they were being particularly careful not to get to know her. It was a far cry from Bob Swanson, but she liked that a lot about her job.

The week before Thanksgiving, she spent some time on her lunch hour making a few personal phone calls. She had meant to do it for a while, but she'd been busy settling into her apartment. But now it was time to start giving back again. It was something she intended to do for the rest of her life, something she felt she owed the people who had helped her. It was a debt she would never stop paying back. And it was time to begin again now.

She finally found what she was looking for.

The place was called St. Andrew's Shelter, and it was on the Lower East Side, on Delancey. There was a young priest in charge, and he had invited her to come down and meet them the following Sunday morning.

She took the subway down Lexington, changed trains, and got off at Delancey, and walked the rest of the way. It was a rough walk, she realized once she got there. There were bums wandering the streets aimlessly, drunks hunched over in doorways, dozing, or lying openly on the sidewalks. There were warehouses and tenements, and battered-looking stores with heavy gates. There were abandoned cars here and there, and some tough-looking kids cruising for trouble. They glanced at Grace as she walked along, but no one bothered her. And finally, she got to St. Andrew's. It was an old brownstone that looked like it was in pretty bad shape, with paint peeling off the doors, and a sign that was barely hanging by a thread, but there were people coming in and out, mostly women with kids, and a few young girls. One of them looked about fourteen, and Grace could see that she was hugely pregnant.

There were three young girls manning a reception desk when she got inside. They were talking and chattering, and one of them was doing her nails. And there was more noise than Grace thought she'd heard anywhere. The building sounded like it was teeming with voices and kids, there was an argument going on somewhere, there were blacks and whites, Chinese and Puerto Ricans. It looked like a microcosm of New York, or as though someone had hijacked a subway.

She asked for the young priest by name, and she waited a long time for him, watching the action, and when he appeared he was wearing jeans and an old battered oatmeal-colored sweater.

“Father Finnegan?” she asked curiously. He had a real twinkle about him, and he didn't look like a priest. He had bright red hair, and he looked like a kid. But crow's-feet near his eyes, in a sea of freckles on his fair skin, said he was somewhat older than the kid he looked like.

“Father Tim,” he corrected her with a grin. “Miss Adams?”

“Grace.” She smiled at him. You couldn't help but smile at him. He had a real look of joy about him.

“Let's go talk somewhere,” he said calmly, weaving in and out of half a dozen children chasing each other around the main lobby. The building looked as though it might have been a tenement, and had been opened up to provide a home to those who needed it. He had told her on the phone that they had only been in existence for five years and needed a lot of help, especially from volunteers. He had been thrilled to hear from her. She was one of the many miracles he said they needed.

He led her to a kitchen with three old dishwashers that had been donated to them and a big old-fashioned sink. There were posters on the walls, a big round table and some chairs, and two huge pots of coffee. He poured a cup for each of them, and led her to a small room with a desk and three chairs. It looked as though it had been a utility room and was now his office. The place was badly in need of paint and some decent furniture, but sitting there, talking to him, it was easy to forget anything but him. He had that kind of presence about him, and he was completely unaware of it, which was why everyone loved him.

“So what brings you here, Grace? Other than a good heart and a foolish nature?” He grinned at her again, and took a sip of steaming coffee, as his eyes danced with glee.

“I've done this kind of volunteer work before, in Chicago. At a place called St. Mary's.” She gave Paul Weinberg's name as a reference.

“I know it well. I'm from Chicago myself. Been here for twenty years now. And I know St. Mary's. In some ways, we've modeled ourselves on them. They run a very good operation.”

She told him the number of people they serviced at St. Mary's each year, and that there were as many as a dozen families in residence at any given time. Not to mention the people who came and went constantly in a day's time, and returned frequently to avail themselves of the comfort offered at St. Mary's.

