Twenty-Five
Five Years Ago
They were avoiding him. All his brothers; they tactfully turned their heads, and found other paths to tread. No one wanted to make small talk; no one even wanted to make eye contact. Not out of fear, he knew. Not out of any kind of respect, or even disgust. This was about a decision made, one that had been hammered out in the cold predawn before he pulled onto the lot. He hadn’t been to the clubhouse in thirty-six hours, but it felt like years. Like a lifetime had flashed by in the time since Carter Michaels had brought them Ava’s phone.
It was Walsh who’d been elected messenger, stone-cold Walsh with the flat blue eyes. He stood propped back against the bar, arms folded, looking like he didn’t care about anyone or anything.
There was a flicker of question in his eyes, though, as he became the first man to look Mercy in the eye that morning. “Ghost’s in the chapel, waiting for you.”
“Thanks.”
Collier and James stood just outside the chapel doors. Collier gave him a halfhearted half-smile. James clapped him on the shoulder, but said nothing. He’d relented, then; whatever Ghost had wanted in this case, James had approved it. Already, Ghost was casting his shadow over the president’s chair, eclipsing his predecessor with brute force.
Inside, the chapel was dark as evening, the lamplight finding places to hide in the deep corners, the folds of the velvet-seated chairs. Ghost stood with his back to the doors, behind Troy’s favorite chair, a lit cigarette smoldering in one hand.
“Take a seat,” he said, his voice emotionless.
Mercy closed the doors behind him and walked down to his usual chair, down near the foot, and as he did, Ghost moved in the opposite direction, to the head, until he stood behind James’s seat, hands braced on the ornate back of the chair. Mercy sat, and folded his hands on the table, and unlike the rest of his brothers, he didn’t shy away from direct eye contact.
Ghost was a man out of time, some displaced warrior king deserving of better vestment than denim and leather, more dignified than the wallet chain at his hip, in need of an audience more tractable than his one-man punching bag.
There was no ramp-up. There never was with Ghost. “I’ve thought about it, and thought about it,” he began, his eyes hardening. “And I still can’t understand why the kid I brought into the club, and gave a job to, and gave a life to, and kept out of a Louisiana prison cell, would repay me by getting my underage daughter pregnant.”
He lifted a hand to stay comment. “No. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. I’ve made my decision.”
Mercy waited, placid on the outside, fuming on the inside.
“You’re going back to Louisiana. You’ll turn in your release paperwork today. I already talked to Bob; he’s ready to accept your application. You can leave first thing in the morning.”
“That’s your decision?” Mercy said, quietly. “Releasing a member is a club decision. That’s a vote at table. Or do the rules only matter when you want them to? Maybe the club really doesn’t look after its own. Do I get to choose at least?” He tapped the dog tatted on his arm. “Fire or knife? Or can someone drag Ziggy down here to have it blacked over?”
Mercy watched Ghost bite down hard on his temper. “This isn’t that kind of release. It’s a transfer.”
“No, you wouldn’t want to get rid of me for good. I’m too useful.”
“You’re too reckless. You almost killed that kid.”
“And he almost killed Ava!” He hadn’t meant to shout, but that was happening anyway, the anger coming up in red waves inside him, a flood tide he couldn’t resist. “I’d kill a hundred kids, and you know what’s sick? You know that, and that’s exactly why you put me in charge of her nine years ago. You knew I’d do anything–”
Ghost’s hand landed hard on the table, a slap like a gunshot.
Mercy forced himself to quiet. He’d stepped out of line, and he knew it. But he couldn’t stop it. In a calm, flat voice, he said, “So I don’t get to defend myself.”
“What part of you putting your dick in my little girl can you defend?”
No part of it. It was indefensible. Mercy could feel his defiance fading away, the drain pulled on all those waves.
“You knew,” Ghost continued, voice a snarl, “that it was sick as fuck the first second you put a hand on her. How did your brain digest that, Merc? Huh? How was it okay to have sex with a child? Were you just waiting, and you couldn’t control yourself anymore? How stupid am I” – dramatic gesture to himself – “to think I could introduce you to my eight-year-old–”
“Nothing happened when she was a child,” Mercy bit out. “Nothing. It was never like that.”
