Twenty
Five Years Ago
Panic. This was panic. Not forgot-her-homework panic, not dented-the-truck panic, not even OSS-affecting-her-future panic. This was cataclysmic, life-altering, oh-God-no panic.
Ava pressed her palms to the closed bathroom stall door in front of her and shut her eyes, drew in a deep breath of stale, bathroom-smelling air.
Mercy had been gone for almost three weeks. According to her dad, he and the others were due back this afternoon.
She should have started her period a week ago.
Panic.
The bathroom door swung open with a squeal and small footsteps pattered across the tiles. “Here,” Leah’s voice said, and a package in a Walgreens bag was shoved under the stall door.
Ava’s hands shook as she took the bag and pulled out its contents: three pregnancy tests. Three different brands. Leah had been thorough.
“You know,” Leah said from the other side of the door, her voice echoing off the porcelain sinks, the tile, the mirror, “they don’t keep those things on a shelf. They’re under glass. Locked away. I had to ask Mr. Ross to get them out for me.” She made a disgusted sound at the memory of the seventy-two year-old pharmacist who’d worked the Walgreens counter since they’d both been in diapers. “Now he totally thinks I’m knocked up, and the worst part is, he didn’t even look surprised about it. Like he expected me to get pregnant–”
Somehow, the process of peeing on all those sticks was less embarrassing with Leah chattering away out there.
“Not that I disagree. Of the two of us, I woulda thought it’d be me. But – totally not the point. God hopes he doesn’t go down the street and tell my dad I came in and bought them. I hope you know what a great friend I am.”
“The greatest,” Ava said, only half-sarcastic. She zipped up and opened the door.
Leah stood with arms folded, studying her neon reflection; she turned as Ava came out, all her test sticks held flat on her palms. “What do they say?”
“Not ready yet.” Ava laid them on the rim of a sink and washed her hands. She was trembling all over. She’d felt pasty and sick all day, just thinking about it. She knew that another student could come into the restroom at any moment, but she wasn’t sure she cared. Thanks to Ainsley’s nose, the popular crowd hated her. The people who’d been indifferent toward her were either secretly thankful the Boss Bitch had gotten her face smashed, or wary they’d be Ava’s next target. Mostly, she just got avoided. A rumor that she was pregnant couldn’t kill her reputation any more.
“If you are,” Leah said, voice becoming careful. “What are you going to do?”
Ava shook her head; her hair fell down around her face and she stared through the tunnel it made at the sticks, laser-focused. She could hardly breathe. “I’ll have to tell him.”
Leah’s hand was soft and careful on her elbow. “What will he say?”
“I dunno. Guess I’m about to find out.”
All the tests were in agreement.
Positive.
Maggie heard the bikes come in. It was a Wednesday, almost three weeks since Mercy had gone north on his drug-dealer hunt with Walsh, RJ, and Rottie. Through the wide, unadorned window of her office in the central building, she watched the boys come swooping onto the Dartmoor property in effortless, bird-like formation.
She picked Mercy out of the four of them; his long legs. As they parked, she stood and walked to the door, stepped out into the autumn sunshine and propped herself in the threshold, waiting.
She felt like a traitor, like a rat, like someone so unlike herself. But this wasn’t about the club – not mostly. It was about her baby.
**
Mercy registered the still, golden silhouette of Maggie at the main office, and decided not to look her way. He had this sinking feeling, as he swung off his bike, that she was looking for him.
“God, I want my bed,” Rottie muttered. “That’s all I want, for three days: bed.”
“With the kiddos jumping into it with you?” RJ asked with a laugh.
“Babysitter. Bed and a babysitter.”
The central office was an unimpressive thing, a cinderblock-walled square with just enough room for office space, a bathroom, and minimal file storage. Each Dartmoor business had its own office, but Ghost liked having a hub, a place where copies of all the books were kept on file, where a master computer tabulated each month’s combined income totals. A center point, a nucleus for the beast that was Dartmoor. Maggie ran the day-to-day; Ghost had the final say.
