Stolen Grace (43 page)

Tommy punched the air as if he were at a soccer match. “Well thanks to that we’ve been able to trace the money’s whereabouts.”

“Oh my God! It’s still
there
?”

“Not completely.”

Sylvia felt a great talon clawing at her insides. Her money lost. The beckoning bills: the credit card debts that had mounted during the last few weeks: air fares, food, taxi rides, hotels.

Tommy laughed. “Don’t look so terrified, darling. Obviously it’s not
all
there. Not all two hundred and forty-seven thousand. She already squandered about thirty grand of it, but still, quite a bonus when we thought the whole lot was lost for good. It’s been frozen now. Frozen so Ruth can’t get her Ruthless hands on it again. It’s right here in a bank in Managua in Knicker Agua,” Tommy joked, “where knickerless girls shouldn’t climb trees. Ruth can’t make off with it now.”

“And what about Ruth herself?”

“The money part and Pidgey O Dollars was the good news,” Melinda warned with a grimace.

“And the bad?” Sylvia asked, feeling her hackles rise.

Tommy shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody has the foggiest idea where Ruth is. She’s simply disappeared into thin air.”

Sara

D
ubai was hotter than Sara expected. Still, the air conditioning in this mansion, with its sealed windows—and the gated, topiary gardens surrounding it—was making her feel claustrophobic. She was like an exotic bird in a gilded cage. How much more of this way of life she could stand, she wasn’t sure.

The shopping bags and boxes from their spree were still strewn about the bedroom: Chanel, Prada, Christian Dior, Valentino. Where she was going to wear all these garments, she had no idea. Every time they went out she was expected to wear that goddamn burka. How these poor women had put up with this shit for centuries, she couldn’t fathom.
Geez
, she thought,
you’d think they would have staged a revolution by now.

Sara sat up, and sinking into the luxurious, silk satin cushions, leaned her head against the headboard. She sucked in a long breath and surveyed the bedroom. Everything shone and sparkled. The drapes were pink, the Persian carpet, the paintings on the walls—all glimmered pink. Or gold. She’d have to do something about the tacky decor. He was still snoring. He was like some sort of pig being fattened up for a feast. That’s right, not pig, Heaven forbid, not here in Muslim land. She tried to think back to all her encounters over the years with different men.
None
had been so distasteful as last night: finally, she gave in and went down on him. She needed to show good will. Enthusiasm even. Yes, she’d pressed her nose to his naked crotch and nestled her mouth around his walnut—which was topped by shelves of multiple, sweaty bellies—sweat trapped between the hairy, overflowing ridges of his flesh. Never again would she stoop so low. She sniggered at her pun and then bit her lip in disgust. Uh, oh, he was waking up.

Mahmoud opened his dark eyes, turned his head, and smiled at her. The smile was full of devotion. “Good morning, my darling one,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it. “Even in my sleep I missed you. Thank you for last night, my precious.”

Last night.
Ugh
! She knew what he was referring to but said, “Yesterday was fun, thank
you
,” and she squeezed his clammy, jeweled hand. She smiled brightly. “I feel very spoiled. You shouldn’t have spent so much money on me, Mahmoud.”

“A morning’s work, that’s all. I earn money when I sleep, you know that.”

She tittered. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a morning’s work?”

“Depends on the day. Depends with whom I’m playing ball. Which country, which president. It’s usually a lot more than that.” He laughed.

Sara thought of Tommy and Sylvia. Poor things. That sum of money was their
life
. To her now, it was not even a few hours’ shopping. She was glad that she’d at least left them their nest egg. Maybe she’d even pay them back someday for what she’d spent—send them some cash, anonymously.

The whole thing had been such a mess. What she’d been thinking, she had no idea, although Tommy was temptingly hot. Still, thank God she was out of it—a narrow escape, for sure. She’d got sloppy—should have been more careful. But she was safe now. Protected. Twenty-four-seven armed guards, a fleet of private jets, helicopters, and a man who would die for her.

