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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Disclaimer: The Pretender and its related characters don’t belong to me. There is no money involved here and no copyright infringement is intended. Actually it is intended but I’m not making any profit so there’s really no point in suing me over it.
- Author’s Note: I’ve been really busy at work as well as taking a class at a nearby college. But now the class has ended and the quarterly reports are all done (and I made my deadline – yippee!). My stress level has dropped dramatically and I now have the time to return to my favorite hobby... writing. Many thanks to all for your patience. And no, e , I don’t ever get tired of reviews.
Veil of Contentment - Part 5
- By Phenyx
- 04/12/04
-
Jarod opened his eyes and woke up. He wasn’t startled into consciousness nor did he wake with the spastic jerking gasp that often roused him. He was simply asleep one moment and awake the next.
The pretender blinked and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. Rolling his head lazily to one side, he yawned and snuggled deeper into the cushions of the couch on which he was lying. The room was dimly lit due to the thick curtains drawn across the windows. Jarod could see daylight at the edges of the draperies. Teddy was sitting on the floor a few feet away, quietly coloring on a large sheet of paper that covered most of the coffee table.
“Morning Ted,” Jarod drawled.
The little boy looked up with a wry grin. “Not any more,” he said. “It’s way past lunchtime.”
“Really?” Jarod asked. Glancing at the watch on his wrist, the pretender was surprised to find that it was well after three o’clock in the afternoon. “Good grief. I’ve been asleep for nearly fourteen hours.”
“You were tired,” Parker’s voice purred. Craning his neck, Jarod looked over his shoulder to find Parker standing in the doorway. She was dressed in typical Saturday afternoon fashion with well-worn jeans and a simple blouse. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Starved,” Jarod rolled his eyes as he sat up and stretched.
Parker nodded and said, “You go wash up while I fix us all a snack.”
“Parker?” Jarod asked in a chagrined voice. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra toothbrush around would you?”
Miss Parker eyed the pretender warily, crossing her arms over her chest. “Left in a hurry did you?”
Jarod shrugged. “The decision to relocate was made rather abruptly I am afraid,” he explained.
“Look in the closet in my bathroom,” she said. “I’ll ask Sydney if he has a clean shirt you could wear.”
“It won’t fit,” Jarod argued.
Miss Parker nodded in agreement. “It will be a little tight. But beggars can’t be choosers, Rat.”
With a grimace of resignation, Jarod headed down the hallway as instructed. He showered quickly and cleaned his teeth. He gave serious consideration to shaving, but decided against it. The only razor in Parker’s bathroom was a delicate pink handled thing and the pretender just wasn’t sure it would serve his purpose.
Finding a plain white undershirt hanging on the outer knob of the bathroom door, Jarod slipped it over his head. The shirt was barely long enough to tuck the edges into his jeans. Yet the other dimensions were just too small, making the shirt cling tightly to his damp body like a second skin. The contours of his chest and abdomen were garishly apparent, leaving nothing to the imagination. Even his nipples were outlined, giving Jarod an uncomfortable feeling of exposure.
As he passed through the livingroom, Jarod grabbed his leather jacket from the chair he had tossed it on last night. He shrugged into the coat and zipped it up halfway to provide some measure of cover. A sudden wave of depression washed over Jarod as it occurred to him that he was practically destitute. Aside from the Mustang parked in Miss Parker’s driveway, Jarod had little more than the clothes on his back, and half of those were borrowed.
Jarod padded barefoot into the kitchen, a dark scowl marring his face. Parker was already there, ladling soup into four bowls on the table. Throwing one leg over the back of the chair, Jarod thudded into his seat and glared at the china before him.
“Did you find a toothbrush?” Parker asked.
“Yes,” Jarod said. With a sigh, he tried to shrug off his sour mood. “Thank you.”
Teddy came bounding into the room with Sydney close on his heels. “My hands are washed Mama,” the boy chirped. “Can I eat now?”
Parker gestured toward a chair in response and placed a bowl in front of the child. Sydney also sat down, unfolding a napkin and placing it on his lap.
“Thank you for the shirt, Sydney,” Jarod said as he plucked a slice of bread from the center of the table. “I’ll need to go out and get some clothes this afternoon.”
“We have plenty of your things in storage,” Sydney volunteered.
Jarod blinked in surprise. “What kind of things?” he asked curiously.
