Danielle Steel - Malice

“I'll write to you,” she promised, but Sally shook her head. She knew better. She had seen a lot of friends come and go. When you left, it was over, until next time.

“Don't,” Luana said brutally. “We don't want to hear from you. And you don't want to know us. Forget us. Go have a life. Grace, put all this behind you. Start fresh and new … go out there and don't ever look back. You don't have to take any of this with you.”

“You're my friends,” she said, with tears in her eyes, but Luana shook her head again.

“No, we're not, girl. We're ghosts. All we are is memories. Take us out once in a while, and then be glad you're not here. And don't you come back again, ya hear!” She wagged a finger at her, and Grace laughed through her tears. Some of what Luana had said was good advice, but she couldn't just leave them there, and forget them. Or was that what you had to do? Did she have to leave them all behind in order to move forward? She wished she could have asked Molly. “Now get lost!” Luana had given her a little shove forward, and a few minutes later she was going through the gate in a van on the way to the bus station in town. They were standing at the fence waving at her, and she turned and waved from the window until she couldn't see them any longer.

Chapter 6

The bus trip from Dwight to Chicago took just under two hours. They had given her a hundred dollars cash when she left the correctional center. And David had set up a small checking account for her before he moved west. It had five thousand dollars in it, and the rest was in a savings account she had vowed not to touch.

In Chicago, she had no idea where to stay, or where to go. She had to tell the authorities where she was going and they had given her the name of a parole officer in Chicago. She had to check in with him within two days. She had his name and address and phone number. Louis Marquez. And one of the girls at Dwight had told her where to go for a cheap hotel.

The bus station in Chicago was on Randolph and Dearborn. The hotels they'd told her about were only a few blocks away from it. But when she saw the kinds of people on the street by the hotels, she hated to go inside them. There were prostitutes hanging around, people renting rooms by the hour, and there were even two cockroaches on the desk in one hotel when she rang the bell for the desk clerk.

“Day, night, or hour?” he asked, shooing the cockroaches aside. Even Dwight hadn't been as bad as that. It was a lot cleaner.

“Do you have prices by the week?”

“Sure. Sixty-five bucks a week,” he said without batting an eye, and it sounded expensive to her, but she didn't know where else to try. She took a single room with private bath on the fourth floor for seven days, and then she went out to find a restaurant to get something to eat. Two bums stopped her and asked her for change, and a hooker on the corner looked her over, wondering what a kid like her was doing in this neighborhood. Littie did they know that a “kid like her” had just been at Dwight. And no matter how seedy the neighborhood was, she was glad to be free. It meant everything to walk the streets again, to look up at the sky, to walk into a restaurant, a store, to buy a newspaper, a magazine, to ride a bus. She even took a tour of Chicago that night, and was stunned by how beautiful it was. And feeling extravagant, she took a cab back to her hotel.

The prostitutes were still there, and the johns, but she paid no attention to them. She just took her key, and went upstairs. She locked her door, and read the papers she'd bought, looking for employment agencies. And the next day, with the newspaper in hand, she hit the streets and started looking.

She went to three agencies, and they wanted to know how much experience she had, where she'd worked before, where she'd been. She told them she was from Watseka, had graduated from junior college there, and had taken secretarial courses in shorthand and typing. She admitted that she had no experience at all, hence no references, and they told her that they couldn't help her find work as a secretary without them. Maybe as a receptionist, or as a waitress, or salesgirl. At twenty with no experience and no references, she didn't have much to offer and they weren't embarrassed to say so.

“Have you thought of modeling?” they asked her in the second agency. And just to be nice, the woman jotted down two names. “They're modeling agencies. Maybe you should talk to them. You've got the look they want.” She smiled at Grace, and promised to call her at the hotel if any jobs opened up that didn't require experience, but she didn't hold out much hope to her.

Grace went to see her probation officer after that, and just seeing him was like a trip back to Dwight, or worse. It was incredibly depressing, and this time she didn't have Luana and Sally to protect her.

Louis Marquez was a small, greasy man, with beady litde eyes, a severely receding hairline, and a mustache. And when he saw Grace walk in, he stopped what he was doing and looked at her in amazement. He had never seen anyone who looked like that in his office. Most of his time was spent with drug addicts, and prostitutes, and the occasional dealer. It was rare for him to handle juveniles, and rarer still to see someone with charges as major as hers, who looked like Grace, and seemed as young and wholesome.

She had bought herself a couple of skirts by then, a dark blue dress to go job-hunting in, and a black suit with a pink satin collar.

She was wearing the dark blue dress when she visited him, because she'd been out looking for work all day, and her feet were killing her from the high heels she was wearing.

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking puzzled, but intrigued. He was sure that she had come to the wrong office. But he was glad she had. He was happy for the distraction.

“Mr. Marquez?”

“Yes?” He gazed hungrily at her, unable to believe his good fortune. And his eyes grew wide, as she reached into her handbag and pulled out the familiar forms for probation. He glanced at them summarily, and then stared at her, unable to believe what he was reading. “You were at Dwight?” She nodded, looking calm. “That's a pretty heavy place,” he looked really startled. “How did you manage that for two years?”

“Very quietly.” She smiled at him. She looked very wise for her years. In fact, looking at her now in the dark blue dress, it was hard to believe she was only twenty. She looked more like twenty-five. And then he looked even more surprised when he read the file notes on her conviction.

“Voluntary manslaughter, eh? You have a fight with your boyfriend?”

She didn't like the way he asked her that, but she answered him very coolly. “No. My father.”

“I see.” He was enjoying this. “You must be no one to mess with.” She didn't answer him, and he was taking her measure with his beady little eyes. He was wondering just exactly how much he could get away with. “You have a boyfriend now?”

She wasn't sure what to say, or why he was asking. “I have friends.” She was thinking of Luana and Sally. They were her only friends in the world now. And of course David, far away in California. She still felt Molly's loss terribly. They were all her only friends. And she didn't want him to think she had no one.

“You have family here?”

But this time she shook her head. “No, I don't.”

“Where are you living?” He had the right to ask her those questions, and she knew that. She told him the name of the hotel, and he nodded and jotted it down. “Not much of a neighborhood for a girl like you. Plenty of hookers. Maybe you noticed.” And then with an evil glint in his eye, “If you get busted, you're back to Dwight for another two years. I wouldn't get any ideas about picking up some extra money.” She wanted to slap him, but prison had taught her not to react, and to be patient. She said nothing. “Are you looking for work?”