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Prologue

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Sometimes in the early evening when the

shadows deepened and thickened in the corners of rooms within Grandmother Hudson's mansion, I would hear soft whispering. It wasn't something I heard when I first arrived, but it was something I was hearing more and more now. The whispers sounded like voices warning me, but about what, I wondered. What?

Back in Washington, D.C., Mama had finally revealed the truth of my birth: my real mother was a rich white woman who had gotten pregnant with me in college. Her boyfriend at the time was a black man named Larry Ward, and after I was born my real mother's father had made the arrangements for me to live with Ken and Latisha Arnold. Ken had been paid well for it. I grew up thinking Beni Arnold was my younger sister and Roy Arnold was my older brother.

After Beni had been murdered by gang members and Mama had told me the truth about myself, she forced my white mother Megan Randolph to meet with us and then pleaded with her to help her get me out of the ghetto world. I thought Mama was trying to get me to live with my real family because she was worried more than ever about the drugs and the gang violence, but there was another reason, one I wouldn't learn until much later. Mama was dying from cancer and she wanted to be sure I was safe and had the opportunities she would never be able to give me.

My real mother was reluctant. She simply wanted to give Mama more money. She said it was the worst time for all this because her husband was being considered for political office. Finally, as a compromise which would still keep my tile identity a secret, my real mother arranged for me to come here and live with her widowed mother, Frances Hudson. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, it was supposed to be an act of charity: taking in a poor girl who showed academic promise. Rich people had so many charitable causes and organizations to list under they names that adding one more, fictional or otherwise, was no problem.

In the beginning I thought I wouldn't last long in this rich, rural Virginia world attending Dogwood, a private school populated mostly by wealthy kids, but not because I wasn't up to the academic challenge. I had, despite my poor school, always been a good student, a reader. And I wasn't worried about being treated badly. None of these snobby kids could stare me down or make me feel bad with their remarks and looks. I had been through far worse.

No, what worried me was my real grandmother. She was a stern elderly woman who liked to lecture and rail at her doctor, her lawyers and accountants, and especially my mother's younger sister Victoria who had taken over management of the family businesses. Grandmother Hudson and I confronted each other like two prize fighters during those early days and weeks. I refused to permit her to get away with even a single innuendo, a single nasty remark about my life with Mama, Roy, Beth and even my adoptive father Ken Arnold.

Although we had lived in the projects of Washington, D.C., Mama had never given up her high hopes for all of us. She wanted me to have an education and become something. I was no slum girl, no ghetto bad girl, and Grandmother Hudson wasn't going to be allowed to paint me into that stereotyped picture.

She realized it soon enough, and soon enough we agreed to a truce and then, after time, we even developed a warm affection for each other. One day I learned she had even included me in her will. It enraged her younger daughter Victoria who didn't find out the truth about me until I was nearly finished with my school year at Dogwood. She wanted to blackmail my mother and force her to help get me out of the will.

I suspected this was the real reason I was given the opportunity to attend a prestigious drama school in London. It was just a way to get rid of me, a sort of compromise. However, Grandmother Hudson insisted that wasn't so.

"Do you think I would ever let my daughter dictate an important decision to me?" she bellowed at me when I so much as suggested it.

"No," I said.

"You're right about that. Not as long as there is still breath in these old lungs, she won't, so don't go feeling sorry for yourself or for me," she warned. "People who accept pity have thrown in the towel. On my tombstone, I want it written that here lies a woman who never accepted pity. Understand?"

"Yes," I said, laughing at her. She muttered and fumed but kept a smile under that mask of outrage, a smile only I could see.

Now, with the school year over, I was days away from leaving for England. Mama had died. Ken was in prison where he belonged. Roy was in the army, and poor Beni was gone. I really had no one but myself, for my real mother had managed to keep intact the secret of who I was, and now it looked like she would be able to continue keeping me without a name just to maintain peace in her own precious, perfect world. Her excuse was always the same--that she had to protect her husband Grant who was trying to become a politician.

Her own children, Brody and Alison, had no idea they were my half brother and half sister. I really didn't want to be related to Alison anyway, but Brody had become too attentive and my mother was worried that he was developing a romantic attachment. Brody was a football star and an advanced-placement student. My grandmother worried about the way he took to me, too.

I suspected that was another reason she was so eager to have me go off to London. She made plans to accompany me on the initial journey, but her doctor, who had managed, with my help, to have a pacemaker implanted in her, strongly advised against her making the trip. The pacemaker wasn't quite right yet. Naturally, Grandmother Hudson threw a tantrum and vowed to defy her doctor. I had to stand up to her and tell her that I wouldn't go if she came along.

"I'm not going to be responsible for what might happen to you," I told her firmly. She could bluster and wave her hands at the air between us, and I wouldn't flinch.

"That's nonsense." She paced the room, gesticulating wildly. "And just whom do you think you're speaking to?"

"I was hoping a mature adult," I said. Her lips moved for a moment without a sound emerging. Her tongue was so eager to lash out her words.

"You know you are an infuriating young lady, don't you?" she finally managed.

"I wonder from whom I've inherited that," I replied.