“Just about anything you might need,” Sydney said. “Clothes, linens, even toiletries.”
Parker lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “We kept everything you ever left behind you know,” she explained. “We figured that it all meant something.”
“It did,” Jarod said slowly. “But when the Centre’s power base fell, I assumed you’d gotten rid of all that stuff.”
“Never quite got around to it,” Parker admitted. “Besides,” she continued. “It wasn’t mine to throw away.”
Jarod swallowed and stared at this soup. He was oddly touched that Parker considered him to still be the owner of things he had abandoned so many years ago. What may have seemed like a lot of junk to some people was in reality, the symbolic representation of Jarod’s journey toward freedom. Those things had indeed all carried some meaning, some message he had tried to convey. That Miss Parker had understood that fact, and still honored it, affected the troubled pretender deeply.
“After we eat, we’ll all head up to the Centre,” Parker said. “I haven’t been to the office for days and I wanted to go in and check my email this afternoon anyway. You can take the opportunity to decide what things you would like to keep and what we can dispose of.”
Jarod grinned wryly. “I’m a notorious packrat, Parker.”
“So I had noticed,” she said, rolling her eyes.
A little over an hour later, Jarod found himself riding in the back seat of Miss Parker’s car watching with trepidation as the ominous stone façade of the Centre loomed in the distance. Teddy squirmed with excitement in the seat to Jarod’s left. Being permitted to accompany his adopted mother in to the office was a rare privilege.
As the car glided into a reserved parking space, Jarod tried a few deep, calming breaths. The group left the vehicle and began to climb the stone steps toward the front entrance. Jarod was hanging back a few paces, nervously wiping his sweating palms on his jeans.
Parker noticed his discomfort of course, and smiled reassuringly as she pulled open the glass doors.
“No one will harm you, Jarod,” Sydney said gently. “There is nothing to be afraid of anymore.”
Jarod nodded, a frown furrowing his brow. “I know,” he replied.
“But what your head knows, and what your instincts are telling you are two completely different things, eh?” Parker interjected.
“My instincts are telling me to make a run for it,” Jarod said with a false brightness.
They stepped across the threshold and into the cool dimness of the Centre. Jarod felt as though the sun and been taken from him once again.
“You can’t run forever,” Parker murmured softly.
“Can’t I?” the pretender snapped back, more harshly than he had intended.
“I’ll be in my office for at least two hours,” Parker said, ignoring the pretender’s ire. Without further comment, she took her son by the hand and strode off down the corridor.
Sydney had patients to look in on, psychiatric cases that he had been forced to neglect over the last few days in favor of his personal ties. Not that these inmates had suffered any in Sydney’s absence. The Centre now had a care giving function, quickly becoming a hospital of high repute. As they headed for the storage levels, Jarod had seen several of the residents, Angelo among them, enjoying the fresh air in a garden designed for that purpose. Many poor souls who had spent years confined in the Centre’s darkest rooms were finally getting the treatment they would need to ease them into the real world.
Jarod’s ex-mentor led him to a room on SL-22. Large metal trunks lined the walls, stacked three deep. The room itself was not overly large, and yet it wasn’t small either. Though the area had a markedly unused feel to it, the room was obviously well kept and cleaned regularly. There wasn’t the dust or mustiness one would expect in a subterranean storage area.
“Each case is numbered,” Sydney explained as he took a metal clipboard from a hook on the wall. “Everything has been inventoried on this list.” He handed the sheaf of papers to Jarod. “I’ll come back in a few hours but feel free to come find me if you finish before then.” With that said, Sydney turned and left the room, leaving Jarod to gaze about him in mild wonder.
Ignoring the specific documentation he’d been given, Jarod chose a box at random and heaved it from its place. He slid the box toward the middle of the room where there was plenty of available space. The pretender lifted the hasps and pulled open the lid, frowning a little at the slight hiss of sound that escaped in the process. The trunk had an airtight seal, providing maximum protection for its contents.
Jarod immediately burst into delighted laughter. A bulging-eyed monster of plaster and foam stared up at him. “Hello, Igor,” the pretender murmured. With one long finger, Jarod traced the grotesque features of the oversized contraption then poked it firmly in the chest. But Igor was silent, his batteries having run dead long ago.
Turning toward another trunk, Jarod set about his task.
