Forty-Three
Ava opened her eyes and the cottage was full of warm daylight. With awareness came the knowledge that she was too hot. She kicked the covers off and thick, humid air folded over her bare skin. She could smell the lingering spiciness of dinner, and the swamp water, and dark, green plant smells that had found their way in under the door and through the thin glass of the windows. Her internal clock told her it was the middle of the day, and she couldn’t believe she’d slept that late. A quick scan revealed that she was alone.
She sat up, and gasped at the revelation of her soreness and stiffness. She was stretching her arms up over her head, trying to ease the ache in her shoulders, when the front door opened and Mercy entered carrying some sort of strange, cylindrical basket.
She was self-conscious in that first moment, aware of her nakedness, the way she was arching her back. She lowered her arms. But then he turned a smile toward her – a wide, beaming, thrilled smile that warmed and soothed her. He was so happy to see her. She rested her hands on the mattress. He’d said all along that he wanted to look at her; she might as well let him look.
“You’re up,” he said, kicking off his boots. They were muddy, and wet, leaving dark splotches on the wood where he’d walked. The bottoms of his jeans were in the same state. He was shirtless, his hair tied back.
Ava didn’t think she’d ever seen anything more beautiful.
“Yeah. You shouldn’t have let me sleep so late.”
He shrugged. “You were tired.” His grin turned wicked at the corners for a second. Then he said, “And who the hell gets up early on their honeymoon?”
“Good point.”
He walked to their makeshift kitchen and pulled a plastic bucket from beneath the exposed piping of the sink.
Ava slid from bed and found his t-shirt on the floor where he’d dropped it last night; she pulled it on over her head and went to his side. “What in the world is in that thing?”
He lifted the basket toward her and she saw that its frame was metal, and that it had an inner lining of netting. And it was half-full with little red wriggling, snapping crawfish.
“Mud bugs,” he explained cheerfully. “Our lunch.”
Her stomach turned over at the idea, but she said, “Well that sounds…interesting.”
He gave her a knowing look as he opened up the trap and dumped the little crustaceans into the bucket with a clattering sound. “They taste good, I promise.”
She nodded. “Oh, I know.” She smiled. “I believe you. I just have no idea how to cook the things.”
“You’re in luck, Mrs. L, because you’re about to learn from the master.”
She felt her smile widen. Mrs. L. That’s who she was now. No longer just Ghost’s daughter, or Aidan’s little sister, but Mercy’s wife.
He watched her absorb the idea, his gaze warm as she processed it all. Then he said, “Here, I’ll show you. Grab me the salt, and we’ll get them clean.”
Cooking lessons with Mercy were nothing like cooking lessons with Maggie. It wasn’t drudgery; it was just spending time with each other, in a new capacity, talking about seasoning instead of Shakespeare.
Mercy built up a fire in the iron stove, and Ava filled a big soup pot with water that she set to boil. Cleaning the crawfish was nasty business. She cringed to watch them writhe around as the salt and water went over them.
Mercy decided they’d do it up like a crab boil, and he set her to halving ears of corn and new potatoes. She managed not to cut herself.
“How’d you get to be so comfy in the kitchen?” she asked teasingly as she minced a head of garlic.
He shrugged his wide, bare shoulders. “Growing up, Gram cooked, and Daddy cooked, and I cooked. We all pitched in.”
“What’s your favorite thing to make?”
“Sausage gravy,” he said without hesitation. “On fresh biscuits.”
To the water, they added the corn, the potatoes, bay leaves, garlic, halved lemons, whole peppercorns, salt, thyme, cayenne, paprika, crushed red pepper. When the crawfish were deemed clean enough, and the dead floaters fished from the mix, Mercy poured the lot in. He splashed in half a beer and declared it ready to “do its thing.”
Then he caught her around the waist and crushed her to him. “You didn’t even kiss me yet.”
Ava wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts to his chest as he claimed her mouth with rough, wet kisses that left her straining up on her toes.
One of his hands went up under the hem of the shirt, found all her bare skin.
“How long do those have to boil?” she asked, breathlessly, when he finally pulled back.
His disappointed frown made her want to laugh. His hand on her ass made her want to drag him over to the bed. “Not long,” he said. He sighed. “After, then. Fucking crawfish.”
Ava did laugh then, resting her head on his chest. “They were your idea.”
