Cold, Cold Heart: A Short Story
3.5/5
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About this ebook
First comes love.
Then comes marriage.
Then comes revenge.
In this sensational short story from the bestselling author of The Kept Woman and Pretty Girls, fifty-two-year-old Pam has done her utmost as a loyal wife to her now ex-husband John. He dropped her cruelly . . . but with a terminal illness about to claim his life, Pam now sees an opportunity to settle the score, in a way that no one—not their children, not her ex, and certainly not the reader—will see coming . . .
Surprising, suspenseful, and diabolically clever, Cold, Cold Heart offers old fans and new readers alike a taste of the writer Gillian Flynn calls “one of the finest crime novelists at work today.”
Karin Slaughter
Karin Slaughter is one of the world’s most popular storytellers. She is the author of more than twenty instant New York Times bestselling novels, including the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and standalone novels The Good Daughter and Pretty Girls. An international bestseller, Slaughter is published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. Pieces of Her is a #1 Netflix original series, Will Trent is a hit television series starring Ramón Rodríguez on ABC, and it was just announced that Jessica Biel will star in the adaptation of THE GOOD DAUGHTER, which Karin adapted herself. Karin Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project — a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming.
Read more from Karin Slaughter
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Reviews for Cold, Cold Heart
51 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I had my review all planned out until the last few paragraphs. Then the whole thing went right out the window! I just couldn't resist the Bobbitt pun. Sorry.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good stand alone story; good as a book preview. Worth reading; a good short story usually means an excellent novelist.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This short story is a tale of revenge. John and Pam were former husband and wife. He calls her to his death bed. Although Pam was the more highly educated, John was the more successful of the two. When married, he tried to control her life and was unfaithful to their relationship. Their troubled son Zachary died in an automobile accident. I'll let you read how this short story plays out. While I didn't love this very dark story, I didn't hate it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cold, Cold Heart by Karin Slaughter is a Kindle Single and is truly a short story. The story itself is over and done by the 39% mark in the downloaded epub. It is then followed by an excerpt from The Kept Woman advertised to be on sale 20 September 2016. The prolog to that excerpt should guarantee sales. This is one of those times when it is good to take Amazon’s offer of a free sample. But back to the short story Cold, Cold Heart.Jon (previously John, before the later than mid-life crisis) and Pam had been together and married for a long time. Both were high school teachers; they had little money and had to live on a tightly controlled budget. And Jon controlled the budget very strictly even refusing to give Pam lunch money when she had run out early in the week. He did give her advice; she was to budget more wisely.Jon believed he had superior intellect even though Pam was the one with a doctorate in biology. Jon held no advanced degree. For any problem that popped up, Jon shrugged his shoulders and replied that they should just let things work themselves out. That did not work out so well with their son Zachary. Pam informed Jon about the drugs, the alcohol, the exuberant sex life of their teenage son but Jon just shrugged it off. But Jon could not shrug off Zachary’s death in a car accident. Jon could not get over ignoring Pam’s earlier concerns when it was found that Zachary’s blood alcohol content was six times over the legal limit. Jon blamed the failure of their sex life after the death of their son on depression.But Pam already knew about some of Jon’s infidelities. She put up with some but could not ignore the one in which he ran away with a younger woman, went to California, and married her. Jon had spent a lot of time prior to his divorce from Pam writing a book. It was hugely successful; Jon became rich. He tried to give some money to Pam but the betrayed wife accepted none of it. And now Jon had phoned her to invite her to visit him in California and witness his death.Jon had accepted death but wanted to be decapitated and have his head and body cryogenically preserved for a later return. He also wanted to see Pam one last time, not to apologize for anything but to confess. Jon had kept journals for all of the time he had been married to Pam. He wanted her to read them. In each journal, he named the women he had a relationship with during his marriage to Pam. There were a lot of journals. Rather than making amends to Pam, he wanted to gloat, to stick the knife in once again, with a shrug of the shoulders and a smirk.And now it is Pam’s turn. Her reaction and behavior in response to Jon’s confession makes the story worth reading. The characters in this short story are well developed. I felt sorry for the wasted life that was Pam’s. I loathed the superior attitude of Jon (John). Zachary was not around long enough to engender feelings but he was only important as a writing prompt. The story “action” is mostly in Pam’s mind as she looks back and reflects on her married life: what she knew, what she didn’t know, the unequal and unfair life she had with Jon. As her reflections alternate between her feelings about herself, her son Zach, and her changing feelings for Jon, the story moves quickly.I almost never read the follow on excerpts. I did so here and now feel I have to buy The Kept Woman.
