The Costanzo Baby Secret Read Online Free PDF

trying to make myself invisible, which isn’t easy when you’re taller than everyone else, and painfully awkward to boot. I suppose that’s when I became fixated on long hair. I used to hide behind it all the time.”
    She took another sip of champagne and stared at the empty sea, for the second time in one day harking back to that awful, unhappy era. “I wanted to be different. Be braver, more outgoing, more interesting and lively. More like those other girls who were so sure of themselves and so at ease in their environment. But I was me. Ordinary, dull. Academically acceptable, but socially and athletically inept.”
    “When did all that change?”
    “How do you know it did?”
    “Because the person you describe isn’t the woman I know.”
    Not on the outside, perhaps, and usually not on the inside either. Until someone poked too cruelly at those hidden insecurities and made them bleed. Then she was exactly that girl all over again. Not good enough. A nobody masquerading as somebody.
    “Maeve,” he said, watching her closely, “what happened to make you see yourself in a different light?’
    She remembered as if it had occurred just last week. “The day in my senior year that the headmistress called me up on stage during morning assembly and ordered the entire student body to look at Maeve Montgomery and take notice. Believing I was about to be castigated for having broken some unwritten rule of decorum, and to hide the fact that I was shaking inside, I stood very erect and stared out at that sea of faces without blinking.”
    “And?”
    “And what she said was, ‘When members of the general public meet girls from this academy walking down the street or waiting at the bus stop, this is what I expect them to see. Someone who doesn’t feel the need to raise her voice to draw attention to herself, but who behaves with quiet dignity. Someone proud to wear our uniform, with her blouse tucked in at the waist, her shoes polished and her hair neatly arranged.’”
    Maeve paused and shot Dario a wry glance. “In case you’re wondering, by then I’d progressed to the point that I wore my hair in a French braid, instead of letting it hang in my face.”
    “I see. So the girl who thought she was an outsider turned out to fit in very well, after all.”
    “I suppose I did, in a way. I’m not sure if I was really the paragon of virtue the headmistress made me out to be, or if she understood that I needed a morale boost and that was her way of giving it to me, but after that morning the other seniors regarded me with a sort of surprised respect, and those in the lower grades with something approaching awe.”
    “What matters, cara, is how did you see yourself?”
    “Differently,” she admitted. That night she’d looked in themirror, something she normally avoided, and discovered not a flat-chested, gangly teenager forever tripping over her own feet, but a long-legged stranger with soft curves, straight teeth and clear blue eyes.
    Not that she said as much to Dario, of course. She’d have sounded too conceited. Instead she explained, “I realized it was time to get over myself. I vowed I’d never again be ashamed of who I was, but would face the world with courage, and honor the ideals my parents had instilled in me. In other words, to value honesty and loyalty and decency.”
    “People don’t necessarily abide by their promises though, do they?”
    Taken aback by the sudden and inexplicably bitter note underlying his remark, she said, “I can’t speak for other people, Dario, but I can tell you that I’ve always tried hard to stick to mine.”
    He stared her at her for a second or two, his beautiful face so immobile it might have been carved from granite. When he spoke, his voice was as distant as the cold stars littering the sky. “If you say so, my dear. It’s such a fine night that I ordered dinner served out here. I hope you don’t mind.”
    “Not at all,” she answered, “but I do mind your