“We offer the same thing here,” he said thoughtfully, looking at her. He wondered why someone like her wanted to do this kind of work. But he had learned long since not to question God's gifts to him, but to use them well. He had every intention of putting Grace to work at St. Andrew's. “We see more people here. Maybe close to eighty or a hundred a day, give or take a dozen, mostly give.” He grinned again. “We've had over a hundred women staying here at one time, sometimes twice as many children. Generally, we keep it to a dull roar, and we have about sixty women and a hundred and fifty kids here most of the time. We don't turn anyone away at St. Andrew's. That's the only rule here. They come to our door, they stay, if that's what they want. Most of them don't stay long. They either go back, or they move on, and start new lives. I'd say the average stay is anywhere from a week to two months, maximum. Most of them are out in two weeks.” It had been pretty much the same at St. Mary's.

“Can you house that many people here?” She was surprised. The building didn't look that big, and it wasn't.

“This used to be twenty apartments. We stack 'em as high as we have to, Grace. Our doors are open to everyone, not just to Catholics,” he explained, “we don't even ask that question.”

“Actually …” She smiled at him, there was a warmth that came from him that touched her very soul. There was an innocence and purity about Father Tim that made him seem particularly holy, in a real sense. He was truly a man of God, and Grace felt instantly at ease with him and blessed to be near him. “The doctor who ran St. Mary's was Jewish,” she said conversationally, and he laughed.

“I haven't gone that far yet, but you never know.”

“Is there a doctor in charge here?”

“Me, I guess. I'm a Jesuit, and I have a doctorate in psychology. But Dr. Tim sounds a little strange, doesn't it? Father Tim suits me better.” They both laughed this time and he went to pour them both another cup of coffee from one of the two huge pots.

“We have half a dozen nuns, not in habit, of course, who work here, and about forty volunteers at various times. We need every one of them to keep the place running. We've got some psychiatric nurses who give us time, from NYU, and we get a lot of kids doing psych internships, mostly from Columbia. It's a good group, and they work like demons … sorry, angels.” She really loved him, with his freckles and his laughing eyes. “And what about you, Grace? What brings you to us?”

“I like this kind of work. It means a lot to me.”

“Do you know much about it? I suppose you do after two years at St. Mary's.”

“Enough, I guess, to be useful.” It was all too familiar to her, but she wasn't quite sure whether or not to say it to him. She almost wanted to. She trusted him more than she had anyone in a long time.

“How many times a week or month did you volunteer at St. Mary's?”

“Two nights a week, and every Sunday … most holidays.”

“Wow.” He looked impressed, and surprised. Priest or no, he could see easily that she was young and beautiful, too young to be giving up so much of her life to a home like this one. And then he looked at her carefully. “Is this a special mission for you, Grace?” It was as though he knew. He sensed it. And she nodded.

“I think so. I … understand about these things.” She wasn't sure what else to say to him, but he nodded, and touched her hand gently.

“It's all right. Healing comes in many ways. Blessing others is the best one.” She nodded, and her eyes were blurred with tears. He knew. He understood. She felt as though she had come home, just being here, and being near him. “We need you, Grace. There's a place for you here. You can bring joy, and healing, to a lot of people, as well as yourself.”

“Thank you, Father,” she whispered as she wiped her eyes and he smiled at her. He didn't pry any further. He knew all he needed to know. No one knew better what these women were going through than one who'd been through it, battered and abused by husbands and fathers, or mothers or boyfriends.

“Now, let's get down to business.” His eyes were laughing again. “How soon can you start? We're not going to let you get away from here that easily. You might come to your senses.”

“Right now?” She had come prepared to work, if he wanted her, and he did. He led her back into the kitchen, where they left their empty mugs in one of the dishwashers, and then he walked her out to the hallway and started introducing her to people. The three girls at the desk had been replaced by a boy in his early twenties, who was a medical student at Columbia, and there were two women talking to a gaggle of little girls, whom Father Tim introduced as Sister Theresa, and Sister Eugene, but neither of them looked like nuns to Grace. They were friendly-looking women in their early thirties. One was wearing a sweat suit, and the other jeans and a threadbare sweater. And Sister Eugene volunteered to take Grace upstairs to show her around the rooms where the women stayed, and the nursery where they sometimes kept the children, if the women were too battered to deal with them for the time being themselves.