“I know. Fuck me too.”
“After,” she reminded, smiling. “I’ll do that after.”
They poured their crawfish boil out over newspaper, as it should be done, and the smell was incredible. Ava ate a few. She ate more of the corn and potatoes, slathered with butter. There was just something about the texture that was hard to stomach. Not for her, she decided, but this was Mercy’s Cajun culture. And she wanted to support him in every way she could.
“Can we walk over sometime and see the church?” she asked as they were rolling up the shells in the newspaper and throwing out the trash.
Mercy snapped his fingers. “That reminds me. Damn, I can’t believe I forgot. When we get done with this, put some pants on, and I’ll show you something cool.”
She was too curious to joke that she’d thought his after-lunch “something cool” would involve a distinct lack of pants. Instead, she pulled on jeans and boots and was handed a flashlight. He had one too, and he was sliding his Colt into his waistband.
Ava lifted her brows. “Should I be nervous?”
“Nope.” He waggled his brows. “Not unless you’re afraid of ghosts.”
“I’m only afraid of one Ghost. And that’s not so much fear as a healthy understanding of his overbearing father issues.”
Mercy laughed. “Come on, then.”
They went out the back door of the cottage, to what had once been a small garden in the right angle where the outer walls of the main room and bathroom extension came together. It was nothing but a tangle of old vines threaded with weeds now, but Ava saw the small concrete angel, discolored and moss-covered, that still stood in the very corner.
Mercy dropped to his knees and felt across the ground. From under the fallen leaves, he unearthed a heavy metal ring. He hooked his fingers through it and pulled. As Ava watched, the moss-covered ground lifted, and then revealed itself as a trap door, about three feet by three feet, falling back on its hinges and revealing a dark stone stairwell that led down into the earth.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, delighted. “It’s a secret tunnel?”
Mercy grinned up at her. “It’s a secret tunnel.” He clicked on the flashlight and stood, aiming the beam down into the opening. “Let’s hope there’s not any water moccasins down there.”
He went first, and Ava followed, a hand resting lightly against the middle of his bare back as she navigated the narrow stone stairs. They went down until the ceiling opened up just high enough to let Mercy pass with only a slight stooping of his shoulders. He couldn’t stand upright, and they had to walk one in front of the other between its narrow stone walls.
“Oh, wow.” Ava passed her flashlight beam across the algae-slick stones under her boots. “The whole thing’s made of rock.”
“It floods when the water’s up,” Mercy said in front of her, half-twisting so she could hear him better. The close walls pressed his voice around them. “So whoever dug it wanted to make sure it wouldn’t collapse. This stone’s four feet thick.” He patted the wall. “It was built during Prohibition. The Hollow belonged to smugglers then. They wanted an escape route, in case the police found them.”
“Wow,” she breathed again.
As they progressed along, the light touched small puddles, old forgotten glass bottles, black with age, straggling dead knots of duckweed, the bones of frogs, snakes, and mice that had been washed in with the water, and then perished alone in the dark.
It felt like they walked forever.
“How far does it go?”
“The chapel. Not much farther now.”
They reached another stone staircase, and a heavy wood door at a slant above them. Mercy pushed it open with ease, and as it opened, sunlight came streaming into the tunnel, sharp against their dark-adjusted eyes. Ava saw the leaping tendons in his arms. The thing was heavy.
It fell back with a dull slamming sound, and they were climbing up onto a little wooden stage, the high chapel ceiling soaring above them, the collapsing pews marching in rows up ahead. They were at the pulpit. There was the lectern; behind them, the big plain cross spread its arms. Mother Nature had punched up the floorboards, and the aisles were soft with grass and vines. Ava could hear the music of birds and frogs. Sun fell in through the high narrow windows, and in the utter stillness, the air smelling of warmth and greenery, it was easy to feel the echoes of holiness in this long-forgotten church.
“It’s beautiful,” Ava said, almost afraid to let her voice touch the quiet.
Mercy stood at the edge of the simple wooden stage, hands at his sides, staring at the cross. “Hmm,” he murmured in agreement, but Ava could see that he was miles away. Coming in here had triggered something in him.
She wanted to go to him, slide her arms around his waist. But that old sense of infringing held her back. She didn’t want to pry the demons out of him. She wanted him to pull them out and show them to her.