“She’s still a child! And I fucking trusted you.” Ghost pushed his hands through his hair, his expression tortured. Yes, he’d trusted Mercy, because he was too caught up in other things to bother with his own daughter, and he’d been totally blind to the subtle shifts in energy between the two of them. He’d had no idea, not until two nights ago in the hospital, and he was as ashamed of his own oversight as he was furious with what had happened.
“Yeah,” Mercy said in a low, dark voice. “You trusted me. What made you think you could trust some Cajun trash who cuts men up for a living and tosses them to the gators?”
How had any of them ever trusted him? After what happened to Oliver Landau in the tar paper shack in the swamp. How did Ava offer herself up to him with nothing but absolute love and trust? That was the sickening part – that any of them thought him human.
Mercy watched the same thought reflected in Ghost’s dark eyes. Then the VP turned away, pacing toward the wall. He reached to straighten a framed photo of the original London chapter, a grainy, black-and-white shot taken in front of Baskerville Hall, not long after the second World War. There was a copy of that photo in every clubhouse all up and down the US east coast.
The tension in Ghost’s body was graceful, as he took a drag off his forgotten cigarette. His voice composed again as he said, “You can have a week. Get things in order, get rid of your apartment, pack your stuff up, hire a moving van, whatever. And at the end of the week, you’ll go back to NOLA as planned. And before you leave, you will make Ava understand that this thing – whatever the fuck it is between you two – it’s over, for good.”
“She’s stubborn. She won’t accept that.”
Ghost turned and nodded; his face was a harsh, unreadable mask, his eyes the only thing alive. “Which is why you will make it undeniably clear that you don’t want her, won’t have her, can’t stay with her. You will break her heart into a hundred pieces if you have to. You will insult her, make her cry. You will kill that relationship, torture it to death.” Quick flick of a bitter smile. “That’s your area of expertise, after all.”
Mercy met his stare unflinching. He breathed a laugh. “You really don’t even think I’m a man, do you?” He heard the sadness in his voice, and knew his accusation to be true. “You think I would do that to her because you told me to. I really am just a dog.”
Something shimmered deep in the centers of Ghost’s eyes, some last second-guessing of this plan he’d devised.
“You think I don’t love her,” Mercy said. “You really don’t pay attention, do you?”
Insubordination. It hardened Ghost’s mouth, pushed him through the doubt and forged him ahead in his directive.
“I think you’ll ‘do that to her,’ ” he said, “because otherwise, I’ll liquefy her college fund and put it toward our next run.”
Mercy felt the breath catch in his lungs.
“When she graduates high school, she won’t have a job at Dartmoor waiting for her, and she won’t have the money to go off to school. She can go work the register at Leroy’s, buy her clothes at Walmart, cook you three squares a day on a hot plate because you can’t afford to get the stove fixed. I think you’ll do exactly what I tell you to, because if you love her, you’ll want her to have the chance to go to college, and you won’t want to poison her life with the likes of your own.”
Mercy swallowed hard, his throat scraped-raw and sticking together. What would happen, he wondered, if he launched himself across the table and put Ghost’s head through the wall paneling? The club would execute him, sure, but he’d go to his grave with satisfaction.
And then he thought about Ava’s soft, lilting recital of Shakespeare’s love sonnets, the foxed edges of her paperback copy of The Hobbit, the way her eyes glowed when she talked about the stories she wanted to write.
“Ava needs to go to college.”
“I know.”
“You wouldn’t deny her that just because of me.”
“I would do anything,” Ghost said.
Mercy glanced down at his hands and saw that he was gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles had gone white. His nails digging in had added to the patina of scratches on its gently polished surface.
Ghost said, almost kindly, “You’ve hurt her enough. Make a break, and step away, or you’ll hurt her the rest of her life. If you really do love her, you know I’m right.”
Mercy saw it unfold in his mind, in all its predictable horror. Without a degree, without financial support from her parents, Ava would rely totally on him. And he would try – Christ, he’d kill himself trying – but it wouldn’t be enough. He could see her with her chin in her hands at his tiny apartment table, disgusted with her own bad cooking, exhausted and depressed and reading a book she could have written herself ten times over. She was ambitious about her art; that was something he’d always adored about her, that safe normalcy of healthy dreams. But with him, they’d never come true. And how long would it be before she resented him for that? How long before each touch felt suffocating?
