Running From Mercy

by Terra Little

  “Nikki . . . please. It’s not what you think. There were things . . .”

  “Things like what? Look at you, you can’t even look me in my face when you lie to me. You’re pitiful, Pam. I feel sick just looking at you. And you know what else? My mom was ten times the woman you are. She loved me even if you didn’t.”

  Pam swallowed the rage Nikki’s words called forth and took a breath for patience. “You don’t know the whole story, Nikki. I wasn’t well. For a long time . . . I was sick.”

  “Whatever, Pam,” Nikki snapped.

  “No, it’s not whatever. It’s the truth. Just like it’s the truth that I gave birth to you and I loved you enough to do what I had to do to keep you safe. I knew Paris would take care of you until I could come for you, but . . .”

  “You never came back!” Nikki skidded across the room and scooped up the diary from the floor. She advanced on Pam, holding the book out and flipping through the pages. “She wrote about it right here, how you were supposed to come back, but you never did! Be honest for once, Aunt Pam! Tell the truth. You didn’t want me. Just say it!”

  “I will not say that,” Pam hissed, jumping to her feet. She slapped the diary out of Nikki’s hands and watched it fly across the room. She wrestled with control and finally claimed it. Calm now, she said, “It’s not the truth.”

  “I think that’s enough.” Chad stepped between Pam and Nikki like a referee and sent Nate a meaningful look. “We need to calm down and discuss this rationally.”

  Nate came away from the wall where he was leaning and reluctantly ventured into the fray. He had been paying close attention to the scene, content to let it play out however it would and thinking that it was long overdue. Instead of heeding Chad’s call for assistance with coming between the two women, he wanted nothing more than to drag Chad to safety, so they could have it out. One or the both of them might come away bloodied and scarred, but they would both be better for it. He only wished Paris were there to accept her part in the chaos that was unfolding.

  “Nikki.” Nate touched Nikki’s arm softly and motioned for her to come away. As he did so he shot Pam a veiled look, one that she intercepted so beautifully he could’ve kissed her.

  “I carried you in my belly for nine months, Nikki,” Pam informed her daughter. The shock had lessened, then moved aside completely to make room for the anger she’d buried years ago. “I was in labor with you for fourteen long hours and mine was the first face you saw when you finally decided to grace us with your presence. I named you Angela, for your grandmother and I nursed you at my breasts for the first six weeks of your life. I loved you so strong and so hard that I cried for weeks after you were gone. I woke up in the middle of the night, hearing you crying for me. I thought I would die from missing you. But I was sick and I wanted you safe, so I sent you back here with Paris. She was supposed to take care of you while I got well, while I got my head on straight. She was supposed to be ready when I came back for you. She wasn’t supposed to take what I had, what I loved and needed, from me. She wasn’t supposed to do that, Nikki.”

  “You should’ve come back,” Nikki bit out from between clenched teeth.

  “You’re right.” Pam glanced around for her purse, saw it on the far end of the sofa and reached for it. She slipped it over her shoulder and looked at Nikki. “You’re absolutely right. I should’ve come back. I should’ve come back and fought for what was mine, but I didn’t know how to do that, what with the man I was in love with married to Paris and you thinking that she was your mother. That train left me standing at the station, honey, and it was too late for me to hop on. I told you before that I share with the people I love and I shared you and Chad with Paris because I loved her and I figured that if she would go to the extremes she went to, to have you, she must’ve wanted you awfully bad. How could I fight against a mind that diabolical?”

  “Don’t talk about my mom like that,” Nikki snapped. “She was better than you any day.”

  “A better actress, anyway.” Pam moved away from them and headed for the door. She extended a parting hand toward Nate and gasped in shock when Nikki reached out to slap it down.

  “Get out,” Nikki said. “And don’t come back.”

  Pam’s hand flew through the air before she thought about what she was doing. The back of her hand met Nikki’s cheek with a loud crack and sent the girl stumbling sideways. Nate caught her and then swung her away when she would’ve charged toward Pam with her claws bared.

