Running From Mercy

by Terra Little

  “But you still want her now?”

  “But I still want her now.”

  “Did you ever love Mom?” She watched his face closely, trying to read his mind. That was another reason she was angry, though she would never admit it to him. The idea that he had never loved her mom. No kid wanted to think that, no matter how weird the circumstances were.

  “She was one of my best friends, so yes, I did love her, but in a very different way. Don’t get me wrong,” he put up a hand, “I’m still confused by what she did but even that doesn’t make me want to take back the love I felt for her. I have some great memories of the times we spent together when we were kids.”

  The doorbell rang again and she looked in the direction of the sound. Goosebumps rose on her arms and she got the same feeling in her stomach that she always got when the gun finally went off, signaling that it was okay for her to take off running and leave her opponents in the dust. The decision to open the door rushed at her and she trembled from the force of it. But first, there was something else she wanted to know.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Nikki?” At last count, the doorbell had rang seven distinct times. He worked to keep impatience out of his voice.

  “What about Uncle Nate?”

  “What about him?”

  “Does it bother you that he and Pam are so close? They kiss a lot.”

  “They grew up together,” was all he said. It had not escaped his attention that Nikki now referred to Pam as simply Pam, without any particular familial classification. He thought of it as a step, but he had no idea in which direction. “Have you decided what you want to do about the door?”

  Chad watched his daughter shift around a few seconds longer before she disappeared from the doorway. He heard her footfalls on the stairs and held his breath until he picked up on the sound of locks twisting and the door creaking open. Their voices were low and he couldn’t hear what they were saying to one another, but he wasn’t really trying to overhear. At this point, their words were for each other’s ears only. He’d have his time with Pam soon enough.

  He dragged a hand down his face, sucked in a deep breath and thought, What about Nate? He was almost ashamed to admit that as he read Paris’s diary, he’d looked for references to Pam and Nate, entries that might’ve given him answers to a few of the questions he’d pondered over the years. Nate had always been his source for information about Pam. Where she was, what she was doing and who she was seeing, if anyone, at the time. Over the years, he had casually volunteered the information to Chad, expertly slipping in tidbits here and there during the course of a normal conversation, knowing that Chad would want to know, but that he would never come right out and ask.

  He’d always known that Nate and Pam had remained in close contact. There were photos of Pam in the photo albums downstairs in the living room that Nate had taken with all that expensive photography equipment he never left home without. Candid shots, posed shots, ones of her in her home, and a few in exotic looking locales. And it never occurred to Chad until after Nate was long gone and he was sitting up in the middle of the night with images of the photos stampeding across his mind, that Nate would’ve been wherever Pam was at the times they were taken.

  He remembered one photo in particular, perhaps because it had snagged his attention and held it exclusively for a long time after he’d seen it. It was a head and shoulders shot of Pam, asleep with her lips slightly parted and her face partially hidden in the depths of a fluffy pillow, her shoulders bare. He’d held the photo in his hands for long seconds, staring at it. Then he’d stared at Nate for just as long, while he bustled around with his cell phone clamped to his ear, dictating the particulars of his upcoming itinerary to his publicist and oblivious to Chad’s intense scrutiny. Chad didn’t think he was meant to have seen the photo, since Nate hadn’t given it to him as part of the selection he had originally shown him. In fact he knew he wasn’t. He’d come across it on his own, while looking for something completely unrelated and by accident. But he’d found it and he had pondered.

  He and Paris had been married four years, with him in the middle of his second affair and her regularly seeing Ben, when he first began to wonder about Pam and Nate. But all he’d ever done was wonder. He had no claims on Pam and he’d had relationships with other women, so he wasn’t really in a position to hurl accusations and demand answers, particularly in light of his marriage to Pam’s sister. When he reminded himself of that fact, most of the wondering ceased and the inevitability of his life had come into sharp focus.

  Chad accepted that he would probably never know if Nate and Pam had crossed the line. He knew them both well enough to know that neither of them would ever speak of it, if they had. And it was for the best that he didn’t know because he thought of Nate as the brother he’d never had and he simply thought of Pam all the time. Truth be told, he really didn’t want to know. He avoided digging too deeply for fear of uncovering something he was better off not knowing.

  What he wanted was for Pam to come to him and say the things he needed to hear her say. That she was ready for him, ready for what he wanted to give her and to have with her. Ready to pick up where they had left off and get it right this time. He stayed where he was, pretending to read over the papers in his lap and waited to see if the prayers he’d been whispering under his breath for the past eighteen years had finally been answered.

  “I like your shirt.” Nikki stepped back from the door to make room for Pam to come inside the house. Her eyes traveled over the silky material, admiring the way the bright colors swirled together and crossed her eyes.

  “You can’t have it,” Pam told her. That was coming next, she knew.

  “I wasn’t going to ask for it.”

  “Oh. Well, what were you going to ask then? There has to be something you want to know.”

  They stared at each other, neither of them willing to be the first to look away. Nikki’s eyes filled with tears she tried to blink away. “I want to know . . .” she began, then stopped to swallow the lump in her throat and take a deep breath. She couldn’t talk around it. “I mean, I know why you left, but I want to know if you really wanted me?”