When Miss Parker came for him several hours later, she found Jarod sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by red notebooks. Every single trunk had been opened and the room was a jumbled mess. The pretender was staring off into space, a million miles away, with a red folder clutched to his chest.
“Jarod?” she called softly. Kneeling carefully at his side so as not to startle him, Parker tried again, “Jarod?”
“Everything I ever left behind, everything I ever mailed to the Centre,” he said. “It is all here.”
“Yes,” Parker answered.
“But the things I sent to your house are missing,” Jarod observed. There was no recrimination in his voice, just the flatness of stating fact.
Pushing aside a handful of notebooks, Parker made a spot for herself on the floor and sat down. “Those were gifts sent to me,” she explained. “They were not meant for anyone else. It was no one else’s business.”
Jarod turned to her with a frown. “You didn’t tell anyone about them?” he asked.
“No.”
“Not even Sydney?”
Parker shook her head solemnly.
“Why?” Jarod asked.
“I doubt it would have gone over well with my father,” Parker answered with a wry grin. “You sent me jewelry for crying out loud.”
The pretender tilted his head curiously. “Does it matter what I sent?” he persisted.
“Yes. It mattered,” Parker sighed. “My grandmother’s ring, the stained glass artwork, the letters from my mother, they were all very special. I could never betray the fact that you had sent them to me.”
Jarod shook his head, sad laughter bubbling from him. “Of all the people in my life, Miss Parker, you alone have never betrayed me. We may not have always been on the same side of the fight, but I could always trust you to react the way I knew you would.”
“I’ve always said that you knew me too well,” Parker chided. Picking up one of the notebooks from the clutter, Parker eyed it nonchalantly as she went on. “Trust is not easily given for us. Once lost, it doesn’t come back.”
“No,” Jarod whispered in anguish.
It wasn’t difficult for Miss Parker to read the signs of Jarod’s distress. He was hurting. The pretender wore his pain like a shroud. Someone close to him had suddenly brought bitter disappointment to Jarod’s life. Parker had little trouble guessing who that someone had been.
“What has she done?” Parker pried.
Jarod sighed in resignation. “There’s another man,” he said simply. “If I had gotten home a few minutes earlier I would no doubt have caught them in my bed.”
Parker shook her head. She felt a swirl of emotions twisting within her. Parker wasn’t sure which was stronger, the anger that made her want to strangle Jarod’s wife, or pity that the girl would never understand what she had lost. “I’m sorry, Jarod,” Parker whispered.
“Why?” Jarod replied. “It wasn’t your fault. I never should have married her.” The pretender’s voice took on a self-recriminating tone. “I thought that was what normal people did. Buy a house, find a job, get married. I just wanted a normal life, you know?”
“More than forty percent of all marriages in this country end in court,” Parker noted. “Maybe you’re a lot closer to normal than you realize.”
The two of them sat in silence for a time, staring at the chaos around them.
“My mother knew,” Jarod said abruptly. “Hell, the entire family probably knew. My mother said that Zoë wasn’t being particularly discrete about the affair.”
Parker glared at Jarod knowingly. “She knew and didn’t tell you about it?”
Jarod nodded his head slowly.
“Shit,” the explicative rolled off Parker’s tongue with such vehemence that it made the pretender flinch.
“She lied to me, Parker,” Jarod said in a small trembling voice.
Parker sighed. “What was your mother supposed to do? It can’t be easy to just blurt something like that out.” She tilted her head and began to mimic his mother in a singsong voice. “Oh by the way dear, your beloved wife was boinking the gardener while you were away. He’s really been neglecting the rose bushes in the front yard.”
“He’s been too busy tending Zoë’s bushes,” Jarod commented dryly.
They looked at each other for a moment, both wide eyed at the crudeness of their comments. Then as if on cue, the two burst into laughter. They cackled hysterically until tears were running down their cheeks and they were both gasping for air.
“This really isn’t funny,” Parker wheezed.
“Yes it is,” Jarod chortled, sobering slowly. “If anyone had told me six years ago that I would be discussing my disastrous love life within the bowels of the Centre, I’d have said they were nuts.” He wiped the moisture from his cheeks. “And with you of all people!”
“Hey!” Parker scolded him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Ann Landers you are not,” Jarod said, crumbling into another fit of cathartic laughter. Once the pretender had calmed down, he gathered several of the notebooks lying about him and began to stack them neatly. “Thank you Miss Parker,” he sighed.