It was a hundred feet from the clubhouse, set back from the bike shop parking lot. It didn’t have a porch, so Maggie stood in the full sunlight, hair blazing, shades masking her eyes. Her body language said serious, and her gaze, even from behind the glasses, he could tell was trained on him.
But he was going to ignore her. She was an old lady – but just an old lady. She wasn’t his boss; he didn’t answer to her.
He got halfway to the clubhouse when he heard, “Mercy,” cut through the afternoon, an arrow straight through the middle of him. “Can I talk to you a sec?” When he glanced at her, she offered a bare smile. “Just a literal sec, promise. I have a question.”
RJ and Rottie kept walking.
Walsh glanced back over his shoulder once, his blank face knowing somehow.
Mercy knuckled his shades further up his nose and turned toward the woman whose daughter he’d been screwing. Hands in his pockets, unhurried, he met her in front of the office, just out of earshot of anyone who might be happening past. His shadow fell across her and her hair lost some of its brilliance. Her face looked tight and lined.
“What’s up?”
She took a breath that rattled at the end, and pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead. Her eyes weren’t the flinty hazel shards he’d expected. They were deep and wet with sadness. That was the only way he could describe the emotion she projected toward him: sadness.
“The dinner,” she said. “You and Ava in the kitchen.” Her eyebrows went up in silent question.
He said nothing.
“Merc, I’ve always known that she carries a huge, flaming torch for you. But I never thought you’d take her up on the offer. You’re more careful than that.”
He glanced away from her; he’d expected a very different kind of accusation. He had no idea what to do with this.
“I like you,” Maggie went on. “Hell, I love you. You know that. You’re family. You’re the only reason Ava and I are alive right now, and believe me, I know that. I don’t take that lightly.”
He waited for it.
“But…”
He snapped back to her, levering hostility into his voice. “But this is the part where you give me the stay away from your daughter speech?”
“No.” Her face softened further. Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I understand. I might be the only person in the world who does, but trust me, I get it. Even if that makes me a bad mother.
“What I’m saying, is that I hope you’ve calculated the risks. All of them, real life, and club-related.”
Are you using protection?
Are you prepared for Ghost’s reaction?
“My hubby,” Maggie said, “God, I love him, but he’s oblivious when it comes to Ava. She’s not an adult in his eyes. She’s still just a baby. And you’re…you.”
He wanted to hit something. “So?” He made a show of shrugging. “So what am I supposed to do?”
Maggie shrugged back. “I don’t know.” Her glasses came down over her eyes with a little flick from one finger. “I honestly don’t.”
And she slipped back into the office before he could respond.
**
Leah offered to go home with her that afternoon. Ava turned her down. Her mind was too tangled. She felt too restless and desperate to endure even the most supportive of company.
She skipped dinner, told her parents her head hurt – which it did – and went to bed early, tossed and turned and imagined she could feel the hot brand of the life growing inside her, glowing through her skin, giving away her secret, tattling on her.
She set her alarm for four-fifteen, and was ready to leap out of bed the second it went off. She showered, dressed, and tiptoed out the back door, stepping into her boots on the patio. Her truck starting would wake her parents. She didn’t care. She’d make up some excuse.
Five a.m. was a blank-faced, indigo wall, trying to press her back into the house, into bed. Five a.m. didn’t want to be messed with or questioned. It wasn’t the insidious shifting shadow miasma of midnight. It was an angry schoolmarm that didn’t expect to be challenged.
Lights were on in the bakery under Mercy’s apartment; the bakers had been up since three, preparing the day’s breads, doughnuts, muffins and bagels. Ava parked in the alley and pulled her hood up against the chill as she climbed the wrought iron stairs to his door.