“What?” she asked, softly.
He shook his head a fraction. “Nothing. Just…I haven’t been inside a church in a long time.” He took a deep breath, and the light shifted across the muscles of his chest as it expanded and relaxed again.
“Do you miss going?”
His eyes didn’t waver from the cross. “We didn’t go that often. Gram dragged us to Mass on Christmas Eve every year. Sometimes on Easter.”
“Mercy–”
The sound of a boat motor cut through the tranquil afternoon.
Mercy snapped around, eyes going to the gaping front doors of the church. The tension coiled inside him, cycling through his body, making him seem taller, visibly aggressive. “Wait here.” He made a staying motion with his hand, and stepped off the stage, going down the center aisle in a handful of long strides.
The motor moved closer.
He had a hand on the doorframe, gazing out across the swamp, when she saw him relax.
“Larry and Evie,” he called to her. Then he frowned. “What part of ‘newlywed’ did they not understand, huh?”
“I told her she didn’t need to be bothering you,” Larry grumbled as he and Evie emerged from the cypress cave. “We put truckloads of food in that house, and you don’t need her running over here with a damn meatloaf every five minutes.”
Ava rushed to assure them that they weren’t being a bother, and thanked Evie profusely for the meatloaf. She explained that they’d just eaten. When Evie said, “That’s fine, it’ll keep,” and made no move to leave, Ava asked them to stay and visit, have a drink.
Mercy gave her a murderous look where the O’Donnells couldn’t see, and she smiled sweetly back. She thought, maybe if they got this over with, they could spend the evening alone together.
“Let’s let the boys talk,” Evie urged, when they were all equipped with glasses of Johnnie Walker Red. “Let’s you and me go for a stroll.”
Ah, so this was it: the closest she’d ever get to a motherly chat on Mercy’s behalf.
She took a hard sip of her Scotch as they began a slow walk around the edge of the meadow.
“How were the crawfish?” Evie asked, a knowing laughter in her voice.
“Um…they were different,” Ava said, cringing.
“It’s not like popcorn shrimp at a restaurant, is it?”
“That’s for sure.”
It was a wet, dense heat that seemed to drift up from the ground. The kind of heat that made you light-headed and faintly sick, like walking through water. It was the hottest part of the day, and the alcohol wasn’t helping things. Ava took slow steps, kicking the toes of her boots through the grass. She wished there’d been room to bring along some flip-flops. Even just sneakers. Anything besides these hot boots.
Evie’s voice became more serious, but no less direct. “I know Felix told me once, but I’ve forgotten. It’s hell to get old. But anyway, I was trying to remember – how old were you when Felix moved to Tennessee? The first time, I mean.”
This felt like entrapment. “I was eight,” she said. Skating around the truth wasn’t her style.
“Just a little baby thing,” Evie said.
Ava didn’t like the sound of that. But she said, “My dad assigned him to my mom and me. Our security detail.”
“Hm. He woulda been, what? Twenty?”
“Twenty-one.”
“He was scary to look at even then. I can see why a father would make that choice.” She sipped her Scotch. “What was he like then? After he’d run off from home. All alone up there in the Smoky Mountains.”
Ava felt the first stirrings of anger and tried to tamp them down. “He was my friend. Even though I was only eight, he was my friend from the beginning. The other stuff came later.”
Evie made a murmuring sound. “I’m not sure the poor boy ever had a single friend growing up. He was awful shy, and he was home-schooled, you know.”
It was a little stab of pain to say, “No. I didn’t know.”
“Uh-huh. Never went to school a day in his life. No homecoming, no prom. No football games. Just reading a buncha dusty old books with his daddy and grandmother.”
Ava swallowed another sip of Scotch and felt it catch in her throat. She felt this intense, instant ache when she thought of the fearless man she knew growing up a quiet, shy, friendless boy. This new knowledge painted all the old memories in a new light, explained them more precisely. The young man who’d taken a true interest in her, who had talked books and movies and hokey old sitcoms with her had done so because that was a true connection between them. She’d always known that; but now she knew why. No matter how many years he spent as Mercy – ruthless MC extractor and wielder of pipe wrenches and pliers – there would always be a part of him that was Felix, lonely for some true, kindred company. He’d found that, in her.
She wanted to go back to the cottage and put her arms around him. She wanted to tell Evie to get lost, because she sensed the judgment in the woman, and that made her furious.
