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  “Why don’t we forget business and eat?”

  “Good idea. We have a lot to discuss,” she answered in the same tone she used for client presentations. Felicia had her own menu prepared for lunch. She was planning to serve Trace an ultimatum: Either they seek counseling or their marriage was over.

  Felicia and Trace followed the hostess into the elevator and upstairs into the dining room. While Felicia busied herself with examining the menu, Trace studied his wife. She was still as lovely as the day they’d met. Trace remembered their meeting in every detail just as if it had happened yesterday, instead of a decade ago.

  She was three weeks shy of her nineteenth birthday when he literally bumped into her on the campus of Georgetown University. He was in town recruiting for his New York law firm, and she was a bright-eyed student, finishing up her freshman year. After almost knocking her down in his search for the administration building, Trace had insisted they meet later for coffee. Coffee turned into dinner, dinner into an all-night conversation, and that conversation into plans to meet again the following weekend.

  Over the next three years the two solidified their relationship, and following Felicia’s graduation they were married in a large, traditional June wedding. After a two-week Hawaiian honeymoon they moved into Trace’s Brooklyn Heights brownstone.

  Early married life settled into a comfortable, easy pattern. Trace left home for Manhattan every day to further his career at the law firm, while Felicia found a job in the public-relations department at nearby Methodist Hospital.

  Trace progressed quickly up the ladder at the prestigious law firm. Last year, at age thirty-five, he became a partner. Now that he could afford to have his wife at home, he went along with—and bankrolled—Felicia’s idea to start her own public-relations firm. That’s when things really began to change between them. Felicia was no longer the same inexperienced twenty-two-year-old girl he’d married and their life was not working out quite the way he’d planned, but the bottom line still remained: He loved his wife.

  “You really are a beautiful woman,” Trace observed tenderly.

  Taken aback by his compliment, the first in as long as she could remember, Felicia could only respond with a demure “Thank you.”

  “Feli,” Trace said, calling her by his special nickname, “I know things have been rough between us lately, but I love you. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes I have to wonder,” Felicia said, surprised by her candor.

  “You think I don’t love you simply because I missed your party the other night?”

  “Trace, you just don’t understand. It isn’t simply that you missed the party. It’s that you didn’t care enough to be there. That party was important to me. I wanted to share the experience with my husband, but you were nowhere to be found.”

  “I told you, Curtis—”

  “It doesn’t matter what excuse you offer. In the end the only thing that counts is that you put your client and your business before your wife.”

  “Don’t make it sound so calculated. My absence was due to circumstances beyond my control, not because I didn’t want to be with you.”

  “If it had been only this incident, I’d agree with you, but ever since my company started to show real viability, you’ve gone out of your way to be as unsupportive as possible.”

  “That’s not true,” Trace countered indignantly. “I’ve been behind you since the beginning. Who put up the money to get you started? Who gives you free business and legal advice? Don’t tell me I’m not supportive.”

  “I don’t feel supported. I feel guilty for being successful. Tell me, Trace, are you jealous of Wilcot and Associates?”

  Trace would not admit that jealousy was the motive behind his behavior. It was just that things had changed so much these past few years. Felicia was so hell-bent on being an independent career woman, she’d lost touch with what was important to him—a woman who put her home and family first. That’s how it had been in his house growing up, and that’s how he expected it to be in his own household.

  “No, I am not jealous of your company. But the truth be known, I am tired of having to compete with Wilcot and Associates for the attention of my wife.”

  He is jealous. The confirmation of her suspicions angered Felicia. Why did Trace feel that he needed to compete with her work? Particularly when she was killing herself trying to appease him. She felt like a circus performer, constantly jumping through hoops as he cracked his demanding whip. She wanted to be able to share with him her success and get his opinion when she had problems. Instead of being a source of strength and support, he was behaving like a jealous two-year-old with a new sibling.

  “It’s not just my work. You have expectations of me that I can’t fill,” Felicia said.

  “You were able to fulfill them when we were first married.”

  “We can’t go back there, Trace. We’re not the same people. We both want and need different things.”

  “What exactly do you need?”

  “To begin with, I need us to be equals, to share our life and our life decisions together. I don’t want to be your little wife anymore. I want to be your partner. I’m a capable, intelligent woman. I have my own mind.”

  “I know that. Your mind is one of the things I’m most attracted to.”

  “If that’s true, stop treating me like a child. I want you to listen to me, Trace, really listen to me. Stop turning our important conversations into monologues.”

  “This isn’t fair. You’re changing course in midstream. For years you’ve expected me to be the one who made the decisions for us, and now you’re complaining as if I’m some kind of dictatorial tyrant.”

  “You’re right. I haven’t been forthright with my feelings in the past. The truth is, I’m not satisfied with simply acquiescing to every decision you make or letting you have the last word, despite how I feel, just to keep the peace.”

  “You’re that unhappy?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Not enough to end our marriage.”

  “Neither am I, but we need help. I think we should see a marriage counselor. Somebody who will listen to us objectively and help us find our way back to each other.”

  “I don’t want some therapist in the middle of my marriage. Let’s give it some time and try working it out on our own.”