“For what? I haven’t done anything,” she replied.
“Yes you did,” Jarod said, turning his dark gaze on her. “You let me in. When I showed up on your doorstep last night, you didn’t turn me away.”
“Did you think I would?” Parker asked, her calm voice concealing a sudden stab of hurt.
Jarod shrugged. “No. I wasn’t thinking at all really. I just hopped in my car and started driving. I didn’t realize that I was headed for Delaware until I rang your doorbell.” He smiled sadly.
An uncomfortable silence fell. Neither was willing to give voice to what they were both thinking. In the last few days, each had been faced with a traumatic episode in their lives. Despite years of separation, they had turned unquestioningly to the one person they had always trusted.
Parker squirmed uneasily and stood up. They were treading on dangerous ground. She and Jarod were both survivors, repeatedly clawing their way through the past that haunted them. Indomitable spirit and raw determination had seen them each through horrific times. For two such independent souls, it was difficult to admit that the stubbornness that had kept them alive was in part based on the connection between them.
“Well,” Parker cleared her throat. “It’s getting late. We need to get Teddy home.”
Jarod followed suit and let the prior conversation drop. He stood and brushed the nonexistent dirt from the seat of his pants. “I’ve found some things I’d like to take with me,” he said.
“Hurry it up then,” Parker said in a clipped voice.
The pretender gathered items into two large bundles, skillfully cinching them together into an easy to transport package. “Can we stop on the way back for some burgers?” he asked. “I’m starved.”
“God,” Parker rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Are you a bottomless pit or do you just want to annoy me?”
“Both,” Jarod grinned.
“I suppose you want ice cream as well,” Parker moaned.
With a devilish gleam in his eye, Jarod smiled. “Would you find that annoying?” he asked.
“Yes,” she growled in response.
“Then I definitely want ice cream,” Jarod snickered. “Ice cream is always a good idea.”
The awkwardness of a few moments ago was forgotten as the two made their way into the hallway. They bickered playfully all the way to Sydney’s office where they found the older man watching Teddy type “important” messages on the computer.
“Let’s go men,” Parker called to them. “Jarod is buying us dinner.”
- Author’s Note: I’ve been really busy at work as well as taking a class at a nearby college. But now the class has ended and the quarterly reports are all done (and I made my deadline – yippee!). My stress level has dropped dramatically and I now have the time to return to my favorite hobby... writing. Many thanks to all for your patience. And no, e , I don’t ever get tired of reviews.
Veil of Contentment - Part 5
- By Phenyx
- 04/12/04
-
Jarod opened his eyes and woke up. He wasn’t startled into consciousness nor did he wake with the spastic jerking gasp that often roused him. He was simply asleep one moment and awake the next.
The pretender blinked and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. Rolling his head lazily to one side, he yawned and snuggled deeper into the cushions of the couch on which he was lying. The room was dimly lit due to the thick curtains drawn across the windows. Jarod could see daylight at the edges of the draperies. Teddy was sitting on the floor a few feet away, quietly coloring on a large sheet of paper that covered most of the coffee table.
“Morning Ted,” Jarod drawled.
The little boy looked up with a wry grin. “Not any more,” he said. “It’s way past lunchtime.”
“Really?” Jarod asked. Glancing at the watch on his wrist, the pretender was surprised to find that it was well after three o’clock in the afternoon. “Good grief. I’ve been asleep for nearly fourteen hours.”
“You were tired,” Parker’s voice purred. Craning his neck, Jarod looked over his shoulder to find Parker standing in the doorway. She was dressed in typical Saturday afternoon fashion with well-worn jeans and a simple blouse. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Starved,” Jarod rolled his eyes as he sat up and stretched.
Parker nodded and said, “You go wash up while I fix us all a snack.”
“Parker?” Jarod asked in a chagrined voice. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra toothbrush around would you?”
Miss Parker eyed the pretender warily, crossing her arms over her chest. “Left in a hurry did you?”
Jarod shrugged. “The decision to relocate was made rather abruptly I am afraid,” he explained.
“Look in the closet in my bathroom,” she said. “I’ll ask Sydney if he has a clean shirt you could wear.”
“It won’t fit,” Jarod argued.