She said, “That explains why he’s so much more well-read than any of the boys I ever went to school with.”
Evie laughed. “Nobody ever caught your eye while he was waiting for you to grow up?”
“No.” She hated that phrasing: waiting for her to grow up, like he’d had sick intentions while she was a little girl, and he’d managed to hold himself at bay until she was ripe.
“Well, I guess the same’s true for him,” Evie went on, oblivious to Ava’s darkening mood. “He was in some kinda bad place several years ago, when he came back from Tennessee.”
Not my fault, she wanted to say. That was my Dad’s misguided notion of protecting me, and Mercy being too honorable to tell him to fuck off.
“Felix is a very good-natured boy,” Evie said. “But he doesn’t love too many people. He loves you.” Her brows lifted. “That’s an honor.”
At this point, the Maggie Lowe DNA in her was swirling up with the old Teague blood and she was in the mood to punch this woman right in the face. To be questioned and lectured about her love for Mercy, cautioned like that. It was insulting.
“Mrs. O’Donnell,” she said, tone polite, coming to a halt. She drew on every ounce of her mother’s grace, and her literary background. “I have had the incomparable pleasure of calling Felix Lécuyer my dear friend for almost fifteen years. I have loved him, and been loved by him, for all that time. Don’t ever think that I am less than astounded by the depth of his feeling, or that I don’t love him back with every square inch of my heart.”
Evie blinked. Then smiled. “Oh, honey. I’m so glad you do.” She resumed her walk, and Ava followed suit. “I’m not trying to make you mad, understand.”
Ava sighed. “Sorry. I just get defensive of him.”
“Good.”
They had reached the water’s edge. The ground was so soft, Ava stepped back, afraid she’d get sucked down into the channel.
Evie said, “I brought a box with me this time. A bunch of Felix’s old stuff.”
Ava glanced over out of rabid curiosity.
“I thought he might like to show it to you. Larry and I went back to his house after…you know. Felix wouldn’t go in. I think it hurt too bad to see it empty.”
Ava wanted so badly to ask what you know meant. For years she’d wondered. What was the awful thing that had wounded Mercy so deeply? The words were on her tongue before she checked them. No, she reminded herself. If Mercy wanted her to know, he’d tell her. She would ask, would put her arms around him and promise her support, but asking Evie felt like a betrayal. Gossiping behind his back. She’d never treated him like that before; she wasn’t going to start now.
“A box full of what sort of stuff?” she asked instead.
Evie shrugged. “Old pictures. His personal things off his bookshelf. We packed up the things from his room we thought he’d like to keep. Just junk, probably.” She smiled at Ava. “But it’s his junk.”
Maggie took a deep breath and realized she was shaking. She hated that she was shaking. Fuck this shit. Fuck it.
The entire side of Ava’s pretty black truck, from headlight to taillight, was spattered with eggs. Rotten eggs, going by the smell. Bits of shell clung to the trailing, globular yolks that ran in slow motion down the paint.
When the first one hit on her way down Main, she’d thought it was a rock kicked up by the truck in front of her. But then the volley had begun. High school kids, under the watchful eye of one of their fathers, had egged her car, the utility trailer, and even poor Harry, who’d been riding behind her, and wearing the cut that had drawn the attention of the protesters.
She turned to him now that they were safely parked in her driveway. “Harry, honey…”
His helmet, cut, gloves, and boots were glossy with egg whites. The goo dripped from his sleeves. There was splatter on his face, over his sunglasses, smeared, where he’d wiped it away so he could see to ride.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It coulda been worse. It coulda been rocks.”
Her stomach tightened at the idea.
Ghost came out of the house, Collier in his wake, and Maggie fought to mask her surprise.
Ghost’s eyes skipped over the truck, and she could see the anger building in him, the leaping pulse in the vein at his temple. “Where did this happen?”
“On Main.”
He glanced at her and under the staggering fury, she read the apology in his eyes. He hated that this had happened to her; he blamed himself, for being the sort of husband who drew censure and attention.
“You were with her?” he demanded of Harry and Carter.
Carter said, “Yes, sir.”
“It was kids,” Harry rushed to say. “I don’t think they meant to hurt anybody.”
“No?” Ghost said. “Ava’s little boyfriend, he was just a kid. Look how that went.”
