AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah. I get that.” He supposed that a person could get desperate enough to do pretty much anything.
For him, he’d have to be really desperate before he went to Pam’s mom and asked for anything, but despite how much trouble she’d given Pam through the years, he knew Pam still loved her. Still wanted to have a relationship with her. Still wanted her mom to finally someday say that Pam had done a good job.
She was still waiting for that to happen. Mark wasn’t sure it ever would, but he wasn’t going to fault Pam for her optimism.
“You know, it’s odd that you’d be here on such a beautiful spring day.” She turned to look at him, her eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”
He grinned a little, her question echoing his from earlier. Probably born out of the same thing. They’d been friends long enough that they knew each other so well that they could pretty much read each other’s minds. That kind of thing didn’t happen overnight. It only happened when a person spent a lot of time with someone, knew them well enough, and cared to get to know them. He spent a lot of time with people over the years who couldn’t say the first thing about him, because they just didn’t care to learn. Of course, he’d been guilty of knowing people like that too.
That was something Pam was really good at. She cared about people, and she didn’t just say she did. She showed it.
She definitely helped him in that area. He’d been rather blind about people and his effect on them when he and Pam had first started hanging out.
He liked to think that maybe there were some things that he had helped her with.
“Are you gonna tell me?” she asked, giving him a look that said that she knew that his mind had gone in a completely different direction.
“You got my mind off my problems. Now you want me to focus on them again?” he asked, only partially teasing. It was nice that he’d been able to come and talk to Pam, and somehow, she always made his problems seem like they weren’t as big as what he felt like they were. Even if it was because her problems seemed bigger.
“Just because my problems overshadow yours doesn’t mean that yours isn’t as important.”
“No, but it means that I wasn’t thinking about mine. Which I appreciated, but now that you forced me to confront it again—”
“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t force you to confront anything. You’re going to have to think about it at some point, and it’ll be easier if you talk to me about it first.”
“You’re right about that,” he said, becoming serious immediately. He could do that with Pam. He didn’t have to be funny or joking all the time. It was okay for him to be himself around her. “My sister asked for a favor today.”
“Oh. What are you doing for her?” she asked right away, knowing that he never turned his sister down. He always did his best to try to help her out however he could. They’d been close growing up, and he spent a lot of time with his nieces, both during her divorce and after it, helping her out however he could. Their parents had moved to Utah, for his dad’s job, and his sister and he had stayed in Michigan, even though his sister was down in Detroit.
“I’m not sure I’m going to do it,” he finally admitted.
“You’re not?” she asked, with all the shock in her voice that he would’ve expected. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d told his sister no.
“No. I’m not. She... Do you remember Stacy?” he asked, cringing a little at even mentioning her name. She did not invoke good memories.
“Your sister’s best friend? The one that was here... Was it three summers ago? Four? She took Bruno to the pound and somehow managed to kill all of the plants in the greenhouse. That Stacy?”
“That’s the one.” It wasn’t a happy summer. And it was only two summers ago.
Bruno was the dog that had been with him for almost fifteen years. He was old, and decrepit, and a little senile. He peed on Stacy’s bag or something, and Stacy had gotten mad and loaded him up and took him to the pound.
That had been the final straw that it took for him to tell his sister that Stacy was moving out.
They were both schoolteachers and had the summers off. They wanted to stay at his place, near the beach, for some relaxation. He didn’t mind. He often hosted his nieces, and he had three bedrooms upstairs. He only used one, and he didn’t care who stayed in the other two. Unless they took his dog to the pound. Or killed all his plants. That had been hard to recover from, from both a personal and business perspective.
“I can’t believe that she would even suggest such a thing. I mean...wow.”
“Apparently Stacy needs a place to spend the summer because they’re redoing her apartment. Paulette wanted me to open up one of my rooms for her. Honestly, I’d share my house with anyone. But... And I don’t believe in holding grudges, I mean, you’ve got to forgive and forget. But...”
“That woman doesn’t know what boundaries are. You don’t take someone’s elderly dog to the pound. And I’m not even sure what she was doing in your greenhouse.”
“She said she was watering the plants. She just watered them with my herbicide. I mean, that was an honest mistake, but it was an expensive one too.”
“She never offered to pay?”
“She did not.”
He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He didn’t know Stacy’s financial situation. But she seemed to live fairly well on whatever money she made, always wearing nice clothes and eating well while she was there. Plus, he’d seen her apartment. It was extremely nice, in a gated community, with all the amenities.