Miss Parker nodded in agreement. “It will be a little tight. But beggars can’t be choosers, Rat.”
With a grimace of resignation, Jarod headed down the hallway as instructed. He showered quickly and cleaned his teeth. He gave serious consideration to shaving, but decided against it. The only razor in Parker’s bathroom was a delicate pink handled thing and the pretender just wasn’t sure it would serve his purpose.
Finding a plain white undershirt hanging on the outer knob of the bathroom door, Jarod slipped it over his head. The shirt was barely long enough to tuck the edges into his jeans. Yet the other dimensions were just too small, making the shirt cling tightly to his damp body like a second skin. The contours of his chest and abdomen were garishly apparent, leaving nothing to the imagination. Even his nipples were outlined, giving Jarod an uncomfortable feeling of exposure.
As he passed through the livingroom, Jarod grabbed his leather jacket from the chair he had tossed it on last night. He shrugged into the coat and zipped it up halfway to provide some measure of cover. A sudden wave of depression washed over Jarod as it occurred to him that he was practically destitute. Aside from the Mustang parked in Miss Parker’s driveway, Jarod had little more than the clothes on his back, and half of those were borrowed.
Jarod padded barefoot into the kitchen, a dark scowl marring his face. Parker was already there, ladling soup into four bowls on the table. Throwing one leg over the back of the chair, Jarod thudded into his seat and glared at the china before him.
“Did you find a toothbrush?” Parker asked.
“Yes,” Jarod said. With a sigh, he tried to shrug off his sour mood. “Thank you.”
Teddy came bounding into the room with Sydney close on his heels. “My hands are washed Mama,” the boy chirped. “Can I eat now?”
Parker gestured toward a chair in response and placed a bowl in front of the child. Sydney also sat down, unfolding a napkin and placing it on his lap.
“Thank you for the shirt, Sydney,” Jarod said as he plucked a slice of bread from the center of the table. “I’ll need to go out and get some clothes this afternoon.”
“We have plenty of your things in storage,” Sydney volunteered.
Jarod blinked in surprise. “What kind of things?” he asked curiously.
“Just about anything you might need,” Sydney said. “Clothes, linens, even toiletries.”
Parker lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “We kept everything you ever left behind you know,” she explained. “We figured that it all meant something.”
“It did,” Jarod said slowly. “But when the Centre’s power base fell, I assumed you’d gotten rid of all that stuff.”
“Never quite got around to it,” Parker admitted. “Besides,” she continued. “It wasn’t mine to throw away.”
Jarod swallowed and stared at this soup. He was oddly touched that Parker considered him to still be the owner of things he had abandoned so many years ago. What may have seemed like a lot of junk to some people was in reality, the symbolic representation of Jarod’s journey toward freedom. Those things had indeed all carried some meaning, some message he had tried to convey. That Miss Parker had understood that fact, and still honored it, affected the troubled pretender deeply.
“After we eat, we’ll all head up to the Centre,” Parker said. “I haven’t been to the office for days and I wanted to go in and check my email this afternoon anyway. You can take the opportunity to decide what things you would like to keep and what we can dispose of.”
Jarod grinned wryly. “I’m a notorious packrat, Parker.”
“So I had noticed,” she said, rolling her eyes.
A little over an hour later, Jarod found himself riding in the back seat of Miss Parker’s car watching with trepidation as the ominous stone façade of the Centre loomed in the distance. Teddy squirmed with excitement in the seat to Jarod’s left. Being permitted to accompany his adopted mother in to the office was a rare privilege.
As the car glided into a reserved parking space, Jarod tried a few deep, calming breaths. The group left the vehicle and began to climb the stone steps toward the front entrance. Jarod was hanging back a few paces, nervously wiping his sweating palms on his jeans.
Parker noticed his discomfort of course, and smiled reassuringly as she pulled open the glass doors.
“No one will harm you, Jarod,” Sydney said gently. “There is nothing to be afraid of anymore.”
Jarod nodded, a frown furrowing his brow. “I know,” he replied.
“But what your head knows, and what your instincts are telling you are two completely different things, eh?” Parker interjected.
“My instincts are telling me to make a run for it,” Jarod said with a false brightness.
They stepped across the threshold and into the cool dimness of the Centre. Jarod felt as though the sun and been taken from him once again.