“Everybody alright?” Collier asked.
Maggie took another of those hated shaky breaths. “Yeah. Just a little eggy.”
Ghost came to her side, pulled her into a much-needed hug.
“It makes me so damn angry, is all,” she said, as his strong arms made the tremors worse; knowing she could lean against him always made her more vulnerable.
“I know,” he said. “Me too.”
When she stepped back, Ghost said, “Aidan and Tango are on their way. I told Collier that Jackie could come have dinner with us.” His eyes told her he would explain later.
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Tell your little kids they can stay too.” He gestured to Harry and Carter. “I don’t want them going anywhere alone.”
Because right now, it wasn’t a city at the outlaws’ mercy, but the other way around.
“Christ,” Mercy said, sinking down onto the sofa and letting his head flop back. “Learn to take a fucking hint.”
Ava smiled. “They missed you.”
He snorted. “Right now, that’s not a mutual feeling.
She laughed.
After an early dinner, and another round of drinks, they’d finally managed to get Larry and Evie out the door. Mercy was just back from walking them to their bateau. Ava had breathed a huge sigh of relief to see them go out the door, but Mercy’s theatrics were cute enough to keep her from feeling too robbed.
Mercy sat up, leaning forward to brace his forearms on his thighs. He’d put on a white t-shirt for dinner, and taken his hair down; she loved it loose like that. “What are you doing?”
She sat cross-legged on the rug, looking through the box Evie had brought. She was fizzing with excitement as she walked her fingers through packets of photos, little figurines whittled from wood, old paperbacks, old shell casings and fishing lures, little odds and ends. She pulled out a small cassette player and a handful of tapes with handwritten labels.
“Your old mix tapes,” she said, grinning, as she held one up to the light.
For one quick flash, his expression was sad and vulnerable, then he smoothed it over with the usual bravado. “Somebody call the Smithsonian,” he said. “She found my old mix tapes.”
Undeterred, she read the label. “Good Stuff.” She gave it a little shake. “What’s on here?”
“Dunno. It’s been, like, a thousand years.”
Ava slid the tape and player across the carpet toward him. “Go plug it in.”
He gave her a petulant frown.
“Pretty please?”
He heaved an overdramatic sigh and picked them up, dragged his feet like it was a real effort as he went to the nearest wall outlet and got everything set up. There was that fuzzy sound of the cassette beginning to turn, one she hadn’t heard in a long time thanks to iPods and CDs. And as he resumed his seat on the couch, the solemn opening chords of “Rooster” filled the cottage.
“Alice in Chains,” she said, allowing herself a moment to enjoy the first vocal notes of the song. “This is the good stuff.”
“There’s nothing worth a damn in there,” he said, as she returned her attention to the box.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
He sank back against the sofa with a face that made her want to laugh.
“You know everything there is to know about me,” she said, carefully opening a yellowed photo packet. “Why can’t I…” The pictures slid out into her palm. “Oh, Mercy,” she said quietly, transfixed.
It was him – of course it was, the only child of a single father – too tall, all knobby knees and elbows, his hair cut short, his face soft with boyhood. His father, standing beside him, an arm around his shoulders, looked so much like Mercy did now, as an adult. There was no mistaking the parentage. A handsome, lean-faced, big-shouldered man, a shade darker than his son, more of that Cherokee blood in his veins than in Mercy’s. They stood on a pier, and hanging beside them from a strong pulley was a dead gator, strung up by its tail.
“What?” Mercy asked, voice sharp and displeased.
“It’s you.” She laid the picture carefully on the carpet. Beneath it was a shot of what had to be his grandmother: frail, wrinkled little thing, white hair streaming across her shoulders, small gnarled hands busy over a knitting project. “You family.” The next was a small house made of tar paper. It was just a shack, really, on the water’s edge, a rusted truck parked in the weeds at the back door. “Is this the house you grew up in?”
When he didn’t answer, she lifted her head.
His eyes were dark, angry, defensive, his jaw tight. He didn’t like this.
“Do you not want me to look?” she asked. “I can put them away.”
She watched him wrestle with himself a moment, hands clasping together and clenching until the veins stood out in his wrists.
Ava began to slide the pictures back into their envelope.
“No,” he said. “Look if you want to.”
She gave him a soft smile. “You know I won’t love you any less because of anything I