Coming Undone Read Online Free PDF Page B

occasional screw-up against us, we promise to give you the best show we possibly can. Now, we know you came here to dance, so let’s hear those boots out on the floor, because we’re starting out tonight with Shania Twain’s ‘I Ain’t No Quitter.’” Leaning into the microphone, she sang, He drinks…
    The drummer and steel guitarist jumped in with a two-note counterpoint.
    He smokes…
    As the band repeated the counterpoint, Ron Taber leaned into his mic, made a half turn to look at her, and joined in.
    He curses, swears and he tells bad jokes…
    The bar patrons poured onto the dance floor and P.J. and the band kept them there by playing everything from “Billy’s Got His Beer Goggles On” to “Hick-town” to her own “Let the Party Begin.” Not until the dancers nearest the stage looked good and sweaty did P.J. say, “We’re gonna slow things down now with a little number called ‘Mama’s Girl.’”
    Some of the dancers snickered, and she acknowledged them with a crooked smile. “I know, I know—it’s an ironic choice, given the headlines in the rags these days.” Her gaze involuntarily sought out Jared. Then she snapped her attention back where it belonged. “But do me a favor and don’t believe everything you read, okay?” She turned to the band. “Hit it, boys.”
    They launched into the intro and she brought the mic to her lips. Looking beyond the lights to the shadowy tables ringing the dance floor, she sang:
    She was eighteen years old and all alone
    When a slick-talking man on the Thurston
    County road
    Slowed down his car and said
    Let me give you a ride.
    It was ironic, all things considered, but despite everything she still loved this song. Her friend Nell had written it, and from the very first time P.J. had heard it, its story and haunting melody had resonated with her. It’d also accessed feelings she was ashamed to acknowledge. For how did one admit to all the guilty longings for the kind of mother she’d always wished she’d had? “Mama’s Girl” had hit on her most heartfelt, number-one fantasy—a mother who loved her daughter unconditionally and made sacrifices to assure her child’s happiness.
    It was a pipe dream, of course, but every time she sang the song she could almost make herself believe that it was true—that the saga of a single mother whose every thought began and ended with her daughter’s welfare was her story. Even now, after Mama had tried to rob her blind and had smeared bits and pieces of her life across the media, the emotional connection to the mother of her song kept sucking her back into the fantasy.
    Unfortunately, that had caused her to dig herself into a great big pit with the media when “Mama’s Girl” started racking up airtime. But what should she have said when they’d asked if the lyrics were based on her own experiences—that the woman in the song was so far removed from her real mother that it wasn’t even funny? That she sang an ode to a nameless, faceless woman she’d give her left arm to have been raised by?
    No, not faceless, P.J. admitted. She had never forgotten Jared’s sister, Victoria, or the way she’d treated her daughter, Esme. Had never been able to erase the memory of the love stamped all over the woman’s face whenever she’d looked at her little girl. Nor had P.J. forgotten Victoria’s generosity—not when Tori had given her the most beautiful dollhouse she’d ever seen when P.J. had left Denver to go back to live with Mama.
    So every time she sang this song, Victoria’s was the face she envisioned.
    By the time they finished the set, P.J. was all jacked up with the euphoria of performing. Fans stopped her every two steps as soon as she left the stage, but she smiled and laughed and happily talked with them. She was in a fine mood by the time she reached the bar.
    “Great show,” Wayne said.
    “Thanks, it was fun. Can I have a large, large club soda, please?”
    “You bet. You want something stronger to