A Mother's Homecoming

chapter Eight




Nick had a case of the Saturday night blues, a restless dissatisfaction, marked by a lot of pacing and grouchiness and the world’s shortest attention span. In his early twenties, he’d struggled with this every week, the sense that everyone he knew was out somewhere having a good time, while he was trapped at home. He’d outgrown that long before meeting Jenna. Now that he was single again, if someone were to ask, he’d say that after a long week, he was perfectly happy to rent a movie and split a pizza with his kid, then call it a night.



Not that the “kid” was so happy with that arrangement, he thought wryly. Faith had kept to herself for most of the afternoon, and he hadn’t wanted to press her for details about her conversation with Pam. His daughter knew he was here and would talk to him when she was ready. When she’d bounced down the stairs before dinner, he’d misinterpreted her sudden presence as exactly that.



But it hadn’t been him she’d wanted to confide in—she’d asked for permission to spend the night at Morgan’s.



He’d felt like an ogre as he reminded her, “You’re grounded.” In his humble opinion, Morgan should be, too.



“These are extenuating circumstances!” Faith had argued, breaking out the PSAT vocabulary words. She sometimes did that when she was trying to get her way, as if more highbrow language would convince him to take her seriously. “I had the first encounter I can remember with my mother today, probably the only one I’ll ever have. I need to talk to a friend.”



“You could talk to me,” he’d suggested.



This was met with a roll of the eyes and a huffy sigh as she stomped out of the room.



When the phone rang two hours later, he found himself almost wishing he’d capitulated. If Faith were out of the house Nick could take Joseph Anders up on his offer.



“Thanks for the invite,” Nick told his coworker, “but I can’t. It’s a little late in the evening for me to call up Mom or Leigh and ask them to come over last minute.” The problem with grounding your kid was that you effectively grounded yourself, too.



“Any other weekend, you could drop Faith off at my house. Lisa would probably welcome the company,” Joseph said of his wife. “But she and the twins are visiting her parents in Kentucky. Damn shame you can’t join us. I like Tully, but the man can’t bowl worth squat. Without you, we’re the odds-on favorite to lose.”



“Sorry, guy. Check with me next time, though.” Nick hung up the phone, admitting to himself that, even if he’d gone, he wouldn’t have been much help to Joseph’s cause. He was far too preoccupied tonight.



There had been rumblings in the hardware store where he’d gone to give Faith and Pam their space. Apparently, Ed Calbert had come in yesterday with his prodigal niece and placed a sizable order. Although Nick had heard months ago that Mae Wilson died, he hadn’t thought much about her leaving Pam anything. Frankly he was a bit surprised to learn she’d had anything to leave. But now he realized that Pam owned the old house and would need to do considerable repairs if she was to have any hope of selling it.



Which meant that Pam wasn’t going anywhere just yet.



Hell, I run a construction company. If he volunteered to work for half-price, would she be gone sooner? Or he could just bulldoze the place for her. Judging from the occasional glimpses he caught from the road, it wouldn’t take much to flatten the neglected place into nothingness. Some things couldn’t be saved; it might be better just to start over, rebuild.



He could just imagine the look on Gwendolyn’s face if he told his mother he was helping Pam renovate a house. The back of her head would blow off. He almost grinned at the rare prospect of his mother speechless.



Nick had muted a ballgame on television when Joseph called. Now he restored sound with the remote but still couldn’t concentrate. He ended up in the kitchen, randomly opening cabinets and inspecting refrigerator shelves with cursory interest. Boredom munchies. He didn’t really want to eat. He wanted something physical to do, something that would help him work off this prowling sense of … whatever it was.



He opened the high cabinet above the refrigerator and reached for the bottle of premium whiskey his semiretired boss, Donald Bauer, had given him at Christmas. As Nick headed for the dishwasher to get a clean tumbler, he noticed Faith’s phone on the counter. He pulled the spare charger out of a drawer. He reminded her on a near daily basis that the phone whose chief purpose was supposed to have been “for emergencies” wasn’t going to do her any good if it ran out of juice and couldn’t be used in an actual crisis. There was a bloop of acknowledgment when he plugged in the phone, and the dark screen brightened. Instead of the usual wallpaper, a picture of Faith and Morgan making crazy faces on the back porch, there was a photo of Faith and Pam, heads close together over a dark green tabletop, smiling at the camera.



He sucked in a breath at the unexpected vision.



