First Thrills - Lee Child [139]
He waved his hand out, saying, “Sit.”
She went to his desk to get the chair, but stopped when she saw the stack of old notebooks piled on top. She recognized the journals, remembered them from their married days when he would sit in his chair, scribbling down his private thoughts. Pam had been tempted, especially after the affair, but she had never read them, never violated his privacy.
Pam started to roll the chair over to his bed, but he waved her away. “No,” he said. “Read.”
“I’m not going to read your journals.” She didn’t add that it was hard enough reading his damn book.
“Read,” he insisted, then, “Please.”
Pam relented, or at least appeared to. She rolled the chair back, her hands gripping the soft leather. God, he had probably paid more for this chair than she had for her car.
She sat at the desk and opened the first book she put her hand on. She did not want to read the journal, could not handle the further blow to her self-esteem of reading his early diatribes on her failures. Her fingers found a letter opener, and she winced, jerking back her hand as she felt the sharp edge slice her skin. The letter opener was actually a stiletto. The small knife looked to be made of brass. Jewels decorated the handle, and the blade was finely sharpened as if John needed to defend himself from strangers entering his office.
The only person he would ever need to defend himself from was Pam.
“Read . . .” John admonished, his voice weaker than ever. “Please . . .”
Pam sighed, giving into curiosity as she picked up one of the journals. She thumbed to the first page. It was dated three years into their marriage, and she skimmed the parts about whiny students and a blister he’d gotten from grading papers.
Her eyes stopped on one word: Beth.
Pam finished the journal in under an hour—a year of John’s life encapsulated in the blink of an eye.
Another year, another name: Celia.
Year six brought two names: Eileen and Ellen.
The door opened and Cindy asked, “Everything all right?”
Pam could not open her mouth to speak. She nodded.
“He just needs to check,” she said, letting in the man Pam had seen in the living room. He went to John, pressed a stethoscope against his chest for a few minutes, nodded, then left.
Cindy told Pam, “We could use some help out here with the ice if you’re—”
“No,” Pam said. Her tone of voice was alarming, the kind she used to stop students in their tracks and elicit confessions of chicanery and cheating.
The door clicked shut and Pam returned to the journal.
Mindy. Sheila. Rina. Yokimito.
Blowjobs, finger fucking, ass fucking, sixty-nine, and a position that, even with her doctorate in human biology, Pam would have needed a diagram to understand.
She turned the page.
He had drawn a diagram.
From the bed, John wheezed. Pam thumbed through the journals, looking for the year of Zack’s death. She found the day before, February sixteenth. John’s cramped scrawl revealed that he had finally found love. He had been with a woman named Judy the day before their son died.
Judy Kendridge, the math teacher down the hall. Pam had tutored kids with the woman after school. They had both complained about their corns, their aching backs, their husbands.
The date on the next page was May third, three months after Zack’s funeral. Pam recognized it as the first line of Biological Healing. “The biggest obstacle to overcoming the death of my son was finally admitting to myself that I could not be the perfect father, the perfect husband.”
“No shit,” Pam hissed, slamming shut the notebook.
She pushed herself away from the desk and walked over to John’s bed.
“Wake up, you bastard.” He didn’t comply, so she poked him, then violently shook him. “Wake up!”
Slowly, his eyes opened. He glanced at the journals, then back to her.
“What does this accomplish?” she demanded, anger and humiliation bringing tears to her eyes. “This is the ‘healing’ you needed, dragging me all the way out here so I can read your deathbed confession?”
An eyebrow went up. She could have sworn he was enjoying this. He pushed the mask from