Many Shades of Gray (26 page)

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“I thought you said you were going to be good,” Simon said softly. He waited for Janice’s mother to turn to face him.

“Are you in love with Mary Jo, Mr. Kohl?”

“Yes, Mrs. Adams, I am.”

The couple exchanged looks. Then her mother looked at Simon again. “That’s obvious, you can’t keep your eyes or your hands off her.”

“Was it my loving her that you were worried about?” Simon observed the woman as he talked to her. She didn’t appear to have any problems with him being white, neither did the father, but still he wondered why the woman had suddenly and deliberately gone for the one topic that Janice hated to talk about.

He watched as the woman turned toward her husband. When silent communication flashed between the couple, he wondered whether he and Janice would ever achieve that. Would there ever come a time when she would trust him with her innermost thoughts. A deep yearning filled his chest and he wished for that bond with Janice more than anything.

“We weren’t worried about you, Mr. Kohl.”

“Call me Simon. I’m going to be your son-in-law.” Simon smiled. “If you weren’t worried about me, that means you were worried about Janice.”

“Mary Jo.”

“Mary Jo,” Simon mimicked, deciding to go with the flow. He wanted to learn as much about the woman he loved as possible. Now if he didn’t alienate her parents, he might finally get real information.

Carol Adams smiled slowly and shrugged her shoulders. “It’s just that I’ve been waiting an awfully long time to hear my little girl say she was in love. She hasn’t been since…” She held back a sob.

Simon sat quietly waiting, something alerting him that this was what he wanted, what he’d spent thousands of dollars on and still hadn’t found.

“Mary Jo doesn’t like to tell people how she feels about them.”

“I know,” Simon said quietly and caught another look that passed between the couple.

“You’re hurting from that, aren’t you?” Carol Adam asked quietly.

Simon smiled but didn’t answer.

“You don’t have to say it. We’ve been waiting years to hear her tell us again too.” The woman shrugged her shoulders again. “I guess that’s why I try and pick fights with her even though I know I’m going about it in the wrong way. It only turns her off, makes her more standoffish, makes her not come home, not call.”

She tilted her face to look at Simon. “I was surprised that she called a week or so ago. I know it was your doing. Why do you want us here?”

Simon smiled. “I want a family. I want lots of kids. My parents are gone. I want grandparents; you two are going to be that. So I wanted to get to know you. I don’t want our kids to not have that. Everybody needs someone they can count on.”

“Can you count on Mary Jo?” Carol asked.

“She loves me,” Simon said licking his lips. “Listen, I’m not a fool. I wouldn’t be marrying her if I didn’t know that.” Again a look passed between the couple. “Don’t,” he said, “don’t pity me. She loves me.”

“Wouldn’t you like to hear her tell you that?”

“You said you’ve been trying for years.”

“Have you told Mary Jo that you love her?”

He bit his lips softly, narrowing his eyes and looking toward the door Janice had run through. “Yes, even though she didn’t want me to.” He grinned. “Was there ever a time that she didn’t mind saying or hearing the words?” He snapped his head back around, knowing the couple was going to communicate silently again.

Carol shrugged her shoulders. “When she was young.”

“What happened?” Simon asked, his throat closing up, his voice strangely brittle. Hell, what was he doing? He’d always known. There was no doubt in his mind that she’d had no problem telling Tommy Strong that she loved him.

“What did he do to her?” he asked.

“I wish I knew. It was like one day she went to bed this happy girl who would stand toe to toe with the devil and fight to the death. The only person she never fought with was Tommy. I always wished that she would, that she wouldn’t just let him lead her around.”

An uneasy feeling developed in the pit of his stomach and Simon wished he’d never asked. “She never told you what happened?”

“No. All I know is that one day she was Mary Jo, the next she was this Janice Lace person, as different from my baby as day from night. I didn’t know her. In the beginning it was kind of nice that she’d mellowed, that she wasn’t fighting everyone on everything. Then I saw that she wasn’t just learning to control her temper. It was like my baby had died. Ever since I’ve been trying to revive her, but nothing I do or say has made a dent.”

“So you fight with her to make her fight back?”

“Yes, but she won’t. She doesn’t fight anymore.”

“That’s not quite true,” Simon said softly, then laughed. “That’s what we do most of the time. You don’t have to worry about her following me around like she adores me.” The last Simon said a bit wistfully.

“Yeah, but I kind of wish she did. I wish she wasn’t so afraid to show her emotions.”

“Did you ever ask Tommy?” Simon asked. The words burned in his throat and he closed his eyes briefly, blinked, then looked straight at the woman.

“Yes, Tommy always said he didn’t know. Actually we’ve seen him more in the past few years than we have our daughter. He always sends us her books when they come out.”

“She doesn’t send them to you?”

“Yes, she sends them.”

“So why does Tommy send them?”

“I guess he just wants us to have them and maybe he thinks Mary Jo won’t send them. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s his way of still feeling close to Mary Jo.”

“Do you think he still loves her?”

“I don’t know. Most of the time he won’t talk about her.”

“When did she change her name?” Simon asked.

“Right after she went through that breakup. She sent us a note saying, ‘I’ve changed my name legally. It’s now Janice Lace.’ ”

Her father cringed and shook his head. “We named her after my mother. It was a slap in the face when she did that.”

“Is that why you disapproved of her writing?”

“We never disapproved of her writing; she just thought we did. We read her books. Yes, there was a lot of sex in them, more than we would have liked to know that she knew about, but we’re not dumb about sex. I mean, look how long we’ve been married.” She looked at her husband. “And we have had a satisfying relationship, haven’t we, honey?”

Joe laughed and his eyes sparked. “The best.”