Her hand hovered a moment, as fear fired all through her and she doubted the logic of what she was doing. She thought of Becky Williams who’d sat beside her in chem class last year. Becky had been going strong with Lance Bell for almost a year, when Becky got pregnant. Lance bolted; he dumped her, called her a slut, and refused to have anything to do with her. Becky’s parents took her to a clinic where the problem was dealt with discreetly. Then Becky had a nervous breakdown during a Periodic Table quiz and had been taken to the nurse. She’d never returned to school after that.
No, Ava told herself, rapping her knuckles hard. This wasn’t some dipshit kid like Lance. This was Mercy. Her Mercy.
She heard him come shuffling to the door, his footfalls heavy and uneven with sleep. There was a hesitation – him checking the peephole – then the door opened on Mercy in worn old black sweatpants, black wifebeater, barefoot and bedheaded.
“Do you have a clue what time it is?” he asked, throat full of gravel.
“Dad said you were back in town,” Ava said, ducking under his arm and letting herself in. The apartment was dark, streetlamp glow filtering through the living room window.
“Yeah. Look, kiddo” – the use of that word halted her in her tracks; not “baby” or “fillette” or “sweetheart,” but kiddo, like she was just a child again, and not the girl who he’d ask to bite him and draw blood – “can this wait till in the morning? Later in the morning. I’m beat.”
The lights came on with a soft hum and she turned to face him. He stood at the open door, still, hand on the light switch, squinting against the burn of the lamps. She saw a glimmer of something white just under his shirt, a bandage, on his chest, to his left. Had the bite not healed? Gotten infected?
“What happened?” She started toward him and he held up a hand to keep her at bay, a movement that brought her up short, surprise melting into hurt.
“New tat,” he said, and folded his arms, not offering to show her or explain. “So…later, yeah? You can come by the clubhouse after school.”
She swallowed down the first lump of emotion. She hadn’t been expecting this, and was scrambling for purchase, trying to figure out why things were different suddenly and why the man in front of her looked so much like a stranger.
She lifted her chin. “I need to talk to you.”
“Now?” There was a sardonic twist to his mouth as his brows lifted.
Not Mercy, her mind said. This isn’t your Mercy.
“Like I said” – gesture to the door – “later. I’m too tired for touchy-feely shit right now.”
“Why are you acting like this?”
“Because it’s five in the morning, and when you say ‘talk’ you don’t really mean it. I rode two hundred miles yesterday, Ava. I’m too tired to fuck you and tell you you’re pretty, alright?” He snarled the last of it, and she took three steps back, her throat closing up on her next breath.
One of her hands had gone to her stomach, out of automatic, protective reflex. She jerked it away, forced it down to her side. Her eyes flooded with tears. Anyone else she could have told off with flair. But she had no words to respond to the venom he’d just spit at her. She didn’t know how to operate in a world in which Mercy was hateful and cruel.
“Nevermind.” She put her head down and looked straight through the door as she walked toward it. “I thought you were someone else.”
She waited – hoped – for him to make a grab for her as she passed him. But he didn’t, and she stepped out onto the iron landing just in time to keep the tears from sliding down her cheeks in front of him.
On his list of Weird Shit, this had to be at the top. It made him suspicious. Made him twitchy. Made him feel like his father was lurking behind him, warning him not to touch any of this “expensive bullshit” with his “grubby hands.” But Carter didn’t think there was a way to turn down an invitation to breakfast at the Stephens’ house.
The summons had come via phone call that morning – at five-fifteen. His cell had chirped in the dark and it hadn’t been Mason, but Mason’s father on the line.
“Carter, m’boy. Would love to have you. The chef makes marvelous crepes. Seven sharp. Don’t be late. Don’t worry about wearing a tie.”
A tie? People wore ties to breakfast?
He’d tugged on his best jeans, a polo, took extra care with his hair and drenched himself in cologne. His dad either hadn’t heard him leave or hadn’t cared. Same difference.
And now here he sat, as wan morning sunlight slanted in through the sheer drapes, in a dining room that belonged in Southern Living, at a table large enough to seat the entire football team.