“Anyway, I feel spoiled,” she told Mahmoud, running her fingers through some strands of his oily black hair.

“I want my future wife to have whatever she wants, whatever her heart desires,” he said to her warmly.

“Do you now.”

He adjusted the position of his heavy body between the purple, silken sheets and put his arms around his fiancée. “She needed me to pick her up in Rio, so I sent a jet. She wants a cinema in this house, so she shall have a cinema. She wants a chateau in France—her wish is my command. She can have whatever she wants,
whenever
she wants. I promised you that twenty years ago, Sara, but you never believed me. Now, do you believe me, my angel?”

“I did believe you but—”

“I know, I know, you weren’t in love with me then.”

“I was too young,” Sara explained, “I wasn’t ready to commit.”

“But now you are.”

“Yes,” she answered, holding up her left hand and inspecting the gleam of her enormous engagement ring. The diamond was blindingly sparkly. She thought of Grace and her Dorothy shoes, also sparkly. Sweet kid, but boy, what a nightmare it had been playing mom. Too much goddamn work! That fantasy was over, for sure. Lucky Mahmoud had been waiting in the wings—
phew
what a close shave. He’d been patiently waiting all these years like an eager spaniel, and it was desperation that had finally caught her in his web of love. Sara had no choice. She had to go with the flow.

“Finally, I got my princess,” he said, stroking her cheek.

She grinned, her smile wide and fixed. “I guess you did, honey. Finally, you wound up with me—the object you’ve been chasing, Lord knows why, for twenty years.”

He laughed. “I don’t deserve you, Sara.”

Oh yes, you do.
She gazed at him, and for a split-second her smile turned to stone, before it set itself into a dazzling grin. “I’m exactly what you deserve, baby. Just you wait and see.”

I began this novel several years ago and it has been through many different drafts. I would like to thank a few people who helped shape it.

Firstly, Michele Paige Holmes. Thank you for going through my manuscript with a fine toothcomb and suggesting things that I had missed myself, and for questioning my characters. Because of you,
Stolen Grace
evolved into a much better book.

To my beta readers, Nelle l’Amour, Cindy Meyer, Gloria Herrera and Kim Pinard Newsome, who gave me invaluable feedback and mended a few holes in the net. Cheryl Van Horne and Paula Swisher, and Loca Crz for being there with your eagle eyes. Precision Editing for doing a great job. Paul, my formatter at BBebooks, as always, thank you. And to my very early readers who championed me and offered their advice, Betty Kramer, Claire Owen and Lisa Morocco.

And finally, to all my loyal readers. Thank you. Without you, none of this would be possible.

STOLEN GRACE

A novel by
ARIANNE RICHMONDE

(Spoilers ahead—make sure you have read the book before you read this interview!)

What inspired you to write
Stolen Grace
?

I think we often think we know a person when, in fact, we don’t. How many of us trust someone who then lets us down? I started asking myself, “What if?” and came up with Ruth. I don’t have a child but it was easy to imagine myself as a desperate parent. It was something I wanted to explore. This is every parent’s nightmare—something which all of us fear. The What-if question got my imagination ticking.

It is very unusual to read an adult novel written from a five-year-old’s point of view. And yet, without that, the book would have been completely different. At what point in your creative process did you decide to tell the story from Grace’s perspective?

Right from the beginning, I knew that if the novel wasn’t told, at least partly in Grace’s voice, then I would only have half a story. The only way this book would work, I decided, was for the reader to experience things through Grace’s eyes on a very personal level. I did have an editor warn me that nobody wants to hear a five-year-old’s point of view in an adult novel. I disagreed. Readers tell me that Grace is their favorite character so I am glad I followed my instinct.

How did you manage to get so thoroughly into the mindset of such a young child?

