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Authors: Terra Little

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BOOK: Running From Mercy
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“You hardly talk to the press at all.”
“Exactly, and there's a reason for that.”
“Which is?” He looked at her steadily.
“I don't have anything to say to them. My life is my own, and I'd just as soon not have the world know everything there is to know. Just because I sing a song and you like it enough to buy it, does that mean you have the right to know everything about me?”
“I wouldn't say so, no.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and processed what he'd confirmed so far. The affair with Jose Marillo was true, and he knew he could pull together at least a chapter's worth of information on that subject alone. Marillo was a hit maker, savvy and powerful, and he recalled the man's vehement denials of an affair with Pam, saying that they were just good friends and industry associates. Miles hadn't believed it for a minute, and he was more than a little satisfied that his instincts were on the mark. Marillo and Pam had worked together on three of her albums over a six-year period, and Miles was willing to bet their affair had lasted just as long.
“I read somewhere that your favorite dessert is banana pudding,” he teased her. Something in the set of her shoulders warned him not to ask any more questions.
“That's probably one of the few things you read about me that's actually true. Willie makes the best banana pudding this side of the Mason Dixon.”
“That's what I know. You want to split some with me?”
“No, but you can order your own,” Pam said, pushing her plate away and smiling at him. “Some things I won't share, and banana pudding is one of them.”
SEVEN
Pam parted ways with Miles outside the diner and set off on foot toward Holmes Funeral Home. She hadn't seen or talked to Jasper since the night before Paris's funeral, and she had a sudden inspiration to visit him. A few times over the years she had called him. Other times she'd written him short notes and mailed them or sent him a postcard from wherever she was vacationing at the time. He'd never written back, but she hadn't needed him to. It was enough that he knew she was thinking of him, which was usually the extent of her notes.
Doing okay. Thinking of you. Love, Pam.
A blast of cool air greeted her as she walked into the home and she lifted her hair off the back of her neck to cool the skin there as she made her way to his office. She found him sitting behind his desk, feet propped up on a corner and a newspaper spread open in front of his face. A smile curved her lips.
“Don't you have some work to do, old man?”
The paper lowered slowly and his eyebrows shot up.
“Just got done tussling with Wilma Thomas. Even in death that woman won't cooperate. Got her in the back. You want to take a look at her?”
“I don't think so. She'd probably rise from the dead just to point a shaky finger at me and call me a whore.” She left the doorway and dropped into a seat on the couch against the wall. “She finally keeled over, huh?”
“The good Lord couldn't put off taking her home any longer and not have a good excuse,” Jasper said dryly. “Got some hogshead cheese and some crackers in the refrigerator upstairs.”
“And that's where it's going to stay, too. Nobody eats that shit but you. A beer would go down good though.”
He dropped his feet to the floor and came to a sitting position as he folded the paper. “Got that in the refrigerator right next door,” he said and left the office. A few minutes later, he returned with two bottles and handed Pam one on his way back to his desk. “Saw you racing around town with Nikki earlier in the week.”
“Uhhmm. She needs the distraction. I do too, come to think of it.”
“And what about Chad? How's he doing?”
“Okay, I guess. I've been avoiding going over there to see for myself, but I have to go today. After I leave here, as a matter of fact.” She tipped the bottle up and took a long drink. “Can't put it off any longer.”
“Been what, two weeks?”
“Since Paris died, yeah. Chad wants me to help him go through her things.” She looked at the floor, then brought her eyes back to Jasper's face. “I don't want to.” She set her beer on the floor by her feet and fished around in her bag for her cigarettes, lit one. “Packing up her stuff makes everything real.”
“It's real whether you pack up her stuff or not. How come you ain't been over to the house before today?” Bushy brows rose toward the ceiling as he leveled a serious look at her.
“I go by and pick up Nikki.” She caught his look and didn't pretend not to know what it meant. “Hell, Jasper, you know why.”