Mason Sr. sat at the head, Mrs. Stephens – flawless makeup and blonde bob, coral pantsuit, dripping jewelry – at the foot, with Carter and Mason across from one another in the middle of the long sides of the table. Tall, unlit candelabra marched down the center of a gold runner on the table’s gleaming surface. The china was white with delicate pink roses in the centers and around the edges. A woman in a uniform and apron brought in fresh fruit, steaming muffins, bacon cheese grits and sausage links on ornate silver platters. Mrs. Stephens’ orange juice fizzed and was probably more than half champagne.
Mr. Stephens was the exact same in person as he’d been in his campaign ads from a few years back. All teeth and tanned skin, his voice megaphone loud. He seemed, conveniently, to have forgotten about the threats he’d made to Carter just a few weeks before. “So Carter,” he boomed, “how’s the season going? Is the team going to make it to the playoffs?”
Carter wondered if Mr. Stephens wouldn’t benefit from a closer seating arrangement so he didn’t feel the need to shout. He wondered if anyone was fooled by Mason’s attendance to public school; no one who saw this house would ever buy the “regular folks” bit from the campaign. Rather than give voice to this, he cleared his throat and tried his best to answer without appearing too dazzled by his surroundings.
Mrs. Stephens and Mason contributed nothing to the conversation. Mrs. Stephens stared, hypnotized by the bubbles in her mimosa, and didn’t touch her food.
As the dishes were clearing away, Mr. Stephens got to his feet and said, “I really appreciate you being such a good friend to Mason, Carter. It’s just horrible the stress he’s been through. This whole situation – well, you can see how it could be damaging to his record. We’re counting on you to help keep things straight, keep the authorities informed on what really happened that night.” Big gubernatorial smile for Carter.
So that’s what this was – a bribe. A flexing of financial muscles. Show him how rich and influential the family was, make him see the light: it was time to blame what had happened on Ava Teague and let her take the fall, get Mason off scot-free before those college applications hit the post office.
“You’re a good kid, Carter.” Stephens squeezed his shoulder on the way past his chair. “And you’ve made a good friend in Mason.”
Mason smiled obligingly for his father.
Stephens hooked his wife with one unkind hand around her elbow and towed her up out of her chair, and from the room.
The maid rolled the last of the dirty dishes out into the hall on a trolley.
And then it was just the two of them.
With the white sunlight framing him, Mason looked yellow, thin, and sickly. He had dark smudges beneath his eyes; his Adam’s apple poked knee-like from his throat, the weight loss from his hospital stay bringing out strange points and corners in his body. He looked ready to fall asleep, but his eyes were sharp. “How was breakfast?” he asked, folding his hands together on the tabletop. His voice was a slicker, oilier version of his father’s. Daddy was fake bravado; Junior was seedy salesman.
Carter said, “Does your mom always drink this early in the morning?”
Anger flickered through Mason’s eyes. He’d been caught off guard; he hadn’t expected to see a showing of spine.
“Is that why your dad’s so big on being pretend-nice? Hoping nobody’ll notice she’s drunk all the time?”
“I invited you here,” Mason said through his teeth, “as a gesture of friendship. And charity. Shit knows you don’t eat anything at home but wormy apples and Slim Jims–”
That stung – it stung bad – but Carter said, “Your father invited me. This had shit-all to do with friendship. You just want me to go to the cops and say Ava force fed you those damn pills. What’s Daddy Warbucks gunning for? Attempted murder?”
“That little bitch–” Mason started, and Carter pushed his chair back.
“Tell the cook it was delish,” Carter said, throwing his napkin onto the table.
“Carter, wait.” Mason’s expression changed, his eyes widening and pulling down at the corners, something like desperation coloring his face. “Wait. Shit. Dude. I’m sorry. Just hold on a sec.”
Carter stayed seated.