There was an infirmary staffed by a nurse who was a nun, and she was wearing a clean white smock over blue jeans. The lights were kept dim, and Sister Eugene walked Grace in on soundless feet, as she signaled to the nurse on duty. And as Grace looked around her at the women in the beds, her heart twisted as she recognized the signs she had lived her entire life with. Merciless beatings and heartrending bruises. Two women had arms in casts, one had cigarette burns all over her face, and another was moaning as the nurse tried to bandage her broken ribs again, and put ice packs on her swollen eyes. Her husband was in jail now.

“We send the worst cases to the hospital,” Sister Eugene explained quietly as they left the room again. Without thinking, Grace had stopped to touch a hand, and the woman had looked at her in suspicion. That was another thing Grace was familiar with too. These women were sometimes so far gone and so badly treated that they didn't trust anyone anymore not to hurt them. “But we keep whoever we can here, it's less upsetting for them. And sometimes it's only bruises. The really ugly stuff goes to the emergency room.” Like the woman who'd come in two nights before whose husband had put a hot iron to her face, after hitting her with a tire iron on the back of her head. He had almost killed her, but she was so terrified of him, she had refused to bring charges. The authorities had taken their children away from them, and they were in foster homes now. But the woman had to be willing to save herself, and many of them didn't have the courage to do it. Being battered was the most isolating thing in the world. It made you hide from everyone, Grace knew only too well, even those who could help you.

Sister Eugene took her to see the children then, and in minutes Grace had her arms full of little girls and boys, she was telling them stories, and tying bows on braids, and shoelaces, as children told her who they were, and some of them talked about what had happened and why they had come there. Some couldn't. Some of their siblings had been killed by their parents. Some of their mothers were upstairs, too battered to move, too ashamed even to see them. It was a disease that destroyed families, and the people who lived through it. And Grace knew with a sinking heart how few of them would ever grow up to be whole people or be able to trust anyone again.

It was after eight o'clock before she left them that night. As she did, Father Tim was standing at the door, talking to a policeman. He had just brought a little girl in, she was two years old, and she had been raped by her father. Grace hated cases like that … at least she had been thirteen … but she had seen babies at St. Mary's who had been raped and sodomized by their fathers.

“Rough day?” Father Tim asked sympathetically, as the policeman left.

“Good day.” She smiled at him. She had spent most of it with kids, and then the last few hours, talking to some of the women, just being there, listening, trying to give them the courage to do what they had to. No one could do it for them. The police could help. But it was up to them to save themselves. And maybe, if she talked to enough of them, she told herself, they wouldn't have to go to the same lengths she had. They wouldn't have to wind up in prison to be free. It was her way of repaying the debt, of atoning for a sin she knew her mother would never have forgiven her for. But she had had no choice, and she didn't regret it. She just didn't want anyone else to have to pay the same price she had.

“You run a great place here,” she complimented him. She liked it even better than St. Mary's. It was livelier, and in some ways warmer.

“It's only as great as the people who work here. Can I interest you in coming back? Sister Eugene says you're terrific.”

“So is she.” The nun had been tireless working there all day, as was everyone Grace had seen. She liked everyone she had met there. “I don't think you'll be able to keep me away.” She had already signed up for two nights that week and the following Sunday. “I can come in on Thanksgiving too,” she said easily.

“You're not going home?” He looked surprised. She was awfully young to be so unencumbered.

“No home to go to,” she said without hesitation. “It's not a big deal. I'm used to it.” He watched her eyes, and nodded. There was a lot there that she wasn't saying.

“We'd love to have you.” The holidays were always rough for people with bad home situations, and the number of people they saw come in often doubled. “It's always a zoo here.”

“That's just what I want. See you next week, Father,” she said, as she signed out on the logbook. She was going to be reporting to Sister Eugene, and she was thrilled that she'd come here. It was exactly what she wanted.

“God bless you, Grace,” Father Tim said as she left.

“You too, Father,” she called, and closed the door behind her.

It was a long, cold, somewhat scary walk back to the subway again, threading her way through the bums and the drunks, and young hoods looking for fun. But no one bothered her, and half an hour later, she was home, walking down First Avenue to her apartment She was tired from her long day, but she felt renewed again, and as though at least for some, the horrors in her life had been useful. For Grace, knowing that always made the pain she carried seem worthwhile. At least it wasn't wasted.