They really did look a lot alike. In an alternate reality, this would have been a picture he’d taken—a routine family outing, a spontaneous shot of his wife and daughter. His throat tightened, and he ran his thumb across the picture, enlarging it so that it was zoomed in on Pam. Her face and hair and style were different, but her eyes hadn’t changed at all.



When they’d been together, he’d found it boldly erotic that she so frequently met his gaze during sex. Her lashes didn’t close often, and she rarely turned her head away from him. Instead she looked right into him.



With a groan, he set down the phone and guiltily shoved it away. Then he poured himself a double. Watching the alcohol splash into the glass kept his thoughts centered on her. Did Pam ever get this itchy, restless feeling? He was vaguely aware that Ed and Julia were gone most weekends; was Pam all alone in that house?



He pulled his own cell phone out of his pocket and padded barefoot onto the back porch. She’d called him the other day to confirm the time she was meeting Faith. Scrolling through recent calls, he clicked on the only one that was unfamiliar before he could stop to question his actions.



The phone rang twice and, without thinking, he greeted her the way he always had—ever since he’d asked her to be his homecoming date sophomore year. “Hey, it’s me.” As if taking for granted that she’d recognize him instantly, as if no time had passed.



“Hey.” Her voice was breathy, low, reminding him of all the times they’d been on the phone after midnight and she hadn’t wanted her mother to catch her.



They’d had some intense late-night discussions about whether or not they were “ready to go all the way.” They’d anticipated what it would be like, and some of those graphic conversations had been a lot hotter than their actual first time, which had ended too soon. Of course, they’d improved greatly with practice.



“Nick, you still there?”



He tossed back a swallow of whiskey. “I’m here.”



“Good. I’m glad you called.”



He’d been expecting more wariness—or even exasperation—and her welcoming tone knocked him off balance.



“Saves me the trouble of finding your card again,” she continued. “I wanted to talk.”



“You did?” Nick set his drink down on the picnic table he’d built. Pam’s voice in his ear had more kick to it than the whiskey; both at the same time were too potent. He needed to keep a clear head.



“Well, to say thank you, first of all. For today.”



“So you don’t think I’m a bully anymore for trying to talk you into it?”



She was quiet for a long moment, as if giving his words serious consideration. “I have a friend I think you would like. Annabel. She’s a firm believer in an unapologetic kick in the ass, if it’s warranted.”



“Happy to help.” He paced the grass along the edge of the porch, the ground cool and damp against his bare feet. “You said ‘first of all.’ Was there more than one reason you were planning to call me?” Was it possible his mother’s insane suspicions weren’t so insane—could Pam have missed him? After all, they were both back in Mimosa, where certain nostalgic tendencies might take effect.



But Pam sounded far from wistfully reminiscent when she said, “It’s about Faith.”



His body tensed. “What about her?”



“I realize this is none of my business …” Utterly bizarre words for a girl’s mother to be speaking, but given the circumstances, accurate. “She seems like a good kid.”



“The best.”



“So you might want to consider, um, easing up on her. A bit.” Her discomfort seeped through the phone lines. Doling out unsolicited advice did not come as easily to her as it did to Gwendolyn and Leigh.



“Easing up? Did she paint me as some sort of überstrict parent?” The little con artist. It galled him to think that after he’d faced down Pam, not to mention his mother, to get Faith today’s opportunity, she’d used it to bitch about him.



“Actually, she seemed to adore you. She said she was even cool most of the time with not having a mom because she had you. I got the impression it had more to do with Gwendolyn.”



Ah. That he could believe.



“And that she just wants you to trust her, to give her the space to prove she’ll make smart decisions.”



He snorted. “And did this upstanding citizen mention to you that she’s currently grounded for cutting class?”



“She what?”



It was gratifying to hear his own parental outrage echoed. “Oh, so she left out that part when she was describing life under my tyrannical thumb.”



Pam sighed. “Damn it—darn it, I knew I should have stayed out of it. I’ve just … I was in California for a while and ran into lots of people making bad decisions. Some of them started as good kids with promising futures, but they rebelled too far against the restrictive ways they were being raised. Parents who probably thought they were keeping their children from harm inadvertently pushed them into it. I’m sure the last thing you want is for Faith to end up, well, like I did.”



The idea of his daughter as a pregnant teenager was enough to wake him in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat. He pushed it aside and focused on Pam instead. “Are you saying that’s what I was to you, teenage rebellion? A method for getting back at your mom?”