  “I hate you, you bitch!” Nikki was livid. She wrestled against Nate’s hold with a ferocity that neither Pam or Chad had known she possessed. Her feet kicked at the air, arms flailed wildly. “Get out, get out, get out, get out!”

  The slap shocked Chad out of his stupefied trance. But rather than go to his daughter, he went to Pam. “We need to talk,” he whispered heatedly.

  “Talk to Nikki, Chad. She needs you right now.” She pulled at his wrists, trying to loosen the hands he’d clamped around her face.

  “What about what I need?”

  “What do you need, Chad?” She was anxious to be off and away, shifting from one foot to the other impatiently.

  “I need you to tell me what the hell happened, Pam. Finally put me out of my misery and tell me what happened.”

  “Get your hands off of her!” Nikki screamed. “Don’t touch that lying bitch!”

  Chad lost it. “Nikki, shut up!” His voice boomed through the room and Nikki’s mouth dropped open. Nate pinned her against the wall by her arms and she struggled against his iron hold uselessly.

  “Nothing happened, Chad. And then everything happened. Please . . . just . . . I need to go.”

  Chad released her slowly, searching her eyes for answers and finding none. He stepped away from her and let his hands fall to his sides. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry.” She left him standing there and went to the door. Before pulling it open, she pressed her forehead to the wood and let her eyes slide closed. Nikki was damn near hysterical and the sound of her rage cut through Pam like knives through butter, threatening to break her. She debated returning to the living room and offering the only explanation she had to offer, but everything inside her rejected the idea. The thought of revisiting the past dampened her armpits and caused sweat to soak her scalp. Not even Nikki’s fury could make her turn around. Pam’s fear was much stronger.

  She pulled the door open and swooned. Locked gazes with the man standing on the other side of the storm door and opened her mouth to speak, then she gave up the fight and crumbled to the floor like a sack of bricks. Hearing the noise, both Chad and Nate raced to the door and came up short. Chad looked from Pam’s still body to Jasper’s worried face and sighed wearily. Then he bent to scoop Pam from the floor and carried her back into the living room.

  “Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on around here?” Nikki came toward him and he stopped her with a look.

  Nate ushered Jasper inside the house and motioned for him to go on into the living room. He closed the door soundlessly, turned the lock and walked up behind Jasper. “We’re having a good old time here at the Greene house, Jasper,” he drawled close to the man’s ear. “As you can see, Nikki’s out of sorts and Pam’s out cold. She’s not much help to us now, so maybe you could help us out in her stead?”

  Pam was sprawled on the sofa and Jasper stood over her, looking down into her face. He glanced over his shoulder at Nate distractedly. “Excuse me?”

  Chad looked up from his perch beside Pam’s head. “Family business, Jasper.”

  “Oh but Jasper is family,” Nate said. “That being the case, why don’t you take a look over here at your granddaughter and while you’re at it, explain to her why her mother left Mercy eighteen years ago. I think it would really mean a lot.”

  “I don’t like your tone, boy.”

  “And I don’t like you, so that makes us just about even. Start talking.”

  “Nate, what is this?” Chad was c
onfused. He recalled Pam’s words when she had first arrived. Something about Moira and then David, who was really Miles, and then something about Jasper. Realization dawned slowly and with it came shock. He took a seat on the sofa, in the narrow space Pam wasn’t occupying and stared at Jasper. “I’m starting to think Pam has the right idea. Is everybody in this fucking town crazy?”

  “I’m going to my room,” Nikki announced on her way out of the room.

  “I don’t think so,” Nate told her. “First, you’re going to the kitchen to wet a towel with cold water and bring it back to me. And then you’re going to sit down and listen.” She hesitated a second too long and his patience dissolved. “Do it!”

  “Do you know something, Jasper?” Chad asked. Pam has his forehead, he thought, and his mouth. How could I have missed that? Nikki came back with the towel and he laid it across Pam’s forehead.

