Malice (15 page)

“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

T
he 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.