“She’ll hate you either way,” Ghost said. “At least this is quick.”
“Mags won’t go along with this.”
“Mags will do what I tell her, because I’m her husband.”
Mercy pushed to his feet, the weight across his shoulders crushing. “You know,” he said with a humorless smile, “everyone thinks I’m the monster around here. They’re wrong.”
“I want to see him.”
Maggie blew on her spoonful of soup to cool it and sent Ava a truly strange look down on her end of the sofa.
“What?”
They were having a mid-afternoon slumber party of sorts, complete with comfy sweats, pillows, chicken noodle, and a midday showing of Roadhouse on cable. Ava was propped up in the corner, heating pad across her lap, pain meds making her nice and lightheaded.
“How’s your head feel?” Maggie asked, popping her spoon in her mouth.
Ava was getting really sick of her family’s avoidance of everything she mentioned. They were treating her like a mental patient. “Mom, did you hear me? I said I wanted to see Mercy. Can he come by the house?”
Maggie lowered her spoon slowly, her expression cautious. “Considering you were keeping your relationship secret, you sure got comfy talking about it all of a sudden.”
Ava shrugged. “Everyone knows at this point. Why should I hide it?”
“I’m not saying you should, but I–”
“So can he come by?” She lifted her phone. “I’m going to call him.”
Maggie made a staying motion. “Hold up a second here, okay? And let’s think about things. Even if he knows about it, there’s no way your father is going to let you two sit on the couch and make out like teenagers.”
“I am a teenager, Mom.”
“You’re sure acting like one,” Maggie muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Maggie stood. “Here, is your soup cold? Mine is. I’ll warm them up.” And she took Ava’s bowl from her hands and whisked off toward the kitchen without waiting for a response.
Ava hated this. Something huge had happened, something wrecking and life-altering, and she needed to see Mercy, for more than a few stolen, non-private moments in the hospital. She needed the warmth of lamplight and his lap to curl up on, and the quiet intimacy of just-them. She needed to see him, needed to. Her teeth and fingernails itched at being separated.
While Maggie was gone, she fired off a text to him, asking him to swing by. The phone was stowed beneath her pillow when Maggie returned, steaming bowls in hand.
“Okay, here we go. Nothing as shitty as cold soup.” Maggie handed Ava her bowl back and resumed her seat, chipper in an obviously fake way. She glued her gaze to the TV. “What’d I miss?”
“Mom.” Maggie stiffened at the tone. “Why are you acting like there’s something wrong with me?”
Her mom turned to her, something guilty in her eyes. “Honestly?”
Ava nodded.
“Because I don’t think what happened the other night has really hit you yet. And when it does, I think it’s going to hurt so much worse than you know right now.”
“What? Like I’m in shock?”
“Yeah.”
Ava sighed. “I’m fine.”
“Baby.” Maggie laid a hand on her upraised knee. “You lost–”
“A pregnancy, not my mind.”
Maggie frowned. “Yeah. Okay.”
When Maggie got up to get them each a soda, Ava checked her phone. No response from Mercy.
That night, she dreamed that she walked through the swamp, cradling a swaddled baby in her arms. It had to be her baby, because it had little tufts of black hair and the widest dark eyes. Ava snuggled it close to her chest as she walked through the dense undergrowth, stepping over knobby cypress roots and dodging wet patches of mud. The mist shifted up from the boggy soil, filling her nose with the smell of damp and decay, peat and brackish water. The branches knotted together overhead, the sunlight dappled and mist-shrouded. Something called up in the trees, a thin high scream. And something bellowed, deep and low to the earth. It made her think of the sound Mercy had described to her, the roar of an alligator.
She kept walking, driven by some dream-urge that had purpose, but no sense. She ducked under a low branch and felt cobwebs stretch across her face. And then she stood at the edge of a murky green pool, some little lagoon that fed in rivulet tributaries out into the deeper channels. On the opposite bank, she saw the wide slide marks, where the gators had gone into the water. A single shaft of sunlight beamed down onto the water, turning the surface opaque, dotted with midges.
