“The coaches demanded everyone behave nicely toward each other, but when the coaches weren’t looking... The rest of them were all so close,” she said. “They shared hotel rooms to save costs and I stayed alone. My mother would rent big town houses that came with domestic help and everyone thought because of that, I had it so easy, why wouldn’t I do well? It came up in every interview and article—as if all we had to do was write a check and first place was mine. All I wanted, the whole time I was growing up, was to be like everyone else.”

“Nothing nastier than jealous teenage girls,” he said. He gave her cheek a little stroke.

“If I cried or pouted they called me poor little rich girl.”

“And yet there were millions of girls all over the country who watched you skate with envy and adoration.”

“But I never met them. The happiest day of my life wasn’t winning the gold—it was handing it to my mother and walking away.”

“Where did you go?”

“To Mamie and Ross. They were a couple without children who had worked for my mother since she was a girl—over thirty years. He was a driver and she was a housekeeper. They were always so good to me and when they left my mother’s employment they opened a flower shop in Portland. They trained me in the business.”

“Is there no other family?”

“Remember I told you about a cousin who wrote me asking for a loan?” He nodded. “That wasn’t a cousin and it wasn’t a loan. That’s a half brother, Barry, who is twenty years older than me. My father and his first wife divorced years and years before my mother knew him. He supported his ex-wife and Barry until Barry was twenty-one. He’s forty-eight now and has been asking for money his whole life, but I don’t remember even three times he visited. My dad gave him money sometimes—my parents fought about it. When my father died, he didn’t leave Barry anything. I don’t know where he is. Last I heard from him, when I told him there was no money, he was in Texas.”

Troy immediately smelled an ill wind. “Maybe Barry is still butt sore about that,” he said, tapping the envelope in her hand.

She handed it to him. “I never had a relationship of any kind with him—he was grown when I was born. No, this is just like the note I remember from years ago. The only one I saw before I was snatched.”

“Could he know exactly what was in it?” Troy asked, opening it up and looking at the typed sentence. I dream of you every night. B. “It’s signed ‘B.’”

She shook her head. “That’s Bruno. Bruno Feldman. The man who held me in a supply closet until the police came. He’s been in a psychiatric hospital and I’m told he’s out and with family somewhere in Florida. Barry doesn’t know that’s what the notes looked like. No one knows—just me, my mother, Mikhail...”

“Mikhail?”

“My coach. One of my coaches. We keep in touch a little bit. Of course he was there at the time. Things got pretty crazy because the first notes came while my father was sick, then he snatched me after my father had died. So much happened at once.”

“One of your coaches?”

She nodded. “There was a team and several different coaches and instructors and trainers. Endurance training, ballet, ice work. For me there was also yoga, sports therapy, and then the tutors and homework.”

“How many hours a day was that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Every one of them, I think. It started early, ended late. That’s not even counting fittings for costumes, choreography, music...and did I mention homework? How about the number of nights I went to bed with bags of ice wrapped to my ass or calves?”

He smiled at her. “You earned those medals, Gracie. It was a lot to give up. But are you happy now?”

“I was,” she said, her eyes glistening again. “Until that came.” She sighed. “What kind of jollies does a person get out of just scaring me to death?”

He shook his head. “It’s not normal, you know. It’s sick and twisted. And from what you tell me, not entirely his fault.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I feel like I should run and hide.”

“That’s because you’re scared and upset. But it’s going to be all right. You’ll have to think things through a little, ask yourself some questions...” He got up and opened the little fridge. He didn’t find what he wanted, so he looked in the small wine rack on top and pulled out a bottle of Merlot. He opened it and poured a small glass for her. “Have a little of this and take a few deep breaths. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“I really don’t expect you to—”

“You don’t expect me to help protect the girl I love?” he asked.

She stared at him. “You love me?”

“Of course I do, Gracie. Couldn’t you tell?”

“You never said anything about love...”

“I was waiting for you to trust me, to be honest with me. Look, I understand how you could want to escape that old life, as difficult as—”

“No, Troy, you don’t! I don’t want to be that person anymore! That friendless person so many people talked about and hated! Do you have any idea how painful it is to be the constant object of everyone’s jealousy? As if I had something that belonged to them? As if my mother’s money could buy anything—well, it can’t buy safety or a family or love!”

“And so many people admired you, also,” he said. “But, no matter what name you decide to use, I’m always going to think of you as Gracie. Everyone loves you. You’re not an overworked, abused, overexposed teenage girl anymore. And the first thing you have to let go of is all the secrecy. Your friends can’t watch out for you if they don’t know anything. When you let the cat out of the bag, people are going to wonder why in the world you’d keep an accomplishment like that a secret.”

“Because they don’t understand how hard it is to be in that life!”

“You’re not in it anymore, honey.” He laughed a little and grabbed the last cold beer out of her fridge. “I have to admit, I had trouble understanding why you’d hide that. Gracie, I get that a lot of it was hard, worse than hard, but it’s also an achievement. No one’s going to hate you for it.”

She sipped her wine. “We don’t know that for sure.”

“Yes, I know it. First thing we’re going to do is get you a couple of things for protection. I think we can find ’em online real easy and get them sent overnight. Maybe some pepper spray. How about a stun gun? A Taser.”

“I have to admit, there are a few people I’d like to zap...”

“That’s my girl. Only bad guys, okay, baby? Then we’re going over to see Seth. He needs to know there’s been this contact. I don’t know if you’d call it a threat, exactly, but it’s creepy and he’s the law around here. Besides that’s a good time for you to unload all this on your best friend. You know you can trust Iris to accept you as exactly who you are, no kidding.”

“I guess,” she said.

Ten

Iris’s house was the scene of quiet domesticity. It almost brought tears to Grace’s eyes, she was that envious. It wasn’t quite seven and apparently they were just getting around to dinner. Seth had changed out of his deputy’s uniform into a pair of jeans and a sweater. Since Troy had called and asked if he and Grace could stop by to have a word with them, Iris had added two plates to their dinner table.