Book preview
Cold, Cold Heart - Karin Slaughter
Contents
Cold, Cold Heart
An Excerpt from The Kept Woman
Prologue
Chapter One
About the Author
Also by Karin Slaughter
Copyright
About the Publisher
Cold, Cold Heart
EVEN NOW, SHE could still feel the ice in her hand, a stinging, biting cold that dug into her skin like a set of sharp teeth. Had the flesh of her palm been that hot or the California climate so scorching that what had been frozen moments before had reverted so quickly to its original form? Standing outside his home, she had been shocked to feel the tears of moisture dripping down her wrist, pooling at her feet.
Jon had been dead for almost two years now. She had known him much longer than that, twenty-four years to be exact—back when he spelled John properly, with an h
, and would never have dreamed of keeping his curly black hair long, his beard on the verge of hermitous proportions. They had met at a young adult Sunday school class, then become lovers, then man and wife. They had taught high school chemistry and biology, respectively, for several years. They had a son, a beautiful, healthy son named Zachary after John’s grandfather. Life was perfect, but then things had happened, things she tried not to think about, and the upshot was that in the end, the good life had called, and Pam had not been invited.
Her hair was too long for a woman her age. Pam knew this, but still could not bring herself to cut it. The slap of the braid against her back was like a reassurance that she was still a person, could still be noticed if only for the faux pas of being a fifty-two year old school teacher who kept her salt and pepper hair down to her waist. While women her age were getting pixie cuts and joining yoga classes, Pam had rebelled. For the first time in her life, she let her weight go. God, what a relief to eat dessert whenever she damn well wanted to. And buttered bread. And whole milk. How had she lived so long drinking that preposterously translucent crap they labeled skim milk? The simple act of satisfying these desires was more rewarding than any emotional joy that could be had from buttoning a pair of size six pants around your waist.
Her waist.
She made herself remember the good things and not the bad, the first few years instead of the last seventeen. The way John used to trace his hand along the cinch of her waist—rough hands, because he liked to garden then. The bristle of his whiskers as his lips brushed her neck, the gentle way he would move the braid over her shoulder so he could kiss his way down her spine.
Wending her way through various backwater towns as for the third—and hopefully last—time in her life she made her way toward the western part of the country, she forced her mind on the good memories. She thought of his lips, his touch, the way he made love to her. Through Alabama, she thought of his strong, muscular legs. Mississippi and Louisiana brought to mind the copious sweating when they first joined as man and wife. Arkansas, the perfect curve of his penis, the way it felt inside of her when she clenched him, her lips parting as she cried out. Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico . . . these were not states on a map, but states of mind for Pam. As she drove across the Arizona line, she found herself suspended between the road and the heavens, and the only thing keeping her grounded was her hands wrapped around the leather steering wheel.
The car.
All she had left of him now was the car.
Two years ago, he had called late in the evening—not late for him, but the three hour time difference put the ringing of the phone well into that block of time when a piercing ring caused nothing but panic. She foolishly thought of Zack, then the second ring brought more reason and she thought of her father, a physically frail man who refused to live in a nursing home despite the fact that he could no longer do much of anything but sit in his recliner all day watching the History Channel.
Papa?
she had cried, grabbing up the phone on the third ring. A fire. A fall down the stairs. A broken hip. Her heart was in her throat. She had read that phrase in so many books, but not understood until now that it was physically possible. She felt a pounding below her trachea; her throat was full from the pressure of her beating heart moving upward, trying to force its way out.
It’s me.
John?
Even as she said his name, she imagined it spelled correctly, the h
flashing like a neon sign outside a strip club.
In keeping with his new California lifestyle, he had said it so matter-of-factly, as if he was discussing the weather: I’m dying.
She’d been glib, said something she had watched him say so many times on Oprah or Dr. Phil: We’re all dying. That’s why we need to make the best of our lives now.
Such an easy thing for him to say. Independently wealthy people didn’t tend to have as negative an outlook on life as those who had to get up at five every morning to get dressed so they could go out and teach drooling teenagers the periodic table.
I’m serious,
he had said. It’s cancer.
Her heart was no longer in her throat, but there was something stuck there that made speaking difficult. She managed, What about Cindy?
The petite, dark haired Pilates instructor who had been living with him for the last year.
I want you to be there when it happens,
he’d said. I want that healing.
Come to Georgia, then.
I can’t fly. You’ll have to come to California.
Pam still cursed that day when they had first flown to California for a teacher’s conference. It had been a way to get out of Atlanta; an exciting adventure, their first trip out west. Their grief counselor had suggested they do something fun
to take their minds off what had happened and John had eagerly suggested the conference. Pam had stared out the window most of the flight, shocked at the vast and varied terrain beneath them. Dense