  Jasper hadn’t come here to get into the mess from years ago. He really hadn’t. Moira had called and begged him to find Pamela, to make sure she was safe. She was sobbing and screaming into the phone and Jasper could hardly understand a word she was saying. Finally, Miles had taken the phone from her and explained to him what Moira was having such a hard time explaining.

  “Moira and I were talking, Mr. Holmes,” Miles said and Moira could be heard screaming frantically in the background. “Pam came in and we didn’t hear her. She knows that . . . well, that you and Moira . . .” He took a deep breath. “Moira would like for you to find Pam and see that she’s okay. She was rather upset when she left here earlier.”

  “I see,” Jasper had replied and then hung up the phone.

  But he didn’t see at all. He didn’t see how, in the space of a few days, his life had been turned upside down. He didn’t see how he could’ve thought, all those years ago, that he and Moira would never be found out. And he didn’t see how he could’ve gone along with everything that happened in the first place. He’d buried one child, never having told her who he was and that he loved her, and now Pam would probably never speak to him again. When she left this time there wouldn’t be any cards and short notes to tell him that she was thinking of him. She would lock him out of her life forever. He’d lost her all over again, just when he was beginning to believe that she had come back to him.

  He had come hoping to catch her before she disappeared and praying she gave him a chance to explain. To Chad, he said, “You remember the day I came home and caught you and Pam messing around?” There was an empty chair nearby and he sank into it gratefully.

  “I do.”

  “She ran off embarrassed, the way women do, but you, you came and faced me like a man.” Chad grinned despite himself and Jasper allowed himself a brief chuckle. “I don’t mean to say that I didn’t want to take your head off, because I did. But you faced me. Couldn’t do nothing but respect you for that, even if your fly was standing open and your shirt was on backwards.”

  “Oh God,” Nikki groaned from across the room. Nate quelled anything else she might’ve said with a look that told her she was skating on thin ice.

  Jasper glanced at his granddaughter and cleared his throat. “Anyway, I knew you two was planning on getting married and I could see that you was in love, so I was happy. Threw me for a loop when she ran off and then when Paris came back you married her instead. I wasn’t so happy about that. Looked to me like you was messing around with both my girls.”

  “Nikki is Pam’s daughter, Jasper,” Chad supplied lest there be any confusion. “I know this looks screwed up to hell and back and that’s because it is, but I don’t want to get into that right now. I’d rather hear what you have to say, if you don’t mind. And if you could say it before Pam comes to and starts talking about things again, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  “I would too,” Nikki chirped sarcastically. “This ought to be good.”

  Nate did a double take and glared at her, letting his eyes speak to her. She snapped her mouth shut and fell into mutinous silence. He had no idea why she felt the need to test his limits the way she was, but he was on the verge of taking off his belt and wearing her ass out. He hadn’t had to spank her since she was seven years old, but looking at her, he was thinking that now might be the time to offer her a refresher course.

  Jasper took his eyes to Pam’s face and left them there. He sat back in his chair and propped his elbow on the arm, covered his mouth with tense fingers. “She didn’t want nobody to know what happened to her here and she made me promise I wouldn’t tell a soul. Course I told Moira anyway, but nobody else. She wouldn’t even let me call the police or take her to the hospital. We fought about that something terrible, but you know how she could be.” His eyes skipped up to Chad’s briefly, then over to Nate’s. “You do too, I think.” Nate was the first to look away from the knowledge in Jasper’s eyes.

  “The police . . . the hospital . . . ?” Chad’s voice trailed off as he began to understand. He dropped his head in his hands. “Damn . . . what the . . . what are you saying?”

  “He hurt her bad. Caught her walking back to the home after she got off work and grabbed her. She said he choked her until she blacked out and when she came to he had her tied up someplace. It was dark and she couldn’t see where she was. She couldn’t see who he was and we never found out, but wasn’t no question about what he did to her. She left work on a Thursday evening and she showed up on my doorstep that Friday night,” Jasper sobbed. “That’s how long that bastard kept her, doing things to her before he let her go.