“You can’t run forever,” Parker murmured softly.
“Can’t I?” the pretender snapped back, more harshly than he had intended.
“I’ll be in my office for at least two hours,” Parker said, ignoring the pretender’s ire. Without further comment, she took her son by the hand and strode off down the corridor.
Sydney had patients to look in on, psychiatric cases that he had been forced to neglect over the last few days in favor of his personal ties. Not that these inmates had suffered any in Sydney’s absence. The Centre now had a care giving function, quickly becoming a hospital of high repute. As they headed for the storage levels, Jarod had seen several of the residents, Angelo among them, enjoying the fresh air in a garden designed for that purpose. Many poor souls who had spent years confined in the Centre’s darkest rooms were finally getting the treatment they would need to ease them into the real world.
Jarod’s ex-mentor led him to a room on SL-22. Large metal trunks lined the walls, stacked three deep. The room itself was not overly large, and yet it wasn’t small either. Though the area had a markedly unused feel to it, the room was obviously well kept and cleaned regularly. There wasn’t the dust or mustiness one would expect in a subterranean storage area.
“Each case is numbered,” Sydney explained as he took a metal clipboard from a hook on the wall. “Everything has been inventoried on this list.” He handed the sheaf of papers to Jarod. “I’ll come back in a few hours but feel free to come find me if you finish before then.” With that said, Sydney turned and left the room, leaving Jarod to gaze about him in mild wonder.
Ignoring the specific documentation he’d been given, Jarod chose a box at random and heaved it from its place. He slid the box toward the middle of the room where there was plenty of available space. The pretender lifted the hasps and pulled open the lid, frowning a little at the slight hiss of sound that escaped in the process. The trunk had an airtight seal, providing maximum protection for its contents.
Jarod immediately burst into delighted laughter. A bulging-eyed monster of plaster and foam stared up at him. “Hello, Igor,” the pretender murmured. With one long finger, Jarod traced the grotesque features of the oversized contraption then poked it firmly in the chest. But Igor was silent, his batteries having run dead long ago.
Turning toward another trunk, Jarod set about his task.
When Miss Parker came for him several hours later, she found Jarod sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by red notebooks. Every single trunk had been opened and the room was a jumbled mess. The pretender was staring off into space, a million miles away, with a red folder clutched to his chest.
“Jarod?” she called softly. Kneeling carefully at his side so as not to startle him, Parker tried again, “Jarod?”
“Everything I ever left behind, everything I ever mailed to the Centre,” he said. “It is all here.”
“Yes,” Parker answered.
“But the things I sent to your house are missing,” Jarod observed. There was no recrimination in his voice, just the flatness of stating fact.
Pushing aside a handful of notebooks, Parker made a spot for herself on the floor and sat down. “Those were gifts sent to me,” she explained. “They were not meant for anyone else. It was no one else’s business.”
Jarod turned to her with a frown. “You didn’t tell anyone about them?” he asked.
“No.”
“Not even Sydney?”
Parker shook her head solemnly.
“Why?” Jarod asked.
“I doubt it would have gone over well with my father,” Parker answered with a wry grin. “You sent me jewelry for crying out loud.”
The pretender tilted his head curiously. “Does it matter what I sent?” he persisted.
“Yes. It mattered,” Parker sighed. “My grandmother’s ring, the stained glass artwork, the letters from my mother, they were all very special. I could never betray the fact that you had sent them to me.”
Jarod shook his head, sad laughter bubbling from him. “Of all the people in my life, Miss Parker, you alone have never betrayed me. We may not have always been on the same side of the fight, but I could always trust you to react the way I knew you would.”
“I’ve always said that you knew me too well,” Parker chided. Picking up one of the notebooks from the clutter, Parker eyed it nonchalantly as she went on. “Trust is not easily given for us. Once lost, it doesn’t come back.”
“No,” Jarod whispered in anguish.
It wasn’t difficult for Miss Parker to read the signs of Jarod’s distress. He was hurting. The pretender wore his pain like a shroud. Someone close to him had suddenly brought bitter disappointment to Jarod’s life. Parker had little trouble guessing who that someone had been.
“What has she done?” Parker pried.
Jarod sighed in resignation. “There’s another man,” he said simply. “If I had gotten home a few minutes earlier I would no doubt have caught them in my bed.”