Chapter 10

Grace spent Thanksgiving at St. Andrew's Shelter, as she'd promised them. She even helped to cook the turkey. And after that, she fell into a familiar routine, of going down there on Tuesday and Friday nights, and all day Sunday. Fridays were always busy for them, because it was the beginning of the weekend, and paychecks had come in. Husbands who were prone to violence went out and got drunk and then came home and beat their women. She found that she never left the shelter before two a.m., and sometimes later. And on Sundays, they were trying to deal with all the women and kids who had come in over the weekend. It seemed like it was only on Tuesday nights that she and Sister Eugene had a chance to chat. The two women had become good friends by Christmas. Sister Eugene had even asked her if she'd ever thought of herself as having a vocation.

“Oh my God, no! I can't even imagine it.” Grace looked stunned at the idea.

“It's not very different from what you're doing now, you know.” Sister Eugene smiled at her. “You give an awful lot of yourself to others … and to God … no matter how you view it.”

“I don't think it's quite as saindy as all that,” Grace smiled, embarrassed at what the nun was saying.

“I'm just repaying some old debts. People were good to me at one point, as much as I let them. I'd like to think that I can pass it on to others now.” Not very many people had been good to her. But a few had. And she wanted to be one of the few people in these people's anguished lives who made a difference. And she did. But not enough so to want to give her life to God, only to battered women and children.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Sister Eugene had asked her once, giggling like a girl, and Grace had laughed at the question. Sister Eugene was curious about her life and Grace seldom offered any information. She was very closed about herself, but she felt safer that way.

“I'm not much good with men,” Grace said honestly. “It's not my forte. I'd rather come here and do something useful.”

And she did. She spent Christmas and New Year's with them, and sometimes she had a kind of peaceful glow on her face after she'd been there. Winnie noticed it sometimes at work and always thought it was a man in her life. She seemed so happy and so at ease with herself. But it came from giving to others, and sitting up all night with a battered child in her arms, crooning to it, and holding it, as no one had ever done for her. She wanted more than anything to make a difference in these children's lives, and she did.

Finally, after they'd worked together for nearly five months, Winnie asked her to lunch on a Sunday, and Grace was really touched but she explained to her that she had a standing obligation on Sundays. She would never have canceled. They met on a Saturday instead. They met at Schrafft's on Madison Avenue and then walked over to watch the skaters at Rockefeller Center.

“What do you do on Sundays?” Winnie asked her curiously, still convinced that Grace probably had a boyfriend. She was a pretty girl, and she was so young. There had to be someone.

“I work on Delancey Street, at a home for battered women and kids,” she explained, as they watched women in short skirts swirl on the ice, and children fall and laugh as they chased their parents and friends. They looked like such happy children.

“You do?” Winnie looked surprised by Grace's admission. “Why?” She couldn't imagine a girl as young and beautiful as Grace doing something so difficult and so dismal.

“I do it because I think it's important. I work there three times a week. It's a great place. I love it,” Grace said, smiling at Winnie.

“Have you always done that?” Winnie asked her in amazement, and Grace nodded, still smiling.

“For a long time anyway. I did it in Chicago too, but actually I like the place here better. It's called St. Andrew's.” And then she laughed and told her about Sister Eugene suggesting she become a nun.

“Oh my Lord,” Winnie looked horrified, “you're not going to do that, are you?”

“No. But they seem pretty happy. It's not for me though. I'm happy doing what I can like this.”

“Three days a week is an awful lot. You must not have a lot of time to do anything else.”

“I don't. I don't want to. I enjoy my work, I enjoy working at St. Andrew's. I've got Saturdays if I need time to myself, and a couple of nights a week. I don't need more than that.”

“That's not healthy,” Winnie scolded her. “A girl of your age ought to be out having fun. You know, with boys,” she scolded Grace in a motherly way, and Grace laughed at her. She liked her. She liked working with her. She was responsible and efficient and she really cared about “her” partners, and Grace. She acted almost like a mother to her.