  “She wouldn’t let me do nothing for her,” he pleaded with Chad to understand. “She told me if I called the police she would run off and never come back and I didn’t want her to do that. She took so many baths and scrubbed herself so hard, she made herself bleed. And I couldn’t do nothing for her.”

  “I came home from school and I was looking for her,” Chad said, remembering. “She was supposed to skip out on school and come up to the university to be with me, like she always did on Fridays, but she didn’t show up. I was jealous because I knew Nate was supposed to be coming home from school that weekend and I thought she blew me off to be with him.” He scooted around on the sofa and looked down into her face. “She let me think that’s what she did and we argued about it. I thought she didn’t want to make love with me because she was angry with me. God.”

  “She was already pregnant with Nikki when it happened, Chad,” Nate put in. “About eight weeks, if I recall.”

  “You knew?” Chad was stunned. He gaped at Nate for long seconds. “You knew that some bastard had put his hands on my woman and you didn’t tell me?”

  “She wouldn’t let me tell you, Chad. Hell, we fought about it, too. She wanted to forget it happened. Told me she’d kill herself if I told you. If you’d seen what she was like back then you would’ve believed her, too. Trust me. I had to call Nathaniel and make him come and help me with Pam,” Jasper confided softly. “She was going crazy, screaming and crying, threatening to hurt herself and I couldn’t stand to watch it anymore. Nathaniel, he’s like a brother to her, and I knew he could get through to her. You, you wasn’t nothing like a brother to her and she didn’t want you to see what that bastard did to her. She thought she was ruined.”

  “Somewhere in this town a rapist is running loose and nobody knows who he is?”

  Three heads turned in Nikki’s direction. “Somebody hurt her like that and got away with it?”

  “She couldn’t say who it was, Nikki.” Nate’s tone was gentle as he reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly. “In her mind it was the mailman or the man at the grocery store or her third period teacher, any man she looked at. Not knowing is what made her leave Mercy. Knowing he was possibly still here is what kept her away.”

  “But, why didn’t she take me with her? Why, Uncle Nate?”

  “She said she was sick and she was. Do you know what clinical depression is, Nikki?” She covered her face and exploded into tears. Nate brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. He’d been
by Pam’s side as much as he could be during that time and he could attest to the fact that Nikki’s tears weren’t wasted. “The two years she spent in therapy saved her life. You had to be here with Paris so she could heal. You didn’t know Pam when she was younger, but you can ask your dad and he’ll tell you that she was a hundred times more alive than she is even today. She was something else and that’s the truth.”

  “She was,” Chad seconded. A sad smile curved his lips. “I took one look at her and decided I couldn’t stand her. Then I took a breath and realized that I wanted her like I’d never wanted anything in my life. She drove me crazy with her smart mouth and those switching hips. I couldn’t think straight when she was around.”

  “He broke her . . . whoever he was, he broke her,” Jasper hissed angrily.

  Nate rolled to his feet, just as angry. “I don’t know about anybody else, but I need a drink.” Unable to listen to any more, he escaped to the kitchen without a backward glance.

  “Mom wasn’t like Aunt Pam,” Nikki caught her father’s eyes and said.

  “No baby, she wasn’t.”

  “Then why did you marry her?”

  “Because you were someone else I realized I wanted like I never wanted anything in my life.”

  In the kitchen, Nate tossed back a shot of cognac and grit his teeth as the liquid burned a path down his throat. He looked at the ceiling. “All right, Paris. If your scheming ass is in heaven, start working some miracles, would you?” He slammed the glass down on the counter and went back into the living room with a purpose. He didn’t stop walking until he was standing by the sofa, looking down at Pam’s inert form. “All right, sleeping beauty, it’s time for you to wake the hell up.” He dropped down on his haunches and eased Pam into a sitting position, held her up with one hand and used the other to slap at her face. “Come on, P. Snap out of it. Open those big eyes and look at me, baby. Come on.”