  “Nikki,” Pam sighed heavily. “I always wanted you. Always. There’s never been a day that I didn’t want you. It sounds stupid now, but that’s part of the reason I stayed away, because I didn’t want to suddenly show up and confuse you. I didn’t want you to think that, at first I didn’t want you and then I suddenly decided that I did.” She moved closer to Nikki and reached out to smooth away a tear with the tip of her finger. “The other reason I stayed away is because it killed me to see you and hold you and smell you, and know that I couldn’t have you. I died a little every time I had to hear you call someone else Mom because I knew I’d done it to myself.”

  “You were sick,” Nikki whispered.

  “I was stupid and weak. Too weak to come back here and fight for you . . . and your dad.”

  “It was that good between you two?”

  Pam’s eyes slid closed on a low moan. Her arms crossed over her chest and her hands wrapped around her shoulders and squeezed. She tried to put her memories into words. “It was like the first rain shower of spring, the first snow of winter, the last day of school, and the first day of summer all rolled into one. It was perfect.” She took her hands down to her abdomen and flattened her palms there, caught Nikki’s eyes. “And then I had this . . . this person inside of me and he put it there. He put you there and I felt like I was given the most precious gift. I knew you would be the best of both of us, the best of what we brought to each other, so yes, it was that good. It was so good. Then . . . the rest happened and I . . . I couldn’t deal.”

  “What happened to you . . . I’m sorry it did. It was bad. Mr. Jasper told us about it and he said it was so bad for you. Dad was upset and I was trying to be mad at you but . . . God . . . he said that whoever did that to you wouldn’t let you go for a long time and . . . why would somebody do that to
you?” Nikki burst into tears and covered her face. Pam rubbed her arms as she cried and then, unable to resist any longer, she pulled Nikki into the circle of her arms and held her.

  “I don’t know why, baby, I don’t know,” she pressed kisses to the side of Nikki’s face between words. “I do know that I made the biggest mistake of my life when I sent you away. I love you so much.”

  Nikki breathed Pam’s scent deep into her nostrils and sighed as Pam’s fingers threaded through her hair and caressed her scalp. She could feel Pam’s heartbeat against her cheek and the steady rhythm of it soothed her. Hesitant at first and then possessively, her arms slid around Pam’s waist. She fisted the back of Pam’s shirt in her hands and clung as if her life depended on it.

  “Please forgive me, Nikki,” Pam said a long time later.

  Chad heard her heels on the stairs, tracked the sound of them down the hallway and looked up just as she appeared in the doorway. He stalled for time by fiddling with the remote and carefully stacking papers before setting them aside.

  “You look like you’ve got something you want to say,” he remarked evenly.

  “Do I?” He gave her a completely blank expression; one that he knew from experience would drive her nuts. The effect of it was no different now and she smiled. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

  “Should I?”

  “You wouldn’t come outside.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “You always used to come outside.”

  “We always used to talk, Pam. And we always used to trust each other.”

  “I trusted you, Chad.”

  “Not when it counted,” he snapped. Silence stretched out and filled the room as they considered each other. “You should’ve told me.”

  “I was too ashamed to tell you. I was hurt and embarrassed and I thought I had done something to bring the rape on myself, to make someone feel like they could do that to me. The last thing I wanted to happen was for you to find out and feel the same way.”

  “But you told Nate.”

  “I wasn’t wearing Nate’s ring or carrying Nate’s child. I didn’t want you to have that image of me in your head. I wanted to be perfect for you.”

  “I knew the first time I saw you that you weren’t perfect,” he drawled.

  Pam leaned against the doorjamb and crossed her arms under her breasts. “Well, maybe I didn’t know you knew that. I was trying to be.”

  “You weren’t perfect, Pam, but you were perfect for me. You didn’t have to try. I fell in love with you without the slightest problem.”

  “Do you still love me, Chad?” Her eyebrows met in the middle of her forehead. “You said you fell in love with me back then, but do you still love me now?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You have a smart mouth, you know that?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Kiss my ass, Pam.”

  “I’ll do that if that’s what it takes,” she said.

  “Depends on what you want out of the deal.”

  “I want you to look at me the way you used to and I want you to touch me the way you used to.”

  “I never stopped looking or wanting to touch. You were just too far away from me to see or feel it.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, braced his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor between his bare feet. “You left me here.”

  “I’ve regretted that decision every day since.”

  “So have I.”

  “Is it too late to ask you to come with me now?” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Is it too late for us?”

  “You expect me to just pack up and run off with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leave my job and take Nikki out of school, away from her friends?”

  “Nikki might not mind.”

  “But I might.”

  She caught her breath, speechless. Two full minutes passed before she spoke. “I’m tired of living without you and without my daughter.”

  “Then come back, Pam. Go back to California, get all your shit and come back here. Will you do that?”

  The question ricocheted through her mind and froze her where she stood. Come back to Mercy to live? She wanted to give in and let herself glide into an anxiety attack, fall to the floor and let it take her wherever it would. But he was watching her, waiting for an answer and there was no running from the situation this time. He was telling her that if she wanted him she’d have to come back to Mercy to have him.