“No!” She quickly shot down his idle theory. “Are you kidding? We were together for years, Nick. I’ve had one-night stands, mistakes that made me ashamed to look at myself in the mirror the next day. That’s not what … I loved you.”



His jaw clenched. How dare she say that to him, this woman who’d whispered words of love to him for years, then disappeared? He’d seen her once, on television, and had been incensed that she’d simply built a new life without a backward glance at him and Faith. Why hadn’t it been that easy for him, to forget the woman who’d betrayed him? Instead, Pam had waltzed through his mind so many times she’d worn her own groove.



Not that he planned to share that with her. “I shouldn’t have called.”



“Why did you?” Now the wariness he’d anticipated had crept into her tone.



“Who the hell knows?” He leaned back, taking in the inky black night. The way he was feeling, there should have been a full moon. “I get antsy sometimes, on edge, and I thought you might feel that way on late Saturday nights, too. I heard your aunt and uncle were out of town, and you met Faith today …”



“So you were calling to check on me?” She sounded bemused. “To make sure I wasn’t raiding the liquor cabinet? Not that Aunt Julia has one.”



“Something like that. I didn’t really analyze it, just dialed.” How many times would he have called her over the years if he’d had a number? “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”



THE STRESS HEADACHE behind Pam’s left eye throbbed in time to the bass-heavy pop song playing through the salon’s speakers. On Sundays, the place was only open for a few hours in the afternoon. It was due to close in about fifteen minutes. Given the day Pam was having so far, she’d debated telling Dawn she was unfit company and canceling. But at the last minute, Pam had reconsidered. Visiting her old friend gave her a much-needed excuse to head into town. Because if she’d stayed at the house any longer, she couldn’t be held responsible for her actions.



When she’d staggered bleary-eyed from her bed this morning, she’d actually been looking forward to tackling Mae’s house. It might be a lengthy, complicated process, but at least there weren’t emotions and verbal land mines involved. Instead of letting herself be overwhelmed by the house as a whole, she’d tried to break down a list of individual projects.



Unfortunately very few of them could be completed in a day, and when she added up the cost of all of those projects …



Even with no major living expenses while she stayed with her relatives and Uncle Ed’s generous seed money for renovation, the expense was daunting. She’d decided around lunchtime that if she could just accomplish one tangible thing, she’d feel inspired. She’d chosen the handle on the back door, which needed to be replaced because, as she’d discovered when she’d been rinsing off some stuff in the yard, the door wouldn’t open at all from the outside. It had seemed simple enough—until she shattered the glass in the sliding door.



Now she had two small butterfly bandages across the tender flesh between her thumb and index finger and a large sheet of plastic across the gaping hole that used to be a door. Plus her list of projects had just increased by one.



She’d had disturbing visions of herself on the front page of the Mimosa Monitor, pictured wild-eyed above an article about arson.



All I wanted to do was fix the dang door handle! Is that really so much to ask? Apparently, yes. All she had to do was be patient. If today’s success was any indication, the house would be a pile of rubble by the end of the week.



“There you are!” Dawn’s friendly greeting was just below shriek decibel, and Pam struggled to smile instead of wince. “Glad to see you took me up on my offer. Just give me a few minutes. We’re shorthanded today and it’s been crazy. I need to put some stuff in the computer and sweep up.” She jerked a thumb toward the styling stations behind her.



The floor at one booth was dusted with brown hair, so short that Pam guessed the chair had been occupied by a male client getting a trim. In the next seat over was a redhead with a handful of tissues; she was sniffling about her louse of an ex-boyfriend and periodically instructing the smocked hairdresser to “lop it all off!” Judging by the pile of strawberry locks accumulating in the floor, the hairdresser was doing exactly that. Put a blonde in the third chair, and the checkerboard tile would have a new neopolitan theme.



Pressing a hand to the small of her back, Pam volunteered, “I could sweep if you want.” It would be visible progress—an easily defined and accomplished job. In other words, the opposite of everything else she’d done today.



“You sure you don’t mind?” Dawn asked.



Lowering her voice discreetly, Pam said, “I’m getting a free haircut out of the deal. Sweeping is the least I can do!”



