“You know, Dan and I didn’t go to college together,” she said. “He was at Garland, but my parents sent me to Sweet Briar, you know. He’d drive up for any long weekend, but it was so hard. Well, you know.”
“I know it’s supposed to be hard and I’m supposed to do it anyway,” Grace said. “But I don’t think I can. Maybe because of where I went—maybe it would have been different if I’d gone to Vanderbilt or Sewanee. I just couldn’t find my . . .” She gave up. I had sex with Alls, she imagined saying. I had sex with Alls, and I married your son.
Grace had thought Mrs. Graham had gone to her closet to get a sweater, or to show Grace something she had bought, but Grace now saw that Mrs. Graham was only straightening a row of shirts on their hangers, looking into their collars instead of at Grace.
“And it was too expensive,” Grace said quietly.
Mrs. Graham turned around holding a pale green blouse. Her first name was Joanna, but Grace had never called her that, and even though she secretly thought of Mrs. Graham as her real mother, she couldn’t imagine calling her anything but Mrs. Graham.
Mrs. Graham fingered the blouse’s collar. “Don’t I know it,” she said absently. She smiled. “Honey, remember at Thanksgiving, when Dan gave you some money to give to Riley?”
Grace’s hands were under her thighs. She dug her nails into her jeans. “What money?”
“He gave you an envelope, with money inside,” she said carefully. “For Riley’s supplies.”
It had been three hundred dollars in cash, crisp fifties. Grace had meant to give it to Riley, but she hadn’t. She’d used it for his Christmas present and some other things; she could hardly remember now.
“I don’t remember,” Grace said, growing hot at her temples. “He did?”
“Yes, about three hundred dollars.” She didn’t seem to know what to say then, and neither did Grace. “I told him not to do cash, in case it got lost or something. But he didn’t want Riley to have to go to the bank, since he was working all hours for his show.” She went back to her closet and hung up the blouse.
“I didn’t open it,” Grace said, groping for time. “It’s probably still in my coat pocket.” She’d given over her last paycheck to Riley. She had no way to come up with that money until she found another job, but if she could just hold off—
“Oh, your winter coat? Downstairs?” Mrs. Graham’s shoulders collapsed in relief.
“Yes,” Grace said with false hope that quickly became real. Maybe the envelope would be there; maybe she hadn’t spent the money. She held on to this prayer as she stepped downstairs, Mrs. Graham right behind her, to check her pockets. But of course there was no envelope. There were drugstore receipts and a ChapStick, a few crumpled straw wrappers.
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Graham said. “What could have happened to it? Do you think you put the envelope somewhere? I’m sorry, honey, but three hundred dollars is a lot of money, and Dan was in such a piss that Riley never thanked him, and I wondered if—well, let’s just try to find that envelope.”
But three hundred dollars wasn’t that much money, not to the Grahams. Grace’s sudden flare of anger only made her more scared and more ashamed.
“I don’t remember taking it out,” she said. “It could have fallen out at the airport? Or I guess someone could have taken it? Oh no, I had this dry-cleaned.”
“Well,” Mrs. Graham said, biting her lip. “That’s certainly possible.”
“This is awful,” Grace said. “Let me pay you back. I’m so sorry I lost it.”
She expected Mrs. Graham to say that it was okay, that everyone lost things now and then, and let’s go downstairs and get some ice cream. That would be the Mrs. Graham–like thing.
But Riley’s mother smiled grimly and took Grace’s clammy hand in hers. “Honey, I’m saying this out of love. You know that.”
The heat shot up Grace’s neck and wrapped around her skull in a second. Mrs. Graham’s face floated before her like a too-bright light.
“It’s not the first time something like this has happened, right?”
Grace shut her eyes.
“When you took one of the little silver spoons, I—I was even a little touched. And a scarf once, and some earrings, remember?”
Mrs. Graham was talking as if Grace had stolen the spoon, the scarf, the earrings. You couldn’t steal your mother’s earrings, not if you were her daughter. Grace had just wanted to have them as a piece of—
You couldn’t steal from your own household—that was the point. Riley took his brothers’ old things and his dad’s pocket change all the time. That wasn’t stealing. That wasn’t wrong. It was family.
“But this is different,” Mrs. Graham went on. “This is another kind of thing.” She swallowed. “And we love you, and we just want to take care of you and make sure you have what you need. You need to talk about this with someone, okay?”
Grace wanted to die and she wanted her hand out of Mrs. Graham’s, so she pulled it back.
“Gracie, it’s okay. We’re going to get you some help. Maybe we should talk to your mom?”
Grace lurched forward in a silent sob.
Mrs. Graham put her arm around her. “I’m just glad it was us, instead of—you’re here with us and it’s going to be okay.” She rubbed Grace’s back. “Oh, sweetie, I didn’t mean for you to—I’m used to yelling at boys! Come here, honey. We didn’t tell Riley, okay? Is that what you’re worried about?”
? ? ?
How had they not told Riley? Curled like a bean on their bed back in their room on Orange Street, Grace pled menstrual cramps as she clutched at her stomach. That was what this misery felt like, her insides being carved out of her.
Whether she had meant to steal from the Grahams was an impossible question. Of course she hadn’t meant to steal from them—or rather, she hadn’t meant for stealing to be the right word for keeping the money. It had been something else, the answer to a split-second series of emotional calculations, not quite conscious and immediately suppressed. She had wanted to be the beloved daughter but had tunneled in as a wife. Community property applied to wives, even secret wives. What was Riley’s was hers; the money was a gift to her. But she knew that she had kept the money to feel like a daughter, not like a wife.
Riley was on one of his rare picking-up sprees, shaking the dust bunnies out of their clothes and stuffing them back into drawers. Grace’s pile grew up from her suitcase, which she still had not put away, and now it seemed too symbolic, as if her time were up and now she would have to go.
She didn’t know how she could find out what they had told him without dragging everything up to the surface.
She tried hard to imagine the scene: Mrs. Graham would have asked Riley about the money, to remind him to thank his father. Riley wouldn’t know what she was talking about. But he gave it to Gracie, she might have started. Riley would have asked if she was sure, and Mrs. Graham would have had to think then. Maybe not, she would have had to say. I’ll ask him. It’s probably buried in his desk or something.
“Sorry, what?” she asked Riley. He was holding up a pair of black tights.
“Shouldn’t you wash these?”
Mrs. Graham must have thought quickly, to say those things, to protect her. Grace had always known that Riley’s mother loved her; she had never doubted it. That was why she and Riley couldn’t tell anyone they’d married, because Mrs. Graham would be crushed to have been left out of the wedding. Her daughter’s wedding. But no, Grace was not her daughter. Mrs. Graham had made that clear. Why had she and Riley gotten married? Why hadn’t they gotten engaged? That, they could have told everyone. Marriage had seemed bigger, more romantic and risky, she guessed.
No, she realized. They’d married because marriage had seemed final, as though it would protect her, protect them.
Dr. Graham knew about the money too, of course. Oh, it was worse than if Riley knew, so much worse.