Blessing in Disguise (31 page)

Now Nola, after what seemed like an eternity, was saying with a weary sigh, “You might as well come in. I can’t afford to heat the whole neighborhood.”

Once inside, Grace looked around, surprised at the contrast between the deteriorating exterior and the pleasant tastefulness of the hallway she was standing in. Sponged blue-white walls hung with primitive Haitian prints, and what looked like an African wood carving displayed on the glass top of a starkly modern wrought-iron hall table. Covering the ceramic floor tiles was a worn but colorful Tibetan rug woven in a tiger-skin motif.

Nola, who must have noted something in her expression, commented with a wry chuckle, “Nicer than you expected, huh? Call it the spoils of war. In the high-rollin’ eighties, Marcus sold a lot of junk bonds. After he moved out, I was left with this”—she gestured around her, a chunky gold bracelet sliding from her milk-pale wrist down her dusky forearm—“and Marcus hangs on to all those child-support checks he never gets around to sending.”

“Sounds like you got the short end.” Win’s support check arrived promptly the first of every month.

“Not really. I’ve got Tasha and Dani.” For the first time, Grace saw Nola’s expression soften. “They’re worth everything. You know what I mean?”

Grace nodded, thinking of Chris.

A silence stretched between them, its discomfort partially broken when Nola announced in a flat voice, “The only coffee is what’s left over from this morning, if you don’t mind reheated.”

“I’d love a cup,” Grace said, peeling off her coat and following Nola into the small kitchen opposite the stairs.

Here was none of the entryway’s cool chic, only friendly clutter—children’s drawings stuck up on the refrigerator with magnets, beginning to curl in at the edges; boxes of cereal and a bowl of half-eaten popcorn left out on the counter; plastic placemats on the table, sticky with rings left from juice glasses.

Nola took down a couple of mugs from a row of hooks above a sink piled with dirty dishes. “I just got home, so excuse the mess. Haven’t even started dinner yet. You take sugar with that?”

“Just milk.

“Hope I’ve got some left.” Nola disappeared behind the open refrigerator door, emerging with a carton of skim milk. “We’re in luck. The girls’ll only drink whole. Say this stuff tastes like bathwater.”

“They’re right,” Grace said, laughing. She was beginning to feel comfortable here, chatting with Nola in her kitchen like they were a pair of suburban housewives.

Nola stuck her head into the refrigerator again. “I think I have some fruitcake left over from Christmas. Might even be from Christmas
before
last. ...” She chuckled.

“Did you go anywhere for Christmas?” Grace asked.

“Nope. Stayed here—my landlady, Florene, cooked this huge feast and the girls and I helped, though we probably ate more than we contributed.” Soberly, she added, “Dani ... well, she had a bit of a tough time. Marcus promised to come by, but as usual ...” She shrugged. “It’s sort of like trying to believe in Santa Claus even when you know he doesn’t exist. Tasha’s older—she’s seen enough of Marcus to know not to expect much.”

“Chris’s father—he’s good that way.”

“Still, it’s tough, isn’t it?” Nola observed dryly. “Even the best of them, they’re not around when it counts. We have to wear two hats at once, and most of the time we’re not even having a good hair day.”

Grace smiled. “Sometimes being a mother feels like jumping through flaming hoops. You make it through one, and there’s another one waiting.” She thought of Chris’s promise to her that he wouldn’t skip any more school, but this, she knew, wasn’t going to solve his real problem—the reason, whatever it was, for his rebelliousness.

“Don’t I know it.” Nola rolled her eyes.

Just then, a pair of little girls came running into the kitchen, one of them slightly fairer than the other, with her mother’s pale-green eyes and wary expression. She stopped short when she saw Grace, and mumbled a shy “Hi.”

“Hi there, yourself,” Grace replied, giving her warmest smile. “What’s your name?”

“My name’s Dani,” the smaller girl blurted out before her sister could speak. “I’m
six.”

“This is Tasha,” Nola said, her arm moving protectively to her older daughter’s shoulders. “She’s ten going on forty.” Addressing her daughters, Nola said, “Don’t tell me you’re hungry already, after all that popcorn Florene made you?”

“Pizza!” crowed Dani, hopping up and down. “I want pizza!”

