Blessing in Disguise Read Online Free PDF Page A

mystified. “I didn’t know he made anything else.”
    Jack winked. “The best-kept secret in Chelsea—he keeps a limited supply in back. You just have to know to ask.”
    Grace stared at him. How was it that Jack—from Park, way up on the East Side, who published first-rate books out of a landmark building on Fifth Avenue—knew more about the back rooms of greasy Eighth Avenue pizza parlors than she did?
    I can’t even do takeout right, she thought.
    Grace caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall opposite the kitchen counter wearing the ruffled apron she’d hastily thrown on just before Jack arrived. She began to laugh. This is ridiculous, she thought. This isn’t me. What is going on here?
    But she knew. Oh my, yes, she knew exactly what she was doing.
    Instead of catching that new play Lila had an extra ticket for, you’re running around in circles, hoping to impress the hell out of some guy, show him what a great wife you’d make.
    Not some guy, Jack. Jack Gold, who loved her at three in the morning, hunched over in front of her computer screen, wearing her oldest terry robe with Wheat Thins crumbs caught in its folds.
    And after she’d won the Pulitzer for Bridge over Troubled Waters, and felt that if one more person phoned supposedly to congratulate her and then tried to sell her something or offer her some kind of deal she’d lose what was left of her shell-shocked mind, who but Jack had materialized on her doorstep with a bottle of chilled Moët and two tickets to Bermuda?
    Now, watching Jack unearth a Pyrex dish from a cupboard, into which he began deftly transferring the lasagne from three aluminum-foil containers, she thought, I could be happy with this man.
    “Have I told you lately that I love you?” she asked.
    “Not for at least eight hours. I was beginning to feel deprived.”
    Expertly, as if he did this for a living, he sprinkled extra cheese over the top and popped the lasagne into the oven. While it was heating, he came over and wrapped his arms around her, nearly engulfing her with the sheer solidness of him—like a tree that appears tallest when you’re standing directly underneath it, looking straight up. Her head resting against his collarbone, she caught the smell of his sweat and felt the dampness of his shirt—he must have run all the way to Cesare’s and back. A deep tenderness welled up in her.
    “How did it go today?” he asked cautiously.
    “You mean, in between phone calls from reporters? All I can say is, thank heaven for answering machines.”
    “A couple of days ago you were wishing they’d never been invented.”
    “That was before I got through to Nola.”
    “You talked to her?” Jack’s eyes widened.
    “This afternoon. I would have told you sooner if you hadn’t gone flying out the door practically the minute you got here, but, yes—would you believe it?—Nola Emory actually picked up what must have been my sixteenth call.” Grace sighed. “She was so impersonal. Jack. Like I’d dialed the wrong number. She said she had nothing more to say about her father’s suicide than what had been in the newspapers. Suicide. Jack, that’s not what happened.”
    “What did you expect her to say?”
    “The truth. That it was an accident. Jack, she was there, and so was I. We saw them struggle. The gun ...” She shut her eyes, feeling a sharp pain behind her forehead. All those years ago. Daddy—Margaret, too—had suppressed the truth for the sake of his political career. And hadn’t Mother, after Grace had sobbed out the whole story to her, made sure she kept silent, too? Still, it wouldn’t let go of her. Maybe that was the reason she’d finally gotten up the courage to put it all down on paper, to wrest those rattling bones out of the closet and into the light. “My father was simply protecting Margaret. What I want to know now is, who does Nola think she’s protecting?”
    “Herself probably. Look at what’s happened already—the press is