  Trace was convinced that they didn’t need to seek outside assistance to repair their marriage, but he wasn’t going to kid himself. Getting things back to normal would be no easy task, not when he considered the woman his wife had become.

  “Okay, Trace, if you’re really willing to work at it,” Felicia agreed. She had her doubts that they could succeed without help, but she was willing to try. “But this can’t go on indefinitely. If we aren’t able to make some progress on our own in two or three months, we go for counseling. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Truce?”

  “Truce,” Felicia answered with a tentative smile.

  “We will make this work, Feli.” Trace was determined to save his marriage. Not only because he loved her, but also because he refused to lose her. Trace Gordon was a man who did not know failure, and he was not about to get acquainted now.

  12

  “Hello,” Gabrielle said breathlessly into the telephone. She’d run into the house, leaving her key in the door, knowing that Bea was right behind her.

  “Hey, it’s me. How did it go?” Stephanie asked gleefully into the receiver.

  “Bea is fine. The doctor told her that losing weight would help reduce the strain on her back and gave her a prescription for a muscle relaxer.”

  “Not that. How did things go with Mig Reid this morning?”

  “I’ve been with Beatrice all morning.”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t get the note,” Stephanie cried, feigning shock and concern with great success. “Miguel wanted to see you this morning at nine.”

  “You left me a note? Where?” Gabrie
lle asked, hysteria rising in her voice.

  “Right on your dresser mirror.”

  “The dresser,” Gabrielle whimpered as the situation became clear. She pushed her hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the message she’d found under her bureau this morning. If she hadn’t dropped her brush, she’d have never noticed the note written on Stephanie’s personal memo paper. She’d shoved it in her pocket, making a mental note to have Beatrice read it to her later. It had remained there—forgotten—until this very moment.

  “This is all my fault. I should have called earlier or woke you up last night when I came in. I’ll never forgive myself if you lost your big chance because of me,” Stephanie replied, hoping Gabrielle could not detect her ever-widening smile over the phone. She wished she could witness, face to face, the devastation Gabrielle was obviously feeling.

  “It’s not your fault. You left me a message. I just didn’t see it,” Gabrielle said, as she slowly crushed the paper in her hand and dropped it onto the floor.

  Hearing the pain in Gabrielle’s voice, Stephanie almost felt sorry for the girl. “Ah, look, I have to run. The FedEx guy just walked in.”

  “Sure. I’ll talk to you when you get home.” Gabrielle hung up the phone and dashed up the stairs, her sobs putting Bea’s maternal instincts on alert.

  Beatrice picked up the crumpled note and trudged up after Gabrielle. She could hear the violent cries emanating from her room. She stepped in the doorway to find Gabrielle slumped on the floor at the side of her bed.

  “Honey, what on earth is wrong?” Bea lowered her girth to the floor, and Gabrielle collapsed into the older woman’s soft and fleshy arms, sobbing wildly. The tears came fast and furious.

  Beatrice rocked Gabrielle against her breast and allowed her to expel her grief. As she stroked Gabrielle’s hair and tried to console her, Bea felt a surge of maternal love overtake her. Never in her sixty-four years had she felt so needed.

  As the minutes passed, Beatrice took the time to reflect on her life. She’d always intended to marry and have children, but the right man just never seemed to materialize. When she was twenty-three, she was engaged briefly to a sailor in the merchant marine. They’d met while he was in port in New York, and after a six-day, whirlwind romance she agreed to marry him. On the seventh day he shipped off, leaving her with the promise of a ring and a spring wedding. Their engagement lasted exactly two months, long enough for him to sail to the Philippines and marry a local barmaid.

  Bea’s greatest regret was not that she’d never wed or never explored the world as she had once dreamed, but that she’d never had a child. It appeared, however, sitting here with her arms wrapped around Gabrielle, that the Lord had intervened.

  After several minutes, when Gabrielle’s sobs had evaporated into an occasional whimper, Beatrice gently pressed her into revealing the cause of her grief.

  Gabrielle spoke in a low monotone. “I blew it. I had my big chance, and I blew it. Everything my mom and I dreamed about, I ruined. All because—” Gabrielle’s voice broke as the tears resurfaced.

  “Sweetie, calm down and tell me, is this what has you so upset?” Bea said, smoothing out the discarded note.

  “The photographer I told you about called yesterday. He wanted to take some pictures of me this morning. Stephanie left me that note, only I didn’t know. Now I’ve missed my chance.”

  “Honey, you don’t know that. We’ll call him and tell him you didn’t get his message. I’m sure he’ll reschedule.”

  “I did get it. It fell under the dresser, but I found it.”

  “I’m confused. If you got Stephanie’s message, why didn’t you call?”

  “Because I couldn’t read it.”

  “You couldn’t read Stephanie’s handwriting?”

  “No. You don’t understand. I can’t read anything.”

  “What are you saying?” Beatrice asked, trying to make sense of what she had just heard.

  “I’m saying I never learned how to read or write.”

  “You mean, you don’t read very fast.”

  “No, I mean that other than a few small words like ‘the’ or ‘at,’ I can’t read.”