“I'm all right. Honest. I'll have plenty of time for boys when I grow up,” Grace teased, but Winnie shook her head at her, and wagged a finger.

“That comes a lot faster than you think. I took care of my parents, all my life, and now my mother's in a home in Philadelphia, so she can be with my aunt, and I'm all alone here. My father's gone, and I never got married. By the time he died and Mama went to Philadelphia to be with Aunt Tina, I was too old.” She sounded so sad about it that Grace felt sorry for her. Grace suspected that she was very lonely, which was why she'd met her for lunch. “You'll regret it one day, Grace, if you don't get married, and have a life of your own before that.”

“I'm not sure I will.” She had come to think re-cendy that she really didn't want to get married. She'd been burned enough, and even her brief encounters with men like Marcus, and Bob Swanson, and even her probation officer, had taught her something. She really didn't want any of it. And the nice ones like David and Paul still didn't make her feel any different. They were both good men, but she really didn't want one. She was satisfied to be alone. She didn't make any effort to meet men, or to have any life other than her volunteer work at St. Andrew's.

Which was why she was utterly amazed when one of the other junior partners, who worked in an office near hers, asked her out to dinner one day. She knew he was a friend of the tax men she worked for, and he was recendy divorced and very good-looking. But she had no interest at all in going out with him, or anyone else at work.

He had stopped at her desk at lunch hour one day, and in an embarrassed undervoice had asked her if she would like to have dinner with him the following Friday. She explained that she did volunteer work on Friday nights, and couldn't but she didn't look particularly pleased that he had asked her, and he retreated, looking awkward and feeling somewhat embarrassed.

She was even more surprised when one of her bosses asked her the next afternoon why she had turned Hallam Ball down when he asked her out to dinner. “Hal's a really nice guy,” he explained, “and he likes you,” as though that were all he needed to qualify for a date. None of them could understand her refusal.

“I … uh … that's very nice of him, and I'm sure he is.” She was stammering. It was embarrassing having to explain why she had refused him. “I don't go out with people at work. It's never a good idea,” she said firmly, and the young partner nodded.

“That's what I told him. I figured it was something like that. That's smart, actually, it's just too bad, because I think you'd like him, and he's been really down since the divorce last summer.”

“I'm sorry to hear it,” she said coolly. And then Winnie scolded her and said that Hallam Ball was one of the most eligible men in the law firm, and she was a very foolish girl. She warned her that she'd be an old maid if she didn't watch it.

“Good.” Grace smiled at her. “I can hardly wait. Then no one will ask me out anymore, and I won't have to think up excuses.”

“You're crazy!” Winnie scolded. “Silly fool,” she clucked at her, and grumbled, and when a legal assistant asked her out the following month and Grace turned him down too, and gave the same reason, Winnie went absolutely crazy. “You are the most foolish girl I've ever known!” the older woman railed at her. “I'm absolutely not going to let you do this! He's an adorable boy, and he's even as tall as you are!” Grace only laughed at her reasoning and refused to reconsider, and in a very short period of time, it became well known that Grace Adams did not date men from the office. Most of them figured that she had a boyfriend or was engaged, and a few decided to meet the challenge. But she never changed her mind, and she never gave anyone a different answer. No matter how attractive they were, or how seemingly interested, she never accepted their invitations. In fact, she seemed totally indifferent to all men. And a number of people wondered about her.

“And just how do you plan to get married?” Winnie almost shouted at her one afternoon as they were about to leave work.

“I don't plan to get married, Win. Simple as that.” Grace looked touched but unmoved by the older woman's concern for her. Winnie was livid.

“Then you should become a nun!” Winnie yelled at her. “You practically are one.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Grace said with a good-natured smile, and Bill, one of “their” partners, raised an eyebrow as he left his office and overheard them. He agreed with Winnie and felt that Grace was missing opportunities. Youth and beauty couldn't last forever.

“Fighting in the aisles, ladies?” he teased, putting on his coat and grabbing his umbrella. It was March and it hadn't stopped raining in weeks. But at least it wasn't snowing.

