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lost in thought? I think I’ll ask her about that. I want to be closer to her, like she and Mom were, and I hope she wants that, too.
    I’m going to bed now, but I’ll try to remember to write tomorrow night.
    Â 
    Nikki
    Â 
    PS: I wonder what Aunt Pam and my dad were arguing about the other night?

FIVE
    Miles stayed awake late into Monday night, pulling together his notes and conducting last minute research on Pamela and Paris Mayes. By the time he was finished, his eyes were dry and gritty and he had developed a heightened sense of respect for the Internet. The power of the World Wide Web, combined with the spyware he’d spent thousands of dollars on, had given him an auspicious start on the way to where he needed to be. Plus, there was something to be said for the friendliness of small towns. People talked too much without even realizing what they were saying, and paid even less attention to who they were saying it to. So far, all he’d had to do was put himself in the right places at the right times, open his ears, and keep his mouth shut.
    He calculated the time in New York as he showered and then made a few phone calls while he was toweling himself dry. If things kept going the way they were, he might not have to stay in Mercy as long as he’d originally planned. As things stood, the first half of his book could pretty much write itself.
    It was public knowledge that Pam and Paris were born two minutes apart at a nearby private hospital. Immediately after birth, they were signed over to the state in anticipation of an adoption that never happened. Mercy was a small town full of working-class families barely scraping by, and no one was in too big of a hurry to adopt two additional mouths to feed. Their birth records were sealed and they were placed in Angels of Mercy Children’s Home, where they lived until they were eighteen and no longer the responsibility of the state.
    It was interesting that the nightshift workers at the home had fought for the right to name the babies and won. They’d each chosen pairs of names, put them in a hat, and pulled out Pamela Anne and Paris Marie. One of the workers had claimed a distant relation to the late great Willie Mayes, and they decided as a group that’s what the babies’ last names would be. Not exactly conventional, Miles thought, but whatever.
    According to the locals, the girls were inseparable. Like night and day, someone told Miles. Paris was quiet and book smart, while Pam was loud and brash. She hadn’t especially endeared anyone to her plight with her flippant manner and who-gives-a-shit attitude. A review of her school records had revealed that she was a mediocre student, with no particular proclivity toward mastery of any one subject over another. She had apparently done what was required to get by and spent the remainder of her time brawling or sitting in detention. Notes made by various teachers told him that she was opinionated and combative when challenged, and unconcerned and unmotivated when left to her own devices. Of the two, she was the one who was literally passing time and waiting for childhood to be over.
    None of this information particularly interested Miles since he was just about the same in school and he could probably name a hundred other people with similar reports. Pam’s grades remained steady in the B and C range throughout elementary and junior high school. Nothing surprising there.
    Toward the end of Pam’s high school career was where things started to get more interesting to Miles. She surprised him by earning a 1500 on her SAT, but she hadn’t applied to any colleges. Paris applied and was accepted at Georgia State on a full scholarship, but Pam had put forth zero effort in that area. Even with the sharp plummet in her grades three quarters of the way through her senior year, she should’ve been able to get into college somewhere. Instead, she had skipped graduation all together