“So why did she think you hated her books?”

“I’m a deacon.”

“Oh,” Simon said, beginning to understand.“When you started reading her books, did you ever tell her that you didn’t disapprove?”

“No.”

Simon shook his head.

“I know, I just wanted to get her back to the way she used to be. She wouldn’t even fight back to defend her work. It was as if she no longer cared. Her soul and her spirit were dead and what we got was a shell. I’m sick to death of having a daughter who’s a shell.”

Janice’s mother sighed, then Janice’s father, then Simon. They all laughed.

“I was hoping that you’d done what I couldn’t.”

“I’ve tried,” Simon admitted.

“How, what did you do?”

Simon smiled. He wasn’t about to answer that question.

“Maybe that’s the problem. I think you’ve asked too nicely. I think you should demand for her to tell you that she loves you.”

“Didn’t you try commanding her?”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” her mother admitted.

“How did that turn out?” Simon said, standing. “Did she yield to your demands?” he asked with a knowing look. “Good night, I’ll see you in the morning.”

Simon started up the stairs only to be stopped by Carol’s voice.

“Are you planning on sleeping with my daughter while we’re here? Can’t you wait until we’re gone?”

Simon was amused. “How long are you staying?”

“Are you wishing now you hadn’t invited us?”

“No, but I am rethinking that whole hotel thing,” Simon said and ran up the stairs two at a time, laughing.

He pushed the door open and stood for a moment looking at Janice on the divan, pretending to be reading, pretending that she didn’t know he was in the room.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked.

She finally turned her head toward him and his heart caught in his throat. God, how he loved her.

“Why did you stay down there so long?”

Simon narrowed his eyes and stared at her. She was behaving oddly, almost as if she were jealous of the time he’d spent with her parents. But that was crazy. She was never jealous of the women who threw themselves at him.

“It would have been rude if both of us had left them alone.” He decided to change the subject. “Your mother doesn’t want me sleeping with you.” He smiled as she rolled her eyes. “What?” he asked.

“It figures. She thinks I’m a sinner bound for hell anyway.”

“I don’t think so,” Simon said, still watching her closely.

“You’re taking her side now. I thought you said I could trust you to be there for me.”

His gaze narrowed. “But honey this isn’t…” He saw the expression on her face and stopped. For some reason, this was important to her, and he wasn’t going to belittle it. He walked farther into the room, came and knelt by the divan, his arms going around her as he pulled her close.

“If you want me to be angry at your mother I will.” He felt her shift. Then her hand went into his hair and she began caressing him. He pulled back and stared so long into her eyes that she trembled. Still he stared.

“Can’t you tell me what happened with Tommy, baby?” Wrong question. She closed off, pushed him away, and walked toward the bed. He followed. He took her face in his hands and stared at her, shaking his head slowly.

“You really have no idea how much you mean to me, do you? I thought this was all an act, that you were just afraid. I thought you had to be blind not to know how I feel. Now I see it’s not an act, you really don’t know.” Simon kissed her eyelids, her nose, a butterfly soft kiss on her lips, then walked away.

“Where are you going?” Janice had to stop him. She was trembling inside. The thought of Simon walking away from her again was unbearable. She’d just been through hell and back thinking he’d abandoned her. She couldn’t go through it again.

“Your mother doesn’t want me sleeping with you. I decided to sleep in a guest room.”

“Simon, don’t leave.”

He stared at her.

“Please,” she pleaded, “don’t leave me.”

He shook his head and licked his lips. “I think maybe I should.”

“I had an abortion.”

Simon’s heart stopped; surely she wasn’t telling him that she’d aborted his child. He felt the blood drain from his face and his hand fisted at his side.

“When?” he asked.

“Twelve years ago.”

“What…?” He blinked, not understanding at first. He’d been so shocked that he hadn’t really heard the date. When he did, it was as though someone plunged a samurai sword through his body. Pregnancy was something he had thought he would share with her, something she’d never shared with another man. The pain consumed him and disappointment rose in him. Then he saw the pain in her face and hurt so much for her that he allowed his own pain to fade away.

“I know how much you wanted to share something with me that neither of us had ever shared with anyone else. I’m sorry, Simon, I wish I could give you that.”

So did he, but he wouldn’t say that to her, not now. He wrapped her in his arms, felt her quiver, heard her sob and he held her even closer. Damn Tommy Strong.

“I didn’t lie to you when I said we both called it quits. We did. It’s true that in the end I was the one who walked away from him, but I had a reason for saying he was the one who ended things.” Janice sighed, knowing that he wasn’t going to press her but that she was still about to divulge information to Simon that she had not told another living soul. It was time she told him.

“When I was eighteen I became pregnant. I told Tommy and he took off. He didn’t tell me where he was going or if he were ever coming back. I had never been so scared or felt so alone in my entire life.

“I couldn’t tell my parents. For one thing they would have been so disappointed in me. I had told them repeatedly that Tommy and I were not having sex and they believed me. And they would have forced me to have the baby. I didn’t know if I could handle that without him so I went to the bank, took money out of my account and had an abortion three days after Tommy left.

“I was awake during the entire procedure. It hurt like hell but I refused to cry. I can’t tell you all the guilt I felt. Everything went through my mind—my beliefs about taking a life, my morals, my sincere desire for a baby. My abject shame over anyone finding out that I’d slept with Tommy, that he’d left me, kept me silent. When the procedure was over so was my love for Tommy.

“He returned two days later with a ring and told me, not asked, mind you, that we would get married. I told him that he didn’t have to worry about changing his plans or mine, that I had made my own choices, that I was no longer pregnant and he could go on with his life.”