“I…shit.” Mason blew out a loud breath and slumped forward onto the table, the fatigue weighing heavy in his eye bags. “Yeah, my dad invited you, okay? So? He knew I wasn’t going to do it myself.”
Carter waited.
Mason glanced down at his hands, head hanging like he didn’t have the strength to hold it up. “It’s been hard for me, okay? Going back to school. People are saying shit…people are looking at me funny. One of my best friends has abandoned me.” He glanced up then, from under his brows.
Carter said, “That’s shit, yeah, I get it, but you know this is your own fault. No one made you take that stuff. You don’t like Ava, fine, but I do, and I’m not going to lie just because you want to get her in trouble.”
Mason’s smile was mocking. “Aren’t you a goody-two-shoes.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He got to his feet.
“Is she fucking you?” Mason asked. “Is that why? You getting good head off that biker slut, so you turn on me?”
“We’re just friends.”
“But you wish you weren’t, right?”
“She has a boyfriend,” Carter said, exasperated. “She’s really into him, and I’m not trying to get in the way of that, okay? Just drop it.”
Mason coughed a humorless laugh. “What? She only puts out for bikers? You gonna join the Little Doggies so you can get some off her? What’s your awesome biker name gonna be?”
“Thanks for breakfast,” Carter said, shrugging into his hoodie. “It almost tasted like it was made by someone who cared about you people.”
“You’re a dumbass, picking her,” Mason called at this back. “She’s just the kind of whore cops find dead on the floors of abandoned houses. Setting yourself up for disappointment.”
Carter kept walking. On his way out the front door, he cupped a tiny crystal angel off a side table full of crystal sculptures. Its cool, sharp edges bit into his palm and he smiled the smile of a white trash kid. The theft made him feel a little better. It fit just right in his hoodie pocket.
Art class. At ten-fifteen, Ava stored all her belongings in a cubby at the back of the room, as per her teacher’s instruction, and went to fetch a fresh lump of clay from the storeroom. The art room was a long rectangle, full of long rectangular tables, lit by the sunlight passing through six long rectangular windows. The symmetry was soothing to her tattered nerves. The air smelled of wet clay and paints and chalks and freshly-shaved pencils. Sketches from students and instructional posters covered the stark cinderblock walls. Voices zipped back and forth, echoing in corners: the friendly chaos that was every art class.
Ainsley Millcott was still wearing a white bandage across her nose; the skin around her eyes still had a certain shadowy look to it, but Ava was convinced she was using makeup to prolong the appearance of injury. She’d counted on the little princess tossing the wounded shtick as soon as possible. Instead, Ainsley was lapping up the sympathy like a cat with cream.
Whatever. Ava sat down with her back to Ainsley, at a table full of girls she knew, liked okay, and who wouldn’t pester her. She dug her hands into the clay and swept her mind clean of all worries: Mercy, the baby, everything.
At the end of the hour, she had a drunk-looking vase, and a wealth of clay jammed under her fingernails. As she washed her hands, she overhead Ainsley saying to one of her friends, “As if Coach expects me to play volleyball. Look at my face!” Dramatic gesture as she pulled her backpack from the cubbies.
Whatever, whatever, whatever…
Ava waited until they were gone, until she began to feel the pressure of the next bell, before she retrieved her things. She reached into her purse out of automatic habit to check her phone – maybe Mercy had texted, was awake and thinking better and would apologize – and closed her hand over her bottle of hand sanitizer instead. Huh?
She yanked the purse off the shelf and rummaged. Where was her phone? It was always right in the middle, between her pepper spray and a spare package of pretzels.
Dread crawled up the back of her neck. Paranoia, most like, or maybe something valid. Maybe…
There it was, in the front pocket, with her tampons and lip gloss.
Relief flooded her, and then doubt. Had she put it here? She never did.
Then again, she was all full of new, cartwheeling mommy hormones, wasn’t she?
Cursing to herself, she jammed the phone back where it belonged and hustled off to calculus.