Her voice built in her chest, and hurtled up her throat before she could stop it. “Big Son!” she called. “Come on out, you big son of a bitch!”
Clutching the baby tight with one arm, she knelt and plucked a rock from a small pile of them. She tossed it in. Plunk. The ripples ran outward from it, the green water lapping. Another rock. Plunk. A third, and she saw the disturbance on the surface, the little ridges that broke the water, the knobs of the eyes, the tip of the nose. Here he came, and he was monstrous.
“Big Son!” Ava called again.
And then she gathered the baby up and heaved it out over the water the same way she’d thrown the rocks. The gator’s head broke the surface and his jaws opened as she screamed…
And then she was in her bedroom, tangled in sweat-drenched sheets, panting, new morning sunlight bombarding her senses.
She’d overslept; it was well past time to get up for school.
Stay home a few days, Maggie had said, but she didn’t want to. She hated the way she felt trapped.
And Mercy hadn’t texted her back.
She was eating breakfast when she deciphered the dream.
She set her half-eaten toast back on her plate and said, “I was pregnant.”
Maggie whipped around, eyes tight and startled under the tight pressure of her yoga headband. “Yeah…” she said, slowly.
“No,” Ava said, “I mean, I was pregnant, and I knew it, and I knew there was something off about that text, but I went to Carter’s house anyway. I was stupid. I put myself – the baby – in harm’s way.”
“Ava, sweetie.” Maggie came around the table. “You had no way of knowing–”
“ I might as well have thrown it to the alligators.”
Maggie’s brow furrowed. “No, baby–”
“I wanna get a tattoo.”
“Take a look.” Ziggy wiped the last of the ink away and sat back on his stool, tattoo gun in one gloved hand, pleased smile playing across his mouth. “Pretty sick, if I’m honest.” He tipped his grin up to Ava. “You think?”
“The sickest,” Ava agreed, glancing down at her foot.
“I’m the worst mother in the world,” Maggie said. “It’s official.” She peered over Ziggy’s shoulder to get a look at the tat. “It’s perfect, though, Zig.”
The wiry little tattoo artist was the best in the city, and his cramped parlor was papered in wall-to-wall sketches and designs, the paint beneath hot pink, the floor tiles black and white check. His fellow artist and business partner, Ursula, with a bull ring through her nose and dyed black pixie cut, came around to see for herself.
“Nice,” she said, nodding. “Subtle. Cute. Plenty of detail.”
Ava rested her chin on her raised knees and smiled down at the new ink on the top of her left foot. Very small, very tasteful and realistic, an alligator looked up at her, head raised, tail curled, ready for battle. A way to mark the tiny gator growing inside her that she’d lost. A reminder for her to be careful. A tribute to the man she loved, all rolled into one.
Once Ziggy had dressed the tat and she’d stepped back into her sneakers, as she and Maggie left the parlor on a mission for ice cream and a wasted day of playing hooky, Ava checked her phone.
Still nothing from Mercy.
“Does it hurt?” Leah asked, bending her head low over Ava’s red-around-the-edges raw tattoo.
Ava wiggled her toes and the leaping tendons made the gator look like he was snapping his jaws. “A little. It kind of throbs. Hurt like a bitch while he was doing it.”
Leah sat back and shook her head a little, disbelieving. “Do you know what my mom would say if I told her I wanted her to take me to get a tattoo?”
Ava grinned. “I can guess.”
“Like I keep saying: your mom is the coolest.”
Leah had come by to bring Ava notes from class, and to visit. They sat on Ava’s bed with a bag of Skittles between them.
“How do you feel?” Leah asked, growing serious. “Are you still - ?” She grimaced and gestured to her own stomach.
“I stopped bleeding,” Ava said with a shrug. “And most of the cramping’s stopped. The doc said I was lucky I wasn’t that far along.”
Leah blinked, and gave her that same odd look everyone had been giving her.
“Oh, not you too,” Ava said. “Come on. Everyone’s acting like I’m some sort of freak show.”
“Sorry. Totally not doing that.” Leah was the first person to let it drop and change the subject, but that look…Ava was so tired of that look.
And still, nothing from Mercy.