“Okay, then.” Dawn smiled brightly and retrieved a broom from the spacious storage closet on the other side of the reception counter. “Appreciate the help. One of our girls is pregnant, and she had to go to the E.R. last night. She should be all right, but the doctor has her on bed rest for the remainder of her last trimester! Which means we’re going to be shorthanded for September homecoming, when pretty much every female student at Mimosa High School comes in for an updo and all the women over thirty come to get their gray covered before the alumni luncheon. I don’t suppose you’re a licensed cosmetologist?”



Pam laughed. “Hardly. But I wield a mean broom.” She got to work sweeping, surprised to discover that her headache receded from excruciatingly unbearable to just annoyingly painful.



Her skull had throbbed for pretty much the past twenty-four hours. Although she’d enjoyed talking to Faith far more than she’d expected, it had been difficult to spend that time with her daughter. Last night Pam had been plagued with uncharacteristic what-ifs. She’d been unable to reach Annabel and had tortured herself with not only the milestones she’d already missed in Faith’s life—first step, first loose tooth, first day of school—but also the ones still to come. Her high school graduation, her wedding day.



It hadn’t helped Pam’s conflicted emotional state that Nick had called. Checking on her seemed chivalrous, despite his surliness by the end of their conversation, and she didn’t deserve gallantry from Nick. It only served to confuse her. Considering his eventual return to hostility, maybe he was confused, too.



“Uh, did we hire someone new and no one told me?”



Pam turned to see a skinny woman in head-to-toe black emerge from a room at the far end of the salon.



The background staccato of keyboard typing paused while Dawn explained, “This is my friend Pam Wilson. She chipped in to help with closing cleanup since Stacey’s out. Pam, do you remember Nancy? We all went to Mimosa High around the same time.”



Pam stifled a groan. Nancy Warner? Pam hadn’t recognized her at first because the always thin girl had lost even more weight—the only plumpness on her entire body was in her shiny lips. The two women had never been in the same grade, but Pam knew exactly who Nancy Warner was, a former cheerleader with a wicked crush on Nick. Even though Pam hadn’t stolen her boyfriend from anyone, she’d already been the indirect recipient of Nancy’s hostility. Rumors had run rampant one month that Mae was sleeping with Nancy’s still-married father. The Warners had divorced a year later.



From the way Nancy’s unnaturally violet blue eyes narrowed, she definitely remembered Pam. “Wow, is that you, Pamela Jo? Goodness, what a surprise. We haven’t seen you around these parts since … Let me think. Well, I guess not since you left your husband and baby.”



Behind them, Dawn sucked in her breath in a sharp gasp, but didn’t say anything. Probably because she was too stunned. Everyone froze, including the other stylist in the room and her client. The jilted redhead in the chair actually stopped sniffling, her mouth falling open as she was temporarily distracted by someone else’s problems.



“That’s right,” Pam said mildly. “This is my first return visit since then.” She continued to smile pleasantly and left it at that.



If Nancy was hoping for a catfight, she was going to be sorely disappointed.



But the woman took another stab at baiting her. “Alert the media! The Monitor should post an adultery warning. ‘Be advised, there’s a home-wrecking Wilson in town.’”



Mention of infidelity must have hit too close to home for the newly shorn redhead because she started sobbing again. The girl’s beautician sent a scathing glare in Nancy’s direction, mouthing, Thanks a lot. Pam decided this would be a good time to return the broom to the closet—a space bigger than most of the rooms at her house. Perhaps she’d stay there and thumb through old fashion magazines until tensions had lessened.



Next to the coatrack against the closet wall was a tiny table boasting a coffeemaker and a couple of folding chairs. Pam slid into one of them, unsurprised to see that Dawn had followed her.



“You okay?” her friend asked, looking miserable.



Pam nodded. “There’s bad history between her family and mine. And it’s not like she was wrong. I did leave Nick and Faith.”



Dawn shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Yeah, but that’s none of her business. I’m sure you had your reasons.”



Fragments came back to her—pretending not to hear the baby crying so that someone else would get her, the disjointed thoughts she’d had after they’d brought the baby home from the hospital. It was funny because, even though she hadn’t had a drop to drink during her pregnancy or in the weeks after Faith was born, Pam recalled that postpartum phase much the way she did her worst benders. Blurry, shame-inducing snippets that felt more like bad dreams than reality.



“I wasn’t a good mother. I decided Faith would be better off without me.” And from what she’d seen yesterday, she’d made the right call. “Look, Dawn, you’ve been very sweet, but you don’t have to do my hair. I’ve had a he … Heck of a day, and it sounds like you have, too.”



