First Thrills - Lee Child [135]
Zack, she thought. This is how Zack’s hand will feel.
John had stood frozen outside the morgue. “I can’t do it,” he had told her. “I can’t see him like that.”
Pam had, though. She had looked at her son, stroked back his thick, black hair and kissed his forehead even though it was caked with dried blood. His eyes were slit open, his lips slightly parted. A long gash had flayed open the line of his jaw. She took his hand and kissed his face, his beautiful face, then signed the papers and took John home.
Pam’s second trip to California had been very different from the first one. First-class was a whole new world to her, from the hot towel to wipe her face to the warmed nuts to the endless supply of alcoholic beverages. A well-dressed man stood in baggage claim, her name on the placard he held in front of him. The black Lincoln Town Car was spotless, a bottle of cold water waiting for her as she climbed into the back seat.
This was John’s personal driver, she gathered. Bestselling millionaire authors didn’t have to drive themselves around, especially when they lived in the Hollywood Hills. Pam took no delight in the palm-tree- lined streets, her first glimpse of the famous Hollywood sign. She felt like a whore for taking John’s money. At the dissolution of their marriage, she had insisted they split everything down the middle: selling the house, the cars, their meager stocks so that it could all be done in cash. Money had been the noose he kept around her neck for years. They couldn’t go on vacation or buy a new car or splurge on a dinner out because of money. To say John had kept a tight grip on the purse strings was an understatement. Everything was on a budget and even Pam was kept on an allowance. She seethed with hatred every time she thought about their life before, the way she had allowed him to control everything. How easy it must have been for him, how boring in its own way, to have so much power over her.
When John had gotten his first royalty check from Biological Healing, he had offered her a share of the money, but Pam had told him where he could deposit it. She had read the book at least three times by then, had gone to school where her students had read about the “pedestrian” sex life she had shared with her husband. Her colleagues had read about how she had simply walked away when John had accused her of not loving their son. Her drycleaner knew that she had once told John that she was disgusted by the thought of being with him.
“Take the money.” John had reasoned, “I know you need it.”
“You bastard,” she had hissed. Her teeth were clenched, and she wished they were biting into his jugular, twisting it out of his neck like a root from the ground. She cursed him, something she never did, because she thought cursing was base and showed a lack of intelligence. “Fuck you and fuck your money.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Pam.” His tone was reasonable, the same tone he had used when she questioned him about where he had been until one in the morning, why there was a key in his pocket that didn’t fit any of their locks. The tone that said, “Why are you being so silly? Why are you letting your anger ruin your life?”
She could even picture that smirk, that knowing smirk that said he knew that he had won. Money was his way back into her life, his way to control her again, to make her want nice things only so he could snatch them away at will.
As if she were a prostitute, he had offered: “I can send it to you in cash, if you prefer.”
Pam had slammed down the phone before he could say anything else.
Mostly, she got news of her ex-husband from magazines, television shows, and helpful friends. “Did you see John met the Dali Lama? Did you see John spent the weekend with the president?”
“Did you see that I don’t give a shit?” Pam had said to one of them, but this had been a mistake, because God forbid she should be bitter about the man who was helping heal the country. Funny