Free Once Upon a Project by Bettye Griffin Page B

marriageable age. She’d read someplace that more black women than men earned college degrees, and she knew enough about men to know that some of them didn’t take kindly to women more educated than they were.
    Elyse had spent a few minutes at the luncheon speaking with Pat’s parents, and she recognized right away the pride Moses and Cleotha Maxwell had in their only surviving child. “She’s got the best conviction record of any ADA in Chicago,” Mr. Maxwell had told Elyse.
    â€œIf she wasn’t so good at what she does, she probably would be presiding from the bench,” Mrs. Maxwell had added.
    Looking at her friend move from patron to patron, exchanging words of welcome like they were all guests in her home, Elyse wondered whether the Maxwells ever wondered if they’d made a mistake in their opposition to Pat’s romance with Ricky Suárez. Had they ever considered that Pat could have achieved the same success and still provided them with a grandchild or two?

Chapter 10
    G race took advantage of the red traffic light to run a brush through her hair. She really liked the rich sable-brown color; it beat having graying near-black tresses any day. Her hairdresser had been right when she suggested that a lighter color would be softer against her face. She might be about to turn fifty, but that didn’t mean she had to look matronly. People told her she looked better than a lot of forty-year-olds out there. She worked hard at it, too, spending thirty minutes in the gym at least three times a week, watching her diet carefully, and walking several miles on the weekends.
    She sighed as she put the brush back inside her leather shoulder bag. She felt like she’d already wasted the afternoon by attending the luncheon, and the awkwardness of coming face-to-face with Ricky for the first time since their affair had ended and meeting his gorgeous wife truly made her regret going.
    Still, it wasn’t like she had anything else to do, and Pat needed people like her to make her message to the media: that children who grew up in the projects weren’t necessarily destined to live their lives in abject poverty and squalor.
    She knew Pat had a point. Half the high school–age kids living in Dreiser today probably had no idea that Theodore Dreiser had been a popular novelist and Chicago native in the early twentieth century. She knew from that Career Day seminar Pat had dragged her to years ago at their alma mater that many of them had no ambitions in life, other than to live in a nice “crib” and drive a nice “ride.” A few did tell her they wanted to run their own businesses, but not one of them had any idea what kind of business they hoped to operate. Grace knew that merely wanting to call the shots from a corner office with a view and make a lot of money was nothing more than a pipe dream, and that ten years from now those kids would have the same dream, no better defined than it was now.
    Her thoughts returned to Ricky. His forced-looking smile and stiff hug told her he felt just as uncomfortable as she did. But at least he hadn’t been surprised to see her. Surely Pat knew he was coming, since she handled the RSVP list. But she’d said nothing to Grace. Why? Grace wondered. Could it be that Pat was still hung up on Ricky after all this time? My God, everything between them had ended more than half a lifetime ago.
    Grace had always thought that if something serious developed between her and Ricky, like she so desperately wanted, Pat would first be upset but would come around eventually. Now she wasn’t so sure.
    Of course, considering the outcome, it was a moot point. Grace had been stunned when Ricky told her why he was ending their affair—just when she thought everything was progressing beautifully. She’d never heard anything so idiotic. Did he actually feel like he was cheating on Pat after being apart more than twenty years? And what about