“No, don’t go! You can’t let Nancy run you off just because she clearly has PMS.”



Pam laughed despite herself.



“See, being around me has cheered you up already,” Dawn said. “I’m delightful company—ask anyone. So quit hiding in the closet and get your butt out there. I think our last official client is finished and paying as we speak.”



“The redhead? There’s someone who looks like she’s having a bad day,” Pam said sympathetically.



Dawn blew out a breath. “That girl is gonna hate herself tomorrow. She’s worn her hair long for years. I’ve told Maxine, C-3’s owner, when it comes to radical changes, we should have some kind of mandatory waiting period like they have for guns. Especially for any woman who’s just been done wrong by a man.”



Pam laughed again. It felt good. “All right, I give—you are delightful. I guess I’ll stick around for that haircut.”



“You won’t be sorry. Wait until the shampoo! I give a very relaxing scalp massage. Have you ever thought about maybe changing your color a little, too?” Dawn asked. “Nothing radical, just some subtle lowlights to give the blond more depth.”



Why not? If Pam was going to continue dealing with complicated mixed emotions and her newly acquired money pit, she might as well look good while she did so. Never underestimate the power of a good hair day.



“All right, show me to your booth.”



While Dawn wrapped sections of Pam’s hair in foil, Nancy finished her share of the cleaning and stormed out, taking the tension with her.



“Whew!” The stylist who’d been working on Red let out a low whistle. “I know Nancy’s not always Little Miss Sunshine, but that was extreme.” She met Pam’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m Beth. And I’m guessing you must be the Wicked Witch of the West?”



Pam’s lips quirked. “Something like that.”



Beth nodded. “Which would explain your familiarity with the broom. You want a regular job sweeping up? We could sell ringside seats for the locals to come watch the fireworks between you and Nancy.”



Considering the number of people in town who no doubt shared Nancy’s opinions of Pam and her late mother, that idea sounded like hell.



Dawn painted another strand of hair and expertly rolled it up, the aluminum crinkling as she went. “Actually, Beth, people probably would turn out in droves to see Pam. But not because of any crazy grudge Nancy has. Pam was a real live TV star!”



“Star is too strong a word,” Pam protested. “Even personality would be a stretch.”



Dawn clucked her tongue. “Well, I watched you every single week while you were on, and you were way better than that girl who took your spot when you left … or anyone else they had after. In fact, I think losing you was why Country Countdown stopped airing on that channel!” She stopped what she was doing, tilting her head to the side. “Speaking of careers, Beth may be on to something. Would you have any interest in some part-time work at the salon? Only temporarily, of course.”



Nancy would hate the idea. “We already established that I don’t have any cosmetology credentials,” Pam said diplomatically.



“That’s okay, we can’t hire another stylist full-time and still hold Stacey’s spot for her. With her being pregnant, she’d already cut back to a minimum of select customers. She didn’t need to be working directly with chemicals and couldn’t stand on her feet all day. So she was doing receptionist stuff—taking payments, answering phones, scheduling—along with just a few appointments and some light housekeeping.”



Beth was nodding enthusiastically. “Like sweeping up the stations and doing laundry. None of it’s too difficult, but it’s hard for us to keep up with that stuff when we’re already down a stylist.”



“Especially since she won’t be back until after the baby!” Dawn added. “We weren’t expecting her to be gone so soon. I’ll bet Maxine would appreciate the extra manpower to help us transition.”



Pam knew that Dawn was just trying to help an old friend and didn’t even have the owner’s authorization to make such an offer. Still, it was nice to be wanted for something, to be thought of as useful and competent—the mirror opposite of how she’d felt all morning while pieces of her former home fell down around her. “Thanks for asking me, but I am going to be swamped trying to remodel that house.”



Then again, she did need to finance the remodeling.



And she’d certainly taken worse jobs before, notably a waitressing gig at a truck stop just off the interstate. If she could survive that, she could manage some dirty looks from Nancy Warner. Now that the other woman had vented, she would probably give up trying to rile Pam and simply ignore her. Pam’s aunt and uncle had assured her that they were glad to help, but she was a grown woman. She didn’t want to feel like a teenager who had to come to them for her allowance. Besides, they weren’t made of money, no matter how successful Uncle Ed said his wife’s jewelry-making had become.



Pam sighed. “So, this hypothetical job we’re talking about—how much do you think it would pay?”