Jeanne Adams - Dark and Deadly

Torie scoffed. “You didn’t leave me to dangle, Pammie. I was okay until somebody started shooting at me.”

“Yeah, so okay that you retreated to North Carolina again?”

“Hey,” Torie protested. “I like North Carolina.”

“So do I, but you go there to hide. I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”

“Pam, don’t beat yourself up over this. Besides,” Torie added, “I wouldn’t have let you come. I needed the brooding time. I had a lot to think about.”

“Seems like you’ve been doing more thinking lately than you have in a while.”

“Since the wedding. You know what?”

“What?”

“I think I’ve been waiting, all this time, for him to come back.”

“What? That’s crazy, you have not. He did come back, remember, asked you a bunch of times to reconsider, get married.”

“I don’t mean literally.”

“Oh,” Pam rolled her eyes. “This is the deep soul-searching stuff.”

“Don’t knock it. It’s the only way I change. You know that.”

Pam smiled, despite her grousing. “I know, honey. So what did you learn on the beach?”

“That I was waiting. Waiting to do stuff. Waiting to move, to get out of what had been our house. Waiting to figure out if I still liked working for TruStructure.”

“What the hell were you waiting for? ”

Torie shook her head, mildly disgusted at her realizations. “I don’t know. Now that I see that, I feel like I’ve wasted so much time. I didn’t want Todd to come back, but I sure didn’t move on with my life, did I?”

“Well, kind of. You dated a lot.”

“That turned out so well for everyone involved.” Torie shuddered as she said it. “But I wasn’t really looking, you know? I wasn’t dating people who could have been, well, you know, possible husbands or anything. I dated random people who happened to ask.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Pam said, a bit defensively.

“No, there isn’t as long as you know it, but I kept telling myself and you, too, that I was looking for Mister Right.”

“True. And all of them were Mister Wrong, not to mention Mister Wrong Side of the Tracks.”

“Yeah, him, too.” Torie laughed, remembering the one date she’d had with a bartender. “You know, I don’t think anything ever happened to him. I should tell Tibbet.”

“Make a note, but let’s do the fun stuff first.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

For the first time in years, maybe ever, Torie felt free. She was buying a car she liked, to haul around dogs she really wanted. She was going to forget practicality and rent a house that needed massive work while she was simultaneously trying to rebuild her own house. She was, in the deepest darkest places of her mind, considering opening her own business. Given the way TruStructure had treated her when the press was hounding her, she wasn’t sure she could go back. If she did, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay.

She hadn’t had the courage to tell Pam about the business thing yet. It was too new an idea.

Not to Paul, her subconscious whispered. He suggested it, supported it. Told you to go for it.

“Fuck Paul,” she muttered.

Unfortunately, Pam heard her.

“What did you say? Did I just hear you use the f-word again? What is this, twice in a week? Lord, you’ve gone years between breaking bad and cussing like that, and now you’re driven to fuck twice in one week?”

Torie couldn’t help it. The opening for the joke was there, and she took it.

“I only fucked him once, thank you very much.”

Pam goggled at her. Then giggled. Then laughed.

Before she knew it, the two of them were laughing hysterically, to the point of tears. Several of the sales-people had looked out of the dealership and seen them, but neither she nor Pam could stop.

“Don’t look at me,” Pam said, still snickering. She deliberately looked out the driver’s side window, up at the sky. “Don’t look at me. I’ll never stop if you keep looking at me.”

“I’m not looking at you,” Torie protested, wiping her eyes. She flipped the mirror down from the visor to check her makeup. “Jeez, I haven’t laughed like that in—” she stopped to think and couldn’t remember a time—“forever.”

Pam was taking deep breaths, and Torie started to giggle again. “You look like a dying fish with all that heaving.”

“Fish don’t have great boobs to heave,” Pam said, bursting into laughter again.

They finally got themselves under control. “I needed that,” Pam said, checking her own makeup. “Lord knows, you did, too.”

“Yeah. So let’s go buy a car.”

“Wonder if they think we’re lesbians?”

The question sent them off into fresh gales of laughter. By the time they finished the paperwork on the car and handed the check over, the salesman was laughing, too. He promised the car would be ready by the weekend.

“Thanks, Pete,” Torie said as they shook hands. “I’ll look forward to picking it up.”

“You’re welcome. It was a pleasure.” He smiled at her, and held her hand longer than necessary. He also smiled at Pam, telling her he was available whenever she wanted a new car.

“Or anything else,” Pam said, still giggling as they got into her car. “Men are so obvious.”

“He was, that’s for sure.”

“They all are, but you’re finally noticing it. How do you think I get all that stuff done? I know the signs, and use them to my advantage.”

Thinking about all the vibes Pete the car salesman had been sending, Torie nodded. She hadn’t paid much attention to it before.

“I guess it’s time to start noticing that kind of thing.”

“You’ll get a lot more done,” Pam joked. “And you’re gonna need it with all you’re taking on. How are you going to do it once you go back to work?”

Torie took a deep breath, and said the words out loud for the first time. “I’m not sure I’m going back.”

Horns honked and there was a brief screech of tires as Pam swerved the car, staring at Torie. “What did you say?”

“I have a lot saved, thanks to Todd. I, uh, think maybe I won’t go back.” It sounded weak, even to her ears, so she tried again. More firmly she said, “They treated me badly, Pammie. I think I might go out on my own.”

“You’re kidding? Finally?”

Stung, Torie pouted. “What do you mean, finally? TruStructure has been good to me.”

“They’ve sucked off all your ideas, you mean. Any big project has had your stamp on it, whether your name was on it or not. It’s about time you hoisted your own flag, and flipped those guys the bird.”

Torie laughed at the thought of a flag with a middle finger raised in salute, flapping over TruStructure’s building. That would be fun. She told Pam, which set them laughing again.

“You’re killing me here, girl,” Pam said, still chuckling. “We’re going to have to run by my house, repair makeup.”

“Lunch first,” Torie said. “I’m starving.”

“Okay. We’ll call Kuhman while we wait for our food.”

The lunch turned into a business meeting. Borrowing paper from the manager, they outlined a business plan for Torie’s new venture. Using another four or five pages, they wrote down more ideas they’d had for the houses.

“That upper bedroom, the big one that isn’t the master,” Pam said, “that would make an awesome office. That balcony would be really cool to enjoy while you’re working.”

Torie could see it taking shape. All of it, ultimately, due to Todd’s generosity.

As if the thought had summoned him, Torie’s phone rang. It was Paul.

“Good morning,” she greeted him warmly, and Pam’s eyebrows rose.