“We had pizza last night, and twice the week before. You eat any more of that stuff, you’re gonna have pepperoni for brains.”

“Who are
you?”
Tasha turned her wide eyes on Grace, addressing her with a directness that cut right through to the heart of things. What exactly
was
she to Nola? Not a friend, though she’d have liked to be. But not an enemy, either, she hoped.

“I’m ...” she started to say.

“A lady who’s got no time for nosy questions,” Nola cut in, giving Tasha an affectionate swat on the behind. She handed them each an oatmeal cookie from a big jar on the counter in the shape of a pig. “Now scoot, so we can get our business taken care of.”

Seemingly satisfied, the girls raced off, leaving Nola and Grace alone. Nola placed a steaming mug in front of Grace at the small, round breakfast table, then sat down across from her. She’d taken off her jacket, revealing the cool ivory silk blouse underneath. Her hair was smoothed back in a bun, but the little wisps corkscrewing down around her chin and the nape of her long neck made her seem vulnerable somehow.

Grace took a deep breath and jumped in. “You said we needed to talk.”

“Is this off the record?” Nola wanted to know.

Grace met her firm gaze. “I won’t lie to you. The truth is, I
do
want this book to be as factual as I can make it. And anything you can tell me about your father or mine will help.”

“I hear you,” Nola said, “but, before I spill my guts, I want your word that nothing other than you and what you walked in with leaves this kitchen.”

Grace hesitated. Damn. She wanted so much
more,
but it was the only way to get Nola to talk ...

Slowly, Grace nodded. “Okay. You’ve got it.”

“I read it,” Nola told her, subtly shifting gears. “The manuscript you gave me. It was ... honest.”

“Is that why you decided to help me?”

“I haven’t said anything about
helping
you, have I?” Nola’s eyes narrowed.

“Then why
did
you call?”

Nola sighed and looked away, at a framed sampler on the wall below a shelf crammed with cookbooks. A picture of a house and a dog, with the alphabet carefully cross-stitched underneath. At the bottom, it read,
Emily Morris, Age 9, 1858.

“I don’t know exactly,” she said softly, running her long fingers absently down her throat and catching hold of the faux-pearl choker draped over the prominent knobs of her collarbone. “I wish I did. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start. ...”

“How about by telling me why you spent months ducking my calls?” She held up her hand. “Yes, I know what you told me at lunch—that you didn’t want to get dragged into any kind of spotlight. But, Nola, I can’t help wondering if there aren’t other things, too, that are holding you back.”

Nola remained silent, her expression growing even more clenched. Then, with what seemed like a great effort of will on her part, it became flat again, like a piece of crumpled paper that’s been smoothed out.

I could ask her to leave right now,
Nola thought,
and she’d never know.

How could she convey to Grace the agonizing that had brought her to the decision? How could a woman who had never had to pretend she was someone other than who she appeared to be possibly appreciate Nola’s position? And, now, too, everything was complicated by her library design, which the partners at her firm had entered in the competition. If Grace or her mother were to get wind of her involvement ...

Staring at Grace, whose heart-shaped face looked so expectant, Nola felt a tightening in her throat.

I’m not doing this for you,
she wanted to tell her.
I’m doing if for ME.

And, in a way, wasn’t it for Mama, too?

The truth shall make you free.
Words from the Bible, from which Mama had read to her every night before bed. Surely Mama would have understood this need of hers, this burning inside, to tell someone, especially
this
someone, after all these years. ...

Nola took a deep breath.
Okay, girl, you asked for it. ...

“What I said about your book—about it being honest? It was more than just that,” she began in a soft voice, her gaze directed at a point beyond Grace’s shoulder. “It was so
real.
You showed how he really was. Always helping people, not thinking of himself—like the way he helped Mama and me. But there’s a big piece of his story that’s missing ...”

Grace waited, her heart like a fist thumping against her rib cage.

“... something he never told you, or anyone. ...”

“What?”
Grace urged in a hoarse whisper, though she suddenly had a terrible feeling she didn’t want to know.

“I’m your sister.”

Silence settled over them.

