Jeff Shelby - Thread of Hope

“Stop,” she said.

“…maybe he decided it was cheaper to marry you than pay for you on a nightly basis.”

“Stop,” she said again, more force behind it this time.

I dropped the coaster back to the table and she flinched. “And now your daughter has apparently picked up where you left off.”

Her entire expression froze. I searched her face for some sort of recognition, some tic, some cue, that told me she wasn’t hearing that for the very first time.

I found none.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

The question sat between us for a long moment.

“Meredith has been working as a prostitute,” I said finally.

She immediately shook her head. “Impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible.”

“Meredith isn’t like that.”

“Like you?”

“She’s not at all like me, Mr. Tyler,” she said, her voice edged with anger.

“Did she know about your past?”

The anger faded and was replaced with hesitancy.

“I can run down your history in Vegas if you want,” I said. “I got it from a cop. I know I’m not wrong.”

She whispered something that I couldn’t understand.

“What?”

“Jon doesn’t know.”

I stayed quiet.

She placed her hands on her knees and for a moment, I thought she was going to vomit. But she took several deep breaths, staring at the ground before she looked at me again.

“Jon doesn’t know,” she said. “I’ve never told him. I met him…” Her voice trailed off.

I sat there, my mouth closed, watching her.

“I met him after I’d already decided to leave…that life,” she said after a long pause. “I didn’t want to revisit it with him and I knew what he’d think.”

“So you were done hooking when you met?”

“He wasn’t a john, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.

“No, what I asked was if you were done hooking when you met?””

She was trying to strike an indignant pose, but couldn’t quite put it all together. And I wasn’t entirely sure why I was pressing her as to how she and Jordan had met, but I felt like I was close to uncovering something I’d been looking for.

She remained silent and that gave me my answer. “So you weren’t out of the game then.”

“I was on my way out,” she said, averting my eyes.

“Much easier to go out on the arm of a really rich guy, I’ll bet.”

The anger percolated in her eyes again. “I love my husband. I always have.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

“No, but I understand what you’re insinuating,” she said, her words hard and cold. She sat back in the sofa and folded her arms across her chest. “Of course it was easier to walk away with someone like Jon. But I’d already decided to leave. I don’t give a shit whether or not you believe that.”

“And he doesn’t know?” I asked.

“I’ve never said a word to him,” she said, her eyes slipping away from mine again.

“Did Meredith know?” I asked.

Her expression changed to something I couldn’t read. She looked down at her hands, as if the answer might be written on her fingers. Her fingers clamped tighter to her knees. “Yes. She found out.”

“Some asshole at her school,” Olivia Jordan said, the words coming out of her mouth as if they were made of acid. “She came home and confronted me.”

We’d sat in silence for about five minutes after she told me that Meredith had discovered her secret. Anxiety squeezed her face and I kept waiting for her to cry. But the tears never came.

“A kid at Coronado told her,” I repeated.

She nodded. “I was outside, planting flowers. I heard her car pull up in the drive. She got out of her car, walked right up to me and said ‘You were a hooker.’ Just like you did.”

“Was she upset?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not really. I think she was happy to have something to hold over me.”

“Who told her?”

“She never said. But she had details that were about right, so someone did.”

I wondered now if it was someone other than a classmate. “What details?”

She snorted. “That I fucked men for money. Again, just about what you said to me.”

I couldn’t tell whether she wanted me to feel guilty or whether she was just stating fact. I didn’t care. “You told me you were working at The Zenith when you met Jordan.”

“I was.”

“In what capacity?”

She sighed, but it carried more irritation than weary. “In the capacity you’d think.”

“So that was bullshit about how you met.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d appreciate the nuance of prostitution when you asked me the first time,” she said, then waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Yes, I used to work in the hotel. I met him in the bar when I was having a drink.”

“When you were getting out of the business,” I said.

Her cheeks flushed. “No matter what you think, Mr. Tyler, I was getting out. But it’s not like you can just walk away.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are others involved.”

“Pimps?”

“With the level of clientele I serviced, we called them managers,” she said.

“Sure. So, what? Your manager didn’t want you to leave?”

“Of course not,” she said, frowning. “I was a good earner.” She immediately closed her mouth and the color returned to her cheeks as she realized what she was saying. “My clients paid a good amount of money for my time. I was a strong asset.”

It was clear to me through the vocabulary that she was using that she had completely re-imagined, maybe even dressed up, what she had been. I didn’t know what her circumstances were back then and it was none of my business, but listening to her attempt to dignify her work, I was embarrassed for her.

“Did Meredith threaten to go to her father?” I asked.

Something flashed through Olivia Jordan’s eyes and was followed quickly by anger. “Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.”

“You obviously didn’t want her to.”

“How very astute of you.”

“You bribe her? Threaten her?”

I expected an immediate denial, but got a moment of silence instead.

“Yes. I threatened to tell her father about her relationship with Derek. The truth about it. That she was sexually active.”

“He knew she was having sex,” I said. “He told me that himself. You talked to him about getting Meredith birth control.”

She nodded. “Yes. But he didn't know that she was dumb enough to pick up an STD. Jon would've freaked out and she knew that. I told her I'd tell him.”

I didn't say anything.

“You have to understand something about Meredith,” she finally said, the lines deepening on her forehead. “About the relationship I have with her. It isn’t the greatest.”

“That’s not what you told me the first time we talked.”

She hiked her shoulders as if that was ancient history. “I answered your questions.”

“I asked if you had a good relationship with your daughter and you said you did,” I reminded her.

“What I said was that I liked to think so,” she said.

My stomach tightened. I had misread Olivia Jordan after my initial visit with her. She had carefully chosen each word she’d spoken to me, in case it came back on her. It had and she was prepared.

“Tell me exactly what that means,” I said through clenched teeth.

“It means, Mr. Tyler, that my daughter can be a serious pain in the ass and that we don’t always get along,” she explained. “She’s a teenager. She doesn’t like her parents very much.”

“Her father has the same problems with her then?”

“You’d have to ask him.”