  Beatrice sat silently. It was inconceivable to her that this bright, beautiful child in front of her was illiterate.

  “Your mother? She knew you couldn’t read?”

  “Not until I was twelve.”

  “How could she not know until then?”

  “My mom was a waitress. She worked at night—the tips are bigger then—so she wasn’t home much with me. When she was, we’d do other stuff, like work on puzzles or go to the movies.”

  “But once she knew, why didn’t she get you some help?”

  Gabrielle had no way of explaining to Beatrice what her mother had never clarified for her. Helene impressed on her daughter a thousand times over the years that she was smart in plenty of other ways—that being book smart wasn’t everything. Gabrielle accepted her mother’s subtle insinuation that whatever was keeping her from learning to read, while not fixable, was indeed tolerable. The child had no way of knowing that it was Helene’s blind ambition that was the real culprit. Helene was determined that Gabrielle’s beauty, not her brains, was their ticket out of their miserable existence. She could not take the chance that a literate Gabrielle might make some other, less compelling career choice. Helene was sure that once her ex-husband, Nick, saw his “famous” daughter he would change his mind and they could finally be a family.

  “She helped me a lot, mainly by not making me feel like something was terribly wrong with me. She always said we should emphasize the positive, because the negative parts were irrelevant,” Gabrielle explained.

  “What about school? Somebody must have known.”

  “We moved a lot—every year, sometimes twice. By the time I was in high school I’d been to seventeen schools. I was always the new girl. I was quiet and shy and just kept to myself. It’s like the teachers never really noticed me. Even if they had, it wouldn’t matter, I’d be gone by the end of the year anyway. They just kept passing me along.”

  “How long did you stay in school?” Beatrice asked.

  “I graduated high school last year.”

  Shock was written all over Beatrice’s face. “You have a high-school diploma and you can’t read or write. How?”

  “My mom helped me with my schoolwork by reading the textbooks to me and writing out my reports. I would memorize the work and copy the papers letter by letter and turn it in like everyone else. In class I’d figure out some way to get help on tests.” Gabrielle looked at the expression of disbelief on Beatrice’s face.

  “How could your teachers or classmates not know?”

  “I guess I was good at hiding it. In class I’d watch when everyone else was reading silently and would turn the page when they did. I’d scribble in my notebook when the others were taking notes and then rip them out in case anyone asked to see them after class. When we had assignments to finish in class, I’d ask someone questions, like ‘What do they mean here?’ or ‘What does this mean to you?’ Working in teams was the easiest, because I could walk around thinking out loud and leave my partner to do the reading and writing.”

  “Did you cheat?”

  “Sometimes, but only when I didn’t have a choice,” Gabrielle admitted.

  “But you did manipulate people. Like you did me when we first met. Your hand wasn’t hurt at all, was it?” Beatrice accused, her emotions fluctuating between anger and pity.

  “It’s not really manipulation, it’s more orchestration,” Helene had told her. “Getting people to help you when and how you need it. There’s nothing wrong with that, Cookie. You’re not hurting anybody.”

  “No,” Gabrielle admitted. “I hated being dishonest, but I had no other choice.”

  Beatrice sat contemplating Gabrielle’s shocking revelation. She didn’t look illiterate. But then, what does an illiterate person look like? She was far too smart and productive to be illitera
te. But not being able to read, does that make you stupid? Beatrice looked away from Gabrielle, focusing hard on the details in the small room. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the pile of paperback books stacked on the table in the corner. “I’ve heard you discuss those very books with Stephanie. How can you do that if you can’t read?”

  Gabrielle stood up, her heart pounding. Feeling sad and defeated, she walked to the dresser, bent over, and opened the bottom drawer. Gabrielle reached in and pulled out a bundle of audio cassettes. “By listening to them on tape while pretending to read.”

  “And the way you speak. Your vocabulary isn’t that of an illiterate person.”

  “You don’t have to be able to read to have a big vocabulary. You just have to listen and ask questions.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  A familiar wave of shame washed over Gabrielle. “I wanted to tell you. I needed to tell somebody, but I was too ashamed. Can you imagine what it feels like to be a high-school graduate but unable to read a little kid’s ABC book? Or to walk away from your job selling muffins just because somebody rearranged the shelves? I didn’t want you to hate me or think I was stupid, because I’m not stupid …” Gabrielle’s voice trailed off into a new onslaught of tears.

  “Sweetheart, I know you’re not stupid. I think you’re the brightest and bravest person I know. Don’t worry, you’re not alone anymore. I’ll help you. Stephanie will help you, too. I’m sure together we can teach you to read.”

  “No!” Gabrielle screamed fiercely. “Promise me you won’t say a word, not to anyone, especially not Stephanie. Beatrice, you must promise me.”

  “Honey, calm down,” Beatrice said. “This will stay between me and you, I swear. Nobody will ever know. When you’re ready, we’ll get you some help.”

  “Thank you,” Gabrielle whispered as she sank back into Beatrice’s arms. No one can ever know. Not about this, not about anything, she thought as her eyes settled on her Wizard of Oz snow globe.