Gradually, Grace became aware of the giggling laughter of girls at play down the hall. She glanced over at the clock on the stove. Only fifteen minutes since she’d arrived. How could that be? She felt as if an eternity had passed, as if history books had been written about what had gone on in the world since she’d walked in.

“But your father ...” Grace started to say.

“Him?
The man I called ‘Dad,’ he wasn’t my father.” Nola spoke sharply, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “Oh, he had his suspicions—he just didn’t know enough to pin the blame on anyone in particular. Lucky for Eugene Truscott, or it might’ve been
his
life that ended that day.”

“I don’t believe it. It just is not possible.” Grace felt a numbness spreading through her, as if Nola had opened a window to let in a freezing blast. “All these years. Someone ... surely there had to be somebody ... We would have
known.”

“They were very, very careful about it,” Nola went on. “And remember, we’re talking early sixties—no matter how liberal people thought Eugene Truscott was, it wouldn’t have crossed their minds: him with a black woman.”

Grace covered her face with her hands. “No ...
no.”
At the same time, she was remembering that long-ago day, Margaret calling in a frenzy, begging Daddy to come. The act of a secretary ... or a lover?

“You see? You don’t want to believe it, either.” Nola’s voice was hard. “But he loved her, you know. Loved
us.
It wasn’t just ... a convenient arrangement.”

Love? The word hit Grace like a blow. But what about Mother—hadn’t Daddy loved
her?

It was like how she’d felt after finding Win with Nancy, the floor seeming to open beneath her, dropping her into a black, spinning chasm.

“She got pregnant while Dad was at sea.” Nola’s crisp voice, oddly, seemed to anchor her. “That’s what started to push Dad over the edge. But thank God he didn’t know the whole story.”

“What about your family?” Grace asked. “Aunts, uncles, cousins—do you mean to tell me that
no one
knew?”

Nola smiled then, with a sadness that brought tears to Grace’s eyes. “Mama’s family all lived down around Montgomery, so it was easy in a way. It was just us. I remember, when Dad had been away for maybe six months or more, I must have been around seven—I asked Mama why Uncle Gene couldn’t spend
every
night with us. She hugged me tight and told me the whole story, made me swear never to tell.” She took a deep breath, and turned her anguished gaze on Grace. “That’s why I got so prickly when you first started calling. With you poking around, I was scared that sooner or later you’d dig out the truth.” She took a deep breath. “Then I met you ... and the lines started getting blurred. For one thing, I kept wanting to picture you as this mercenary bitch ... and there you were.”

“Just your plain old garden-variety bitch.” Grace laughed brittlely. Sensation was flooding back into her limbs, making her charged, jittery.

“Yeah, something like that,” Nola said with a wry smile.

“If it were my mother here instead of me, she’d be calling you a liar.”

“Is that what you think I am?”

“I don’t know
what
to think.”

“I know it must be a shock for you. But me? It feels so good—finally saying it out loud.” Nola tipped her head back, and let out a huge breath. “God, you have no
idea.”

“But there’s still so much I don’t know.” Grace scrambled to sort out her madly tumbling thoughts.
“Everything.
From the beginning.”

This was not going to be a talk-show reunion of long-lost sisters, Grace thought. Sally Jesse Raphael was not going to be handing out Kleenexes while they sobbed in each other’s arms.

Nola leaned forward, pushing aside coffee mugs and plates, and the fruitcake they hadn’t touched. She grabbed Grace’s hands, her fingers hard and cool. “You believe me, don’t you? I want to hear it from you before I show you—” She stopped, biting her lip.

“Show me what?”

“Just say it. That you
know
I’m not making all this up.”

Grace forced herself to meet Nola’s eyes, no longer the green of tide pools, but black and bottomless as the ocean itself. She felt herself shivering, almost convulsively. Even when she clenched her teeth and hugged herself she couldn’t make the shivering stop.

Daddy and Margaret. How? How could a lie so monumental have remained a secret? Wouldn’t Mother have known ... or at least
suspected?
Mother had made it a point to keep herself informed about everything Daddy did; nothing escaped her, not unless it was something she didn’t want to—

Grace felt something snap into place inside her, like pieces of a puzzle being joined. Mother? This was
just
the kind of thing she’d have buried ... buried so deep that even
she
could eventually make herself believe it had never been there in the first place.