Read Unforced Error for Free Online

self-flagellation is a bit too retro even for old-school types like us.”
    â€œPenance means telling Peter, right?”
    â€œYou’re projecting. I’m not sure what I mean, but that definitely isn’t it.”
    â€œBut that’s really the bottom line, isn’t it?” Linda insisted. “That’s the choice. Telling Peter would be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I can’t even stand to think about how much it would hurt him. But if it would make me feel clean again…I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do.”
    And at that moment, at the last possible instant, Literature finally came through.
    â€œTravis McGee,” Melissa said.
    â€œHuh? I mean, John D. MacDonald, quasi private eye in mysteries with color-coded titles, right. But still, huh?”
    â€œTravis McGee wasn’t really a private eye, he was a moralist. He said that when you’re in a genuine moral quandary, sincerely conflicted about what to do, the right choice is almost always the one you don’t want to make.”
    â€œSo I should swallow hard and tell Peter.”
    â€œJust the opposite, it seems to me,” Melissa said.
    â€œYou’re going to have to explain that,” Linda said, jumping up so briskly that Melissa wasn’t sure whether she was looking at perky or manic. “But I’m going to help you dress and fix your hair while you do, because we have to get a move on.”
    â€œThe worst thing I ever did was fake out my grandmother, Grammy Seton,” Melissa said as she began undressing. “I didn’t actually lie to her, but I deliberately misled her. Semester break of my freshman year in college she wanted me to swear I was still a virgin, as she insisted I had done my senior year in high school. I solemnly swore that nothing had changed since my senior year in high school. She’d apparently confused me with some less frisky young Seton, so she was happy.”
    â€œBut you weren’t?”
    â€œNot for long. Pretty soon I stopped feeling like a clever undergraduate and started feeling like a gutless jerk who’d exploited a sweet old lady’s naivetë. So I faced the same question you’re looking at right now: tell her and get it off my conscience, or not?”
    â€œDon’t keep me in suspense,” Linda said as she fussed with the hem of Melissa’s dress.
    â€œI talked it over with someone very wise whom I really trusted,” Melissa said softly. “Ran up incredible long distance charges between Ann Arbor, Michigan and Lawrence, Kansas.”
    â€œOh my God,” Linda said. “I‘d forgotten all about that. But I don’t remember you asking me whether you should tell her.”
    â€œI didn’t. I couldn’t make myself spit the question out. So I just talked around the issue, hoping that you’d magically say something that would make everything clear. And you did.”
    â€œWhat in the world did I come up with?”
    â€œYou said I should stop wallowing in what made me feel lousy and spend a minute thinking about something that made me feel good,” Melissa said.
    â€œHeavy, dudette,” Linda said as she fastened buttons up Melissa’s back. “If I’d copyrighted that one I’d be collecting royalties from Dr. Phil today.”
    â€œI did exactly what you said. The last good feeling I’d had was when I’d finally admitted to myself that finessing Grammy Seton’s oath was wrong.
Okay, I’ve got me: I was a jerk
. I’d felt this incredible release of tension, almost an elation, that I’d stopped fighting what I knew was right. And I realized that was the key to deciding whether to come clean with Grammy Seton: not kidding myself about why I’d be doing it, or for whom, or whether it would do any good.”
    â€œI’d say you contributed a lot more to the process than my little bit of psychobabble did,”