Man In A Million

“No,” she replied. “Never mind. Thank you.” She could pursue this herself without her mother’s help.

Prue came home an hour later and sympathized while she made tea.

“Why would Mom have lied to me again?” Paris demanded.

Prue took the boiling kettle off the stove and poured water into a fat brown teapot she’d already warmed with hot water and fitted with a loose tea infuser. Had Paris been doing it, she’d have simply poured hot water into two mugs and dunked a tea bag, but Prue was into ritual. She carried the pot to the table, put a calico cozy on it, then went back to the cupboard for china cups and saucers.

“It’s pretty obvious she doesn’t want you to meet him, whoever he is,” Prue said frankly.

“I have a right to know who he is.”

“Not if he’s going to hurt you.”

Paris gasped impatiently. “Prue, life isn’t all about hair and makeup and cups that match the teapot! Sometimes it’s messy, and if that’s my life, I have a right to know.”

Prue frowned at her testy remark. “Yes. I’m not telling you you don’t have a right to know, I’m just speculating on why Mom won’t tell you.”

“Well, I’m going to call him.” Paris whipped the cozy off the pot and poured the weak but steaming tea into Prue’s cup, feeling guilty for snapping at her. Then she poured her own. “First thing in the morning.”

“What if you get his wife, who doesn’t know he fathered a child that isn’t hers? Or one of his boys?”

“I’ll be careful. I won’t talk to anyone but him.”

“Okay.” Prue dipped her spoon into the sugar bowl. “Want me to drive for you in the morning so you can make the call? I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but I know you’ll do what you want to do, anyway.”

“The truth,” Paris said loftily, “is always the right thing.”

“Noble,” Prue acknowledged, “but probably not always right.”

“You can’t pick and choose with it,” Paris countered.

Prue stirred the sugar into her tea. “You should go back to law school. You certainly sound like a lawyer. All black and white, right and wrong.”

“Before I can do anything relating to my future,” Paris insisted, “I have to settle this. Good or bad, I have to know. And then I can go on.”

“What if it’s harder than you think?”

“I can handle it.” At least, that was her plan.

Prue sighed. “Well, you’re a better woman than I am. I’d be happy knowing Jasper loved me like his own.”

“I do love knowing that,” Paris said defensively. “I just also need to know who my biological father is. Then I can reorganize my life and get somewhere with it.”

“I thought you were doing pretty well. You provide a much-needed service in this town.”

Paris sipped at her tea. “I like the work, but anybody could do it.”

“I don’t think so,” Prue argued. “Not everyone would let the old folks run a tab, or keep an eye out for runaways, or take the homeless to the clinic as a service to the community.”

“It’s a custodial world. We’re supposed to take care of one another.”

Prue shook her head at her. “That’s radical thinking in today’s world. Well, maybe not in Maple Hill, but almost anywhere else. You certainly don’t hear that kind of talk in political circles, I assure you. Except for Gideon, and that apparently was just a front.”

Paris decided they’d talked enough about her problems. Prue was doing her best to be supportive, and the least she could do was return the favor. “Do you miss that life?” she asked. “The politics and the power parties?”

“Sometimes.” Prue pushed away from the table and went to the cupboard for a box of thin ginger cookies she claimed were a safe indulgence. Paris thought it a crime to waste valuable calories on something that wasn’t chocolate or cream-filled, but she was determined to be cooperative. She took a cookie when Prue offered her the box.

Prue fell back into her chair. “Then I remember all the nights Gideon came home after midnight, all the plans we had to cancel at the last minute, all the things we planned to do but never got to because something more important had to be taken care of. I accepted it at the time, but now that I don’t have to, I’m happy to live for me.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Paris said quietly, “that Gideon would have done that to you. The intern, I mean.”

Prue grew defensive. She always did when Paris suggested that fooling around with an intern in their summer home in Maine was unlike her brother-in-law’s straight-arrow approach to life and politics. “You always take his side, but I saw it with my own eyes. They were on the sofa, and she was in her underwear. How else would you explain that?”

“I don’t know,” Paris replied, “but I think I’d have asked that he try.”

“He’s a politician.” Prue’s eyes filled with turbulence, and her cheeks with color—other effects Gideon’s name always had on her. “He can explain away anything. I know what I saw, and no one’s going to make me believe that it wasn’t what it looked like.” She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Washington does that to you. The success of your cause is worth whatever it takes to accomplish it. Men wheel and deal, gain power, make life-and-death decisions for millions of people and finally come to believe that they deserve whatever they want in recompense.”

Again, that didn’t sound like Gideon. Paris remembered him when he was an alderman in Finchbury, a town on the other side of Springfield, and fought big money and the almost rabid historic conservationists who wanted to oust every resident and retailer in a block of old buildings downtown and turn the area into an interpretive center. He’d slaved for a year to get the funding to restore the buildings, maintain the businesses and the residences, and turn a large upstairs room into a sort of miniconvention center. Everyone praised his efforts as the perfect combination of conservation and commerce.

But Paris kept that to herself. Prue’s ignition switch was always hot where her soon-to-be ex-husband was concerned.

“Well, the best revenge is living well, they say.” She reached across the table to pat Prue’s hand. “And you’re about to become a brilliant designer.” She gave her sister a small grin. “And if I’m going to have to eat these ginger things until the fashion show, you’d better move up the date.”

“SAINTS AND SINNERS!” A smooth voice answered the phone just after nine the following morning. Paris had stared at the phone for a full hour before mustering the courage to dial. She’d told Prue she’d make her call at 8:00 a.m.

At eight-fifteen, Prue had anxiously checked with her. “What did he say?”

“I haven’t called yet,” Paris had admitted.

“I’m sorry. I’m not rushing you.”

“It’s all right. I’m calling now.”

Prue checked again at eight-thirty.

“I still haven’t done it. But I’m going to. Now.”

“You’re sure you want to know?”

“I’m sure.”

The voice was younger than Jeffrey St. John would be, Paris felt sure. She tried to sound like a prospective client.

“I’d like to speak to Jeffrey St. John, please,” she said.

“This is Jeffrey St. John,” the voice replied. “Did you want to make a booking?”

“Jeffrey St. John,” she asked carefully, “who was in the chorus of Damn Yankees?”