One Wish (Thunder Point #7)(43)

Troy shook his head and went upstairs. He looked around her loft thoroughly, but nothing seemed out of place. He was back down in less than two minutes. “It’s okay.”

“Did you look everywhere?”

He nodded. “Even in the kitchen trash and the refrigerator. Come on.”

She clutched an envelope in her hand. When they were sitting across from each other in her tiny kitchen she started to explain. “My real name is—”

“I know,” he said.

“You know?”

“Sorry. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I can’t fake surprise. You’re all over the f*cking internet, Gracie. I don’t know how you felt, how you feel, but I know who you are. And that you won it all and walked away.”

“Do you know about the rumors? That I accused a coach of inappropriate sexual behavior with a minor? That I was sued? That there were stalkers? That everyone hated me?”

He shrugged. “I got most of the facts. I don’t know how anyone could hate you. Most of all, I don’t know why it’s a secret.”

So she started at the beginning, born into figure skating, the daughter of a champion and coach, the bullying from jealous girls, pranks aimed at hurting her skating, the exhausting training and travel and no friends.

“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.”