“I respect myself.” Her mother tied the belt and smoothed the silk over her legs. “You’re not the morality police, Faith. You married an old man for his money. You can hardly lecture me on morality.”
In the beginning of her marriage, that was certainly true. “You can only feel secure with yourself if there’s a man in your life.” She unrolled the silk bag and spilled her diamonds into her palm. “I find my security with money. Neither of us can claim the moral high ground.”
“Money is a poor substitute for love.”
“I had both with Virgil.”
Her mother sighed and rolled her eyes.
“It was a good marriage.”
“It was a passionless, sexless marriage to a man old enough to be your grandfather.”
She moved into the big walk-in closet stuffed with clothes in varying shades of beige, white, and black. “You’ll never understand my relationship with Virgil. He gave me a great life,” she said as she punched the numbers to the safe and popped it open.
“He gave you money in exchange for five years of your life. Five years of your youth that you can never get back,” Valerie called after her, and Faith refrained from reminding Valerie that Virgil had given her money as well. Enough that she didn’t have to work. “You can’t have a great life without passion,” her mother added.
Faith swung the safe door open and pulled out one blue velvet tray filled with Tiffany and Cartier earrings. Passion didn’t buy your child shoes when the soles wore out or put food in your child’s stomach. It didn’t keep the repo man from hooking your mother’s car to his wrecker and hauling it away from your single wide while the rest of the kids in the trailer court pointed and laughed because at least they were better off than you.
Faith looked down at the glittering stones of all shapes and colors. Passion did not take away the sick feeling in your stomach that you were one paycheck away from living in an alley behind a Dumpster at the Hard Rock.
“Those don’t keep you warm at night.”
She looked at her mother standing a few feet away. At the deep lines in the corners of her green eyes and her Farrah hair, messed up by a man’s hands. Faith slept beneath a comforter filled with the down of Hungarian white geese to keep her warm at night. She didn’t need a man for that.
She placed her diamonds on the blue velvet tray. She didn’t need a man for warmth or money. Passion was overrated and never really lasted anyway. Her mother was certainly an example of that.
Faith had everything she needed. She didn’t need a man for anything. And yeah, she knew what people would say about that. That she’d used her body instead of her mind to get what she wanted.
So what? She didn’t care. All that mattered was that it all belonged to her and no one could take it away.
Chapter 10
Monday afternoon, as Faith sat in a meeting with the coach, Darby Hogue, and the scouts from the player development department, her nerves twisted her stomach into knots. A television was set up and they watched clip after clip of free agents and minor-league prospects. Even though all trades and acquisitions were put on hold until the end of the season, the player development department still worked at finding new talent, and Jules had thought it important that she attend the meeting. While the men in the room discussed the prospect on the screen, she felt as nervous as a sinner in church, wondering if Ty would breeze through the door, looking hot and cool at the same time. She wondered if any of the men in the room knew that she’d assaulted the captain of the hockey team with her lips. She was fairly certain Ty wasn’t the kind of man to kiss and tell. That he wouldn’t want something like that to get around either, but she didn’t know well enough to be certain he wouldn’t talk about her with one of the guys. Who might in turn tell other people.
Yes, he’d kissed her first, but she was the one who’d grabbed ahold with both hands and hadn’t wanted it to end. Not like that. Not until they were both naked.
“Can I get you anything, Mrs. Duffy?” the coach’s assistant asked as he popped in another tape.
A Xanax. She smiled and shook her head. “No. Thank you.” Her hands lay loosely in her lap, appearing relaxed and composed as her nerves pinged through her veins and zapped her every time someone walked past Coach Nystrom’s door, but Ty never showed and no one mentioned the unfortunate episode in San Jose.
That night, the Chinooks won their second of three against the Sharks. Faith chose to attend a benefit instead and skipped the game. She and Virgil had bought tickets to the thousand-dollar-a-plate event the previous summer. She decided to go by herself and participate in the silent auction to raise money for Doctors Without Borders.
She dressed in her black Donna Karan sheath and hung a string of opera-length pearls around her neck. When she walked into the ballroom at the Four Seasons, she spotted several women she knew from the Gloria Thornwell Society. They turned their faces as if they didn’t know her. The glittering chandeliers shined down on the Seattle elite as she grabbed a glass of Moët from a passing tray. Toward the front of the room, Landon and his wife stood in a circle of Virgil’s close friends congratulating each other for one sort of acquisition or another. She raised the champagne to her lips and her gaze slid to the members of the Seattle Symphony, playing on a raised dais. She knew a lot of these people. Now, as she moved to the table displaying the silent auction items, she caught the gazes of the few trophy wives she’d associated with for five ye
ars. In their eyes she saw pity and fear as they turned away, afraid to make eye contact with their fate.
“Hello, Faith.”
She looked across her shoulder at the wife of Bruce Parsons, Jennifer Parsons, a trophy wife only slightly older than herself.
“Hi, Jennifer. You braved the crowd, I see.”
Jennifer smiled tightly. “How are you doing?”
“A little better. I still miss Virgil.”
They talked for a few short minutes, and in the end promised phone calls that would never be placed and lunch that would never happen.