Parker shook her head. She felt a swirl of emotions twisting within her. Parker wasn’t sure which was stronger, the anger that made her want to strangle Jarod’s wife, or pity that the girl would never understand what she had lost. “I’m sorry, Jarod,” Parker whispered.
“Why?” Jarod replied. “It wasn’t your fault. I never should have married her.” The pretender’s voice took on a self-recriminating tone. “I thought that was what normal people did. Buy a house, find a job, get married. I just wanted a normal life, you know?”
“More than forty percent of all marriages in this country end in court,” Parker noted. “Maybe you’re a lot closer to normal than you realize.”
The two of them sat in silence for a time, staring at the chaos around them.
“My mother knew,” Jarod said abruptly. “Hell, the entire family probably knew. My mother said that Zoë wasn’t being particularly discrete about the affair.”
Parker glared at Jarod knowingly. “She knew and didn’t tell you about it?”
Jarod nodded his head slowly.
“Shit,” the explicative rolled off Parker’s tongue with such vehemence that it made the pretender flinch.
“She lied to me, Parker,” Jarod said in a small trembling voice.
Parker sighed. “What was your mother supposed to do? It can’t be easy to just blurt something like that out.” She tilted her head and began to mimic his mother in a singsong voice. “Oh by the way dear, your beloved wife was boinking the gardener while you were away. He’s really been neglecting the rose bushes in the front yard.”
“He’s been too busy tending Zoë’s bushes,” Jarod commented dryly.
They looked at each other for a moment, both wide eyed at the crudeness of their comments. Then as if on cue, the two burst into laughter. They cackled hysterically until tears were running down their cheeks and they were both gasping for air.
“This really isn’t funny,” Parker wheezed.
“Yes it is,” Jarod chortled, sobering slowly. “If anyone had told me six years ago that I would be discussing my disastrous love life within the bowels of the Centre, I’d have said they were nuts.” He wiped the moisture from his cheeks. “And with you of all people!”
“Hey!” Parker scolded him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Ann Landers you are not,” Jarod said, crumbling into another fit of cathartic laughter. Once the pretender had calmed down, he gathered several of the notebooks lying about him and began to stack them neatly. “Thank you Miss Parker,” he sighed.
“For what? I haven’t done anything,” she replied.
“Yes you did,” Jarod said, turning his dark gaze on her. “You let me in. When I showed up on your doorstep last night, you didn’t turn me away.”
“Did you think I would?” Parker asked, her calm voice concealing a sudden stab of hurt.
Jarod shrugged. “No. I wasn’t thinking at all really. I just hopped in my car and started driving. I didn’t realize that I was headed for Delaware until I rang your doorbell.” He smiled sadly.
An uncomfortable silence fell. Neither was willing to give voice to what they were both thinking. In the last few days, each had been faced with a traumatic episode in their lives. Despite years of separation, they had turned unquestioningly to the one person they had always trusted.
Parker squirmed uneasily and stood up. They were treading on dangerous ground. She and Jarod were both survivors, repeatedly clawing their way through the past that haunted them. Indomitable spirit and raw determination had seen them each through horrific times. For two such independent souls, it was difficult to admit that the stubbornness that had kept them alive was in part based on the connection between them.
“Well,” Parker cleared her throat. “It’s getting late. We need to get Teddy home.”
Jarod followed suit and let the prior conversation drop. He stood and brushed the nonexistent dirt from the seat of his pants. “I’ve found some things I’d like to take with me,” he said.
“Hurry it up then,” Parker said in a clipped voice.
The pretender gathered items into two large bundles, skillfully cinching them together into an easy to transport package. “Can we stop on the way back for some burgers?” he asked. “I’m starved.”
“God,” Parker rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Are you a bottomless pit or do you just want to annoy me?”
“Both,” Jarod grinned.
“I suppose you want ice cream as well,” Parker moaned.
With a devilish gleam in his eye, Jarod smiled. “Would you find that annoying?” he asked.
“Yes,” she growled in response.
“Then I definitely want ice cream,” Jarod snickered. “Ice cream is always a good idea.”
The awkwardness of a few moments ago was forgotten as the two made their way into the hallway. They bickered playfully all the way to Sydney’s office where they found the older man watching Teddy type “important” messages on the computer.
“Let’s go men,” Parker called to them. “Jarod is buying us dinner.”