I have a great memory, especially long-term. So many of the things that Grace felt and said came directly from my feelings and memories as a child. There is no filter at that small age and kids tend to be honest about their thoughts, until they are conditioned otherwise. I have vivid memories from childhood that seem as if they happened yesterday. The emotions never leave you, both happy and sad. I incorporated all that into Grace’s character.

You chose to tell the story from three different points of view, omitting Ruth until the epilogue. Why?

I wanted the reader to feel as if they were in my protagonists’ shoes, experience their journey, and ask the question, Why, Why, Why? How does this person’s mind work? Why did she do something like this? If I had told the book from Ruth’s perspective, it would have been her story. But it was about a family being shattered and the adversity and heartbreak thrown at them, and how each one dealt with a horrific situation. And ultimately how they survived it.

There are a few very strong themes running through the novel: religion, racism and the effects of war and poverty. The book was packed with controversial elements.

The same editor who read the very first draft of
Stolen Grace
(who doubted Grace’s POV) thought I was being too ambitious—that I should keep it a “light thriller without too much depth” and not introduce these themes, but to me they were an integral part of the story. The battle between good and bad is never black and white. Many religious people believe they are doing the right thing, and that because they believe in God so wholeheartedly, they have some kind of indemnity, because in the end, God is on their side. I also wanted to show how religion can unwittingly close people off—Ruth does not believe animals have souls, for instance. And she talks about Hell, yet somehow she feels she is immune, herself. Children are often taught to become hardened to the world on many levels. Indoctrinated with certain beliefs. Grace is Ruth’s antithesis, partly because of her sweet nature, and partly because of how her parents have raised her. Grace believes teddy bears have souls, too. I wanted to give a glimpse into the kind of future Grace would have had with Ruth, and the sort of person Grace may have turned out to be if Ruth had ended up being her mother.

As far as race is concerned, Grace being adopted, and originally from India, made the story more poignant to me. I wanted to show that blood is not necessarily thicker than water and again, how there is no black and white, per se, but many nuanced colors and shades in between. Jacqueline talks about this; that racism takes many guises.

And as for war and the atrocities it brings—well, that’s another evil in our world that often starts out as a “noble cause” and escalates into something horrific.

In the beginning of the book, the Garland family are struggling with bills and the recession, but as we find out by the end of the novel, their problems turn out to be nothing in the grand scale of things when compared to the filth and poverty of the trash dumps where so many millions of people are trying to survive in third-world countries. Sylvia feels blessed, not only to be reunited with her family, but for all the small luxuries she has taken for granted throughout her life.

Your descriptions of Nicaragua and South America are so vivid. Did you live there?

No. I visited Peru a couple of years ago and I have backpacked on a budget in many third-world countries, especially South East Asia, so I have seen so much of what is in the book, firsthand.

Padre Marco seems larger than life. Almost a caricature. What inspired you to write a character like him?

Sadly, people like him are all too real. There are a terrifying number of pedophiles globally, especially in positions of authority. I have read about people like Padre Marco, so although he may seem larger than life, he really isn’t.

Although the novel is dramatic, it also has a thread of black humor running through it.

Yes, I hope my readers feel free to have a good laugh now and then. Some of the situations are so outrageously awful, that they are funny at the same time. I’m an author who, above all, wants to entertain my readers. I want them to be able to disconnect from their hard day at work and to be able to delve into another world with abandon.

1.) In the beginning of the book Sylvia and Tommy’s marriage is going through a very rough patch. Who do you think is responsible for this and do you believe that their marriage would have survived had it not been for what happened to Grace? By the end of the book, do you feel they have resolved their problems?

2.) Have you ever been in a position where you have trusted a friend with a member of your family and that person has let you down or deceived you in some way? In Sylvia’s case, the decision was catastrophic. Did you identify with Sylvia when she left Grace with Ruth to see her father, or is it something you never would have done under any circumstance?

3.) At what point in the novel did you suspect that Ruth was unhinged?