  “Damn you, Chad. Okay.” She fought the shakiness in her voice and met his gaze. It would probably mean her final and complete undoing, living in Mercy again, but for him she would try.

  “What?” He looked at her like she was crazy.

  “I said okay. I love you, so . . . okay.”

  “Just like that, okay? You’ll move back here to be with me?”

  “As long as I get to say I told you so when you have to have me committed.” She smiled, expecting to see him smile in return, but he didn’t. Instead, he scrubbed a hand across his face and released a harsh breath.

  “It’s too late for you to move back here, Pam,” Chad informed her briskly. “I wouldn’t expect you to do that anyway. I love you too much to put you through that.” He sat back and ran a hand around his neck. “Tell me something, though. If I was to come to California with you, would you marry me? Have my babies?”

  Pam took slow steps in his direction. She dropped to her knees between his legs and pressed her face to his chest, wrapped her arms around his waist. “Today,” she said, her lips moving on his skin. “Right now. When?”

  Chad raked his fingers through the hair that flowed down her back and tugged on the strands to tip her head back. He stared into her eyes for long seconds, rested his forehead against hers and kept on staring.

  “Will you come with me, Chad?”

  “Yeah, I’ll come,” he whispered into her mouth and took a soft kiss. “Damn, Pam. What took you so long?”

  Pam was never known for being especially considerate of other people’s feelings. Legend had it that she was unpredictable in both action and deed, and a few of the case examples used to fuel the legend were actually true. She had never fallen into the habit of glancing at a clock before picking up the phone to call someone, and she’d hardly ever given consideration to conventional schedules when she got it in her mind to knock on someone’s door.

  Feeling bad about waking Jasper from a restless sleep didn’t even cross her mind as she stood on the small porch in front of his apartment door and rapped her knuckles against the wood. He came to the door looking frazzled and grumpier than usual because it was almost three o’clock in the morning.

  They stood on opposite sides of the threshold, staring at each other. Now that she was here and confronted with the sight of him, Pam was speechless. Finally, he caught the ball she had thrown in his court by coming and parted his lips.

  “It’s late,” he tried to complain. He searched her eyes and silently sent up a prayer of thanks that she was whole and safe and here. He’d nearly worried what little hair he still had left out thinking about her being so far away and dealing with everything that happened on her own.

  “I know what time it is,” Pam said. “Seems like to me it might be thirty-five years too late.”

  “You ain’t the only one who’s got a say in this, Pam.” Anxiety and fear caused Jasper’s voice to be sharper than he wanted it to be. He left the doorway and went to stand behind the sofa, bracing his hands on the back and leaning his weight on them. His head dropped to his chest and stayed there, while he collected his scattered thoughts. “You think it was easy doing what we did and having to live with it all these years?” He grabbed her eyes with his own and refused to let her look away from him.

  “Apparently it was easy enough,” she decided right then and there. “You never took back what you did. You didn’t come for us, Jasper. Hell, you didn’t keep us and you could’ve.”

  “Moira . . .”

>   She cut him off, slicing a trembling hand through the air. “I don’t want to hear about Moira right now. I came here to talk about you.”

  “No you didn’t, Pam. You came here to scream and holler some more and to cuss me to hell and back. That’s what you came here for, so why don’t you go ahead and do it and get it over with? You don’t want to hear nothing I got to say anyway.”

  “Yes, I do. I want to hear why you did it. At least give me that much to take with me.” She stepped inside the apartment and closed the door at her back, leaned against it heavily.

  “I was stupid and weak, Pam. That’s all I know to tell you. I regretted it every damn day of my life and I still do. You don’t know how many nights I sat up, hating myself and cursing myself for being so damn stupid. I never should’ve went along with it. You can’t hate me no more than I already hate myself.”

  His words hit Pam like a speeding train. She’d said something eerily similar to Nikki a little while ago and the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her. Still, this was Jasper, the same man who had taught her right from wrong and never given up on her when she strayed from those teachings. The same man who had come running when she fell off her bike and tore the skin on her knees open. He had fussed the whole time, blown cool air on her knees when the alcohol burned, and tenderly applied bandages to her scrapes. He was the one who’d given her and Paris matching bikes for their tenth birthdays.

  She flipped through the memories in her mind and searched for the times when Jasper hadn’t been there, lurking around a corner, looking on, and couldn’t find enough of them to add up to the fingers on one hand. She tried like hell to hate him, but the feeling defied her and wouldn’t come.

  “I don’t hate you.”

  He released the breath he was holding in one huge whoosh. “I tried to always be there,” Jasper told her.

  “At the school and around town, everywhere I could. Moira, she . . .” a shaky chuckle escaped his lips, “she used to say that I was obsessed with you and Paris, but I couldn’t help myself. Wasn’t no piece of paper gone tell me I couldn’t be a daddy to my girls. And hell, she wasn’t no better. Always running up to the home and drawing ya’ll out to her house every other day.” He rubbed his face roughly. “I guess we both knew we fucked up big time. We was crazy about you girls.”