Jasper knew what a lot of people didn't know, and his question was loaded with the knowledge. For Pam, it wasn't as simple as going to the house where her sister had once lived, though that was part of it. Her reasons for keeping her distance had more to do with what the house represented and who was still there.
“Seems to me the time for running is long gone, Pam. You gotta go over there and help your sister's husband pack her stuff up, whether you want to or not.” Jasper swallowed the last of his beer and set the bottle on his desk with a click. “You might as well go through all that other shit and pack it up too, while you at it.”
“Can I come here and hide out if things get ugly?”
“Hell, you used to come here and do everything else, I don't see why not.” The startled expression on her face had him throwing his head back and cackling with laughter before he could catch himself.
 
“Where's Nikki?”
“She went over to a friend's house.” Chad closed the door and locked it. “She didn't want to be here. I'm supposed to call her after we're done.”
Except for a dim light in the kitchen, the house was dark. Pam's eyes darted around nervously, looking for some place to land other than on his face. He was still dressed for work in khakis and a navy blazer. Underneath it an oxford cloth shirt was unbuttoned far enough to reveal the neckline of his undershirt. He looked tired.
“Long day?”
“It's about to get longer. You sure you can do this?” He took his glasses off and swiped the back of his hand across the bridge of his nose.
“You don't think it's too soon?”
“Is there a timetable?”
“Isn't there?” she snapped, meeting his eyes, then looking away again.
He took a long time looking at her, silently willing her eyes to stop skipping around and stay on his and slightly angered that she wouldn't let them. When his fingers itched to reach out and touch her, he smoothed them over his head instead. “I didn't buy the handbook for this kind of thing, Pam. But somehow I don't think maintaining a shrine will help either.”
“What if I can't do it?”
“Just do what you can do, okay?”
She followed him up the stairs on stiff legs and crossed the threshold into the first bedroom on the left, the one Chad gestured to wearily as he continued down the hallway. From the doorway, she watched his back until it disappeared from sight and then felt along the wall for the light switch. Both nightstand lamps flickered on and the room came alive for her searching eyes.
Pink. Nearly everything was some shade of pink. The drapes and duvet were a deep rose, the chaise and walls a soft pink. The furniture was white washed oak, contemporary in style and functional looking. There was a stack of paperback books on one nightstand and a cordless phone on the other. On the dresser, Paris's jewelry box was open and various pieces of jewelry spilled out, as if she had been rambling through it just minutes ago trying to decide between a silver pendant and a gold brooch. Pam went over and lifted a slender gold chain from the box. She held it up to the light and noticed Chad leaning against the doorjamb. He had changed into jeans and a polo shirt.
“You haven't changed a bit.”
“Gained a little weight here and there. I could say the same about you.”
“It's different with me. You've seen me on television or wherever.” She put the necklace back where she'd found it and looked around the room. “I didn't know what to expect with you. Didn't know if you'd gotten fat or gone bald or what. You weren't in many of the pictures I got, the videos either.”
“I wish I could describe for you what I felt the first time I saw you on television or heard your voice on the radio.” He came away from the doorjamb and moved deeper into the room. “Nikki would be having a fit, jumping up and down and screaming at the top of her lungs and I'd be sitting there like a block of ice, stunned. I always thawed out long enough to tell her to be quiet, so I could hear, though.”
“She still has the tape I gave her from the time I took her in the studio with me.”
Nikki was seven and bursting with energy, asking every five minutes to
do
something. As if walking around the zoo for hours on end until Pam's feet were throbbing was nothing. After ten o'clock had come and gone and Nikki still wasn't asleep, Pam had carted her off to the recording studio with her; Snoopy house-shoes, ballerina pajamas, and all. They had spent an hour in the soundproof booth, singing Stevie Wonder's “I Just Called To Say I Love You” before Nikki finally conked out on a couch and Pam could get down to business.
“She played it every night for a month. I thought I saw Stevie coming out of her room one night, it got so bad,” Chad joked. They laughed together and some of the tension eased away. “Paris was so proud of you.”
“I was proud of her,” Pam said. “Out of the two of us, she was the one who stuck it out and made a life for herself.”
