Read Online Coming Undone by Susan Andersen - Free Book Online

at the same time…“‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’” he said with conviction, “that thy days may be long upon the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Exodus 20:12 was one of the Bible’s most pertinent passages and Priscilla Jayne grasped its importance. That made her a woman in a million in this immoral age they lived in.
    Certainly his own daughter had never shown him the respect he deserved.
    He brought himself up short with an impatient shake of his head. No. He wouldn’t think about that.
    Not now. Not today.
    The moment he entered his modest frame house, the man went straight to the dining room, where he drew the drapes against prying eyes and the hot, Midwestern sun. Except then it was too dim and the overhead light didn’t help much. He’d been waiting for these articles with far too much anticipation to miss a single word.
    He fetched the gooseneck lamp from the living room, arranged it where it would do the most good and plugged it in.
    Nodding in satisfaction, he made a quick trip to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of iced tea but was too impatient to drink it at the kitchen table as was his custom. He brought it back to the dining room and, after placing the glass just so on a paper napkin he’d positioned in the exact center of the heart-of-pine trestle table, he slit open the envelope. Shaking its contents onto the pristine surface, he meticulously aligned the papers, took a sip of his tea and restored the glass to the precise spot from which he’d retrieved it. Heart quickening in anticipation, he reached for the first article.
    After reading it, however, his heart pounded with another emotion. Priscilla Jayne had fired her mother as her manager?
    That wasn’t following the fifth commandment. That wasn’t being a proper daughter at all.
    Still, it was one piece of writing, and that from one of the more sensationalistic publications. Perhaps they had skewed the story in order to sell more copies of their rag. Those kind of journals were sued all the time for doing exactly that. He reached for the next article in the pile.
    Several minutes later, he’d gone through the entire stack of material. He sat back with his fist clenched next to the newly straightened pile. What had happened to all those pretty sentiments Priscilla Jayne had expressed on that CMT interview he’d watched several months back? She’d seemed so different from the usual young woman of today—more moral, more pure. Certainly as different from his daughter, Mary, as a woman could get. He had developed an instant and total admiration for her.
    But she wasn’t honoring her mother now in any manner that he could see. Fingernails biting into his palms, he glared at the faded wallpaper on the far wall without actually seeing it.
    That was just plain wrong.
     
    “T HANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT , Klamath Falls! You’ve been a great audience!” Stepping back from the mic, P.J. blotted perspiration from her forehead with the back of her wrist and reached for her water bottle. The throng crowding the dance floor and the tables surrounding it roared their approval, and she grinned. But it was late, she’d been doing this for seven nights straight, and when the lights slowly dimmed onstage, exhaustion rolled over her. She walked over to thank the band she’d jammed with tonight, then climbed down from the stage.
    Tomorrow she’d catch up with her band in Portland. Between traveling and the sound check she had scheduled at the arena to prepare for the tour’s first concert that evening, it was bound to be a long and busy day. But that was tomorrow. Tonight she just wanted her bed at the Crater Lake Lodge.
    The thought of her room perked her up, and she cast a triumphant smile in Jared’s direction. Not that he likely saw it, sitting as he was at the back of the room with his legs stretched out beneath the table in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest and his new charcoal-gray Resistol pulled low over his eyes.