“She's a damn fool!” Winnie exclaimed, huffing into her own overcoat and getting all tangled up in it as Grace helped her and the partner laughed at them.

“Grace? My goodness, Grace, what did you do to Winnie?”

“She won't go out with anyone, that's what!” She yanked her coat away from Grace, and buttoned it incorrectly, as the two watching her tried to keep straight faces. “She'll wind up an old maid like me, and she's much too young and pretty for that.” But Grace saw then that she was almost crying, and she leaned over and kissed her cheek in genuine affection. She was almost like a mother to her at times, and a dear friend at others.

“She probably has a boyfriend, you know,” he said soothingly to the older of his two secretaries. In fact, recently, he had started wondering if Grace was involved with someone married. Her constant refusals of all the young men in the office sort of fit the pattern. “She's probably keeping it a secret.” He no longer believed that her reticence was entirely caused by virtue and clear thinking, there had to be more to it than that, and several of the other junior partners agreed with him.

Winnie looked up at her and Grace smiled and said nothing, which immediately convinced Winnie that he was right, and that maybe there was a married man in her life after all.

The two women left each other in the lobby and said good night, and Grace went downtown to Delan-cey Street and spent the night caring for the needy.

And the next morning, she looked tired when she came to work, which convinced Winnie that their boss was right, and she had been up to some mischief the night before. Grace actually thought she was coming down with the flu. After her long walk down Delancey Street in the pouring rain, to get to St. Andrew's, she got soaking wet. And she was in no mood for the favor the personnel director asked her for at lunchtime. She got a call at eleven o'clock and was asked to come to his office. She was concerned, and Winnie was clearly worried. She couldn't imagine what he might be complaining about, unless one of the men she'd turned down had decided to make trouble for her. She had lived through that before, and it certainly wouldn't have surprised her.

“Now don't tell him anything you don't have to,” Winnie warned her as she went upstairs. But he wasn't calling to complain, but to praise her.

He told her she was doing a marvelous job, and everyone in her department liked her, as did the two partners she worked for.

“In fact,” he said hesitandy, “I have a little favor to ask of you, Grace. I know how disruptive it can be to have to leave one's work for a little while, and I know Tom and Bill won't be pleased. But Miss Waterman had an accident last night, on the subway. She slipped on the stairs, and broke her hip. She's going to be out for two months, maybe even three. It sounds like it was pretty nasty. She's at Lenox Hill, and her sister called us. You do know her, don't you?” Grace was racking her memory and couldn't think of who she was. Obviously, one of the secretaries in the law firm. She wondered if it would be a step up or down, and whom she worked for. She only hoped that it wasn't one of the men who had asked her out to dinner. That certainly would have been awkward.

“I don't think I do know her,” Grace looked at him blankly.

“She works for Mr. Mackenzie,” the personnel director said solemnly, as though that said it all. And Grace looked confused as she faced him.

“Which Mr. Mackenzie?” she asked, continuing not to understand him.

“Mr. Charles Mackenzie,” he said, as though she were very stupid. Charles Mackenzie was one of the three senior partners of the law firm.

“Are you kidding?” She almost shouted at him. “Why me? I can't even take dictation.” Her voice was suddenly squeaky. She was comfortable where she was, and she didn't want to be under that kind of pressure.

“You take fast notes, and the partners you work for said your skills are excellent. And Mr. Mackenzie is very definite about what he wants.” He looked uncomfortable because he wasn't supposed to admit it to anyone, but Charles Mackenzie hated grumpy old secretaries who complained about working late, and his constant demands. The job needed someone young to keep up with him, but the personnel man couldn't say that to her. As a rule, Mackenzie preferred his secretaries under thirty. And even Grace had heard that. “He wants someone fast, who's doing an excellent job and won't get in his way, while Miss Waterman is gone. And of course as soon as she returns, you can go back where you are, Grace. It's just for a couple of months.” He probably wanted to get laid, she thought miserably. She knew his kind. And she didn't want to play. She loved her job, and working with Winnie. And the two partners she worked for were no trouble at all. They scarcely paid any attention to her, which was why she liked them.