“You have a good life.”
“Not the one I wanted.”
That gave Chad pause. He didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything and Pam didn't seem inclined to elaborate. There was so much she wanted to say and so much he wanted to ask, but time and distance divided them, kept their eyes away from each other's. Finally, he suggested they start the process of sorting through Paris's clothing by emptying the closet and drawers and making stacks on the bed. Pam slid the closet door open and stepped inside, grateful for the distraction of having something purposeful to do, even if doing it might kill her before she was done.
Paris's tendency toward obsessive neatness and order was evident in the structure of the closet; the arrangement of the clothes hanging on the rack. Pants, then skirts, then jackets, and then blouses. Shoes lined up neatly on the closet floor by pairs, sneakers in the far left corner and dress shoes on the right. Loafers and casual flats front and center.
Pam brought an armful of pants over to the bed and glanced at Chad, who was doing the same with a stack of shirts from a drawer, and turned to retrace her steps. At the one-hour mark, Chad reached over and turned on the bedside radio to keep them company.
Pam caught herself humming along and singing under her breath and stopped abruptly. She shot a look at Chad and found him leaning against the armoire, watching her.
“What?”
“What kind of life did you want?”
Pam dropped the shoes she was carrying on the bed and wiped her palms on the seat of her pants. “I don't know, the same as everybody else, I guess. I figured I'd have a couple of kids, a husband, and a pain-in-the-ass mother-in-law. The whole deal.”
“You never met a man in California you wanted to marry and have kids with?”
They looked at each other. “I didn't go there looking for a man, Chad.”
“So you went there to get away from one?”
“Is that what you thought?”
“What else was I supposed to think? Paris couldn't or wouldn't tell me why you left and you never answered any of my letters. I came to the only logical conclusion there was. You no longer wanted what we had and you left to get away from me.”
“I had . . . there were . . .” She struggled to grab hold to the right word and came up empty. “Things I needed to straighten out.”
“Things,” he said slowly, looking confused.
“Yes, things,” she snapped anxiously. “Things that had nothing to do with you. Why would I need to get away from you when what we had was one of the best things going on in my life?”
“Why couldn't we talk about whatever those things were and still find a way to be together, Pam?”
“By the time I was ready to talk to you, you were married to Paris. There was nothing to say after that.”
“What are these things you're talking about? Tell me . . .”
She put up her hands as if the action had the power to physically stop his words and sighed disgustedly. “Come on, Chad. Could we just . . . can we just . . . do this and get it over with?”
“Just tell me this.” He came away from the armoire and towered over her. “Did you ever really love me like you said you did? Was I the only one who felt that way, or were you there too?”
“What's the point of answering that question now?”
“The point,” he hissed, “is that I'll finally know if the last fifteen years was worth what I gave up to have them.”
She took her eyes from his and stared at his chest, suddenly mute.
She watched him walk out of the room, leaving her surrounded by pink, and cursed under her breath. She told herself to let him go.
Yet . . . “Chad . . .”
She didn't know which room he'd disappeared into. There were four other doors off the upstairs hallway and they were all closed. She opened the first door and saw that it was a bathroom. The second door led to Nikki's room. A jumbled full-sized bed with clothes strewn across the mattress greeted her and she closed the door on the mess. The guest bedroom was quiet as a tomb and obviously hadn't been used in quite some time. He wasn't there.
Pam turned the last doorknob and stepped into the room hesitantly. The color scheme was masculine, the bed huge and neatly made. Cologne bottles were lined up on the bureau, and a wallet and spare change were tossed carelessly next to them. Chad sat on the bed, watching her take it all in.
“What is this?” Then it began to make sense. A completely pink room, containing all of Paris's things and none of Chad's. She hadn't stopped to wonder where his clothes were while she was milling through Paris's. Hadn't stopped to question the lack of male presence in the space down the hall. Shocked, she looked at Chad as her mouth worked to form words that wouldn't come.
BOOK: Running From Mercy
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