“Do I have a choice?” she asked with an unhappy frown.

“Not really,” he said honestly, “We presented three résumés to him this morning, and he chose yours. It would be very difficult to explain to him that you didn't want it.” He looked at her mournfully. He hadn't expected her to resist him. It would look bad for him if she refused, and Charles Mackenzie was not used to being told he couldn't have what he wanted.

“Great” She leaned back in the chair unhappily.

“I'm sure we could arrange for a raise, commensurate with the position you're filling.” But that didn't really sweeten it for her. More than anything she didn't want to work for some old guy who wanted to chase a twenty-two-year-old secretary around his desk. She really did not want to do that. And if he did, she would quit immediately. She'd have to start looking for another job. She'd try it for a few days, and if the guy was a jerk, she was going, but she didn't say that to the head of personnel. She just made up her own mind in silence.

“Fine,” she said icily. “When do I start?”

“After lunch. Mr. Mackenzie had a very difficult morning with no one to help him.”

“How old is Miss Waterman, by the way?” She had understood the message.

“Twenty-five, I think. Maybe twenty-six. I'm not sure. She's excellent. She's been with him for three years now.” Maybe they were having an affair, Grace decided, and they'd had a fight, and now she was out looking for another job. Anything was possible. She'd see for herself in an hour. He told her to report to Mr. Mackenzie's office at one o'clock. And when she went back to pick up her things, she told Winnie.

“How wonderful!” Winnie exclaimed generously. “I'll miss you, but what a great break for you!” Grace didn't see it that way, and she almost cried when a girl from the typing pool came to replace her. She said goodbye to the two partners she'd worked for for almost six months, and took a bag of her things up to the twenty-ninth floor to Mr. Mackenzie's office. Winnie had promised to call her that afternoon to see how it was going.

“He sounds like a jerk,” Grace had said to her under her breath, but Winnie was quick to reassure her.

“He's not. Everyone who works for him loves him.”

“I'll bet,” she said tardy, and kissed Winnie on the cheek before she left. It was like leaving home, and she was in a rotten mood when she got upstairs. She was annoyed over the high-handedness of it. And she hadn't had time for lunch, and had a terrible headache. Besides which, she really did feel like she was getting the flu from her long walk in the rain the night before. And even being shown to her new office, with a spectacular view up Park Avenue, didn't cheer her. They treated her like royalty, and three of the secretaries who worked nearby made a point of coming out to meet her. It was like a little club up there, and had she been in a better mood, she would have admitted that everyone was very pleasant.

She looked through some papers that the personnel director had left for her, and a list of instructions from her new boss, about some things he needed done that afternoon. They were mostly research calls, and some personal calls too, an appointment with his tailor, and another one for a haircut, and a reservation at ‘21’ the following night, for two people. How sexy, she complained to herself as she read the list. And then started making the phone calls.

When he came back from lunch at two-fifteen, she had made all his calls for him, finished half the research, and taken several messages. In each case, she had handled what the caller wanted from him, and he had no need to return the calls, just to know about their resolution. He was immensely surprised by her efficiency, but not nearly as much as she was when she saw him. The “old guy” she'd expected him to be was forty-two years old, tall, had broad shoulders, deep green eyes, and jet black hair with salt and pepper at the temples. He had a rugged jaw that made him look like a movie star, and he was totally without pretension. It was as though he had absolutely no idea he was even handsome. He walked in very quietly, he had had a working lunch downstairs with some of the other partners. And he was casual and friendly when he greeted her, and praised her for the work she'd done for him so quickly.

“You're as good as they said you were, Grace.” He smiled warmly at her, and she vowed instantly to resist him. She was not going to fall for his looks, or for who he was, no matter what Miss Waterman had done for him. As far as Grace was concerned, she wasn't part of the service. She was extremely formal with him, and not particularly friendly.

For the next two weeks, she made every appointment for him, both business and personal, handled all his calls, attended meetings with him and took accurate notes, and proved herself to be very near perfect.

“She's good, isn't she?” Tom Short asked possessively when he saw Mackenzie alone for a few minutes before a meeting.

“Yes,” the senior partner said cautiously, but without much zeal, and Tom noticed.

“Don't you like her?” Tom immediately sensed a hesitation.

“Honestly? No. She's disagreeable as hell, and she walks around with a broomstick up her ass all day long. She's the most uptight human being I've ever met. She makes me want to throw a bucket of water on her.”

“Grace?” Her old boss looked stunned. “She's so nice, and so easygoing.”

“Maybe she just doesn't like me. Christ, I can't wait to get Waterman back.” But four weeks later, Elizabeth Waterman delivered news that upset them both deeply. She had thought about it a great deal, but after her accident and the way people had treated her as she lay in the subway with a broken hip and leg, she had decided to leave New York for good when she recuperated, and go back to Florida where she came from.

“I suspect this isn't good news for either of us,” Charles Mackenzie said to Grace honestly after he heard. For six weeks, Grace had done an impeccable job for him, and she'd barely said a civil word to him. He had been nothing but friendly with her, and accommodating, but each time she saw him, and noticed again how good-looking he was, and how at ease he was with her and everyone, she hated him all the more. She had convinced herself that she knew his type, he was just waiting for an opportunity to pounce on her and harass her sexually, just like Bob Swanson had done, and she wasn't going to take it. Never again. And certainly not from him. Week after week she saw the women come into St. Andrew's and it reminded her again and again of how rotten men were, how dangerous, and how much damage it could do if you let yourself trust them.

“You're not happy here, are you, Grace?” Charles Mackenzie asked her in a kind tone finally, and she sat noticing how green his eyes were again, reminding herself of how many women he had probably had fail all over him in his life, including Elizabeth Waterman, and God alone knew how many others.

“I'm probably not the right secretary for you,” she said quietly. “I don't have the experience you need. I've never worked in a law firm like this before, or for anyone as important.” He smiled at what she said, but she looked as tense as ever.

“What did you do before this?” He had forgotten.

“I worked in a modeling agency for two years,” she said, wondering what he was after. Maybe he was going to strike now. He would eventually. They all did.

“As a model?” he asked, not surprised, but she shook her head in answer.

“No, as a secretary.”

“It must have been a lot more interesting than a law firm. My job isn't exactly exciting.” He smiled and looked surprisingly young. She knew he'd been married to a well-known actress and they'd never had children. He had been divorced for two years, and according to most reports, he dated a lot of women. She had certainly made plenty of dinner reservations for him, but not all were with women. Some were with his partners and clients.

“Most jobs aren't very interesting,” Grace said sensibly, surprised that he was willing to spend so much time talking to her. “Mine at the agency wasn't either. Actually,” she said, thinking about it, “I like this better. The people here are a lot nicer.”

“It's just me, then,” he said almost sadly, as though she had hurt his feelings.

“What do you mean?” She didn't understand him.

“Well, it's obvious you're not enjoying your work, and if you like the law firm, then it must be me. I get the feeling you hate working for me, to be honest with you, Grace. I feel like I make you miserable every time I walk into the office.” She flushed in embarrassment as he said it.

“No … I … I'm really sorry … I didn't mean to give you that impression …”

“Then what is it?” He wanted to work it out with her. She was the best secretary he'd ever had. “Is there something I can do to smooth things out between us? With Elizabeth leaving permanently, we either have to make it work or give it up, don't we?” Grace nodded, embarrassed now that her dislike for him had been so blatant. It wasn't really anything he had done personally. It was just what she thought he represented. The truth was that he was a lot less of a womanizer than she thought. Only his highly publicized marriage to his famous actress ex-wife had won him that reputation.

“I'm really sorry, Mr. Mackenzie. I'll try and make things a little easier for you from now on.”

“So will I,” he said kindly, and she felt somewhat guilty toward him as she left her office. And even more so when Elizabeth Waterman came to say goodbye to him on her crutches. She said it was like leaving home again for her, and that he was the kindest person she had ever known. She cried when she said goodbye to him and everyone in the office. Grace didn't get the feeling that she was ending a love affair, but felt that she was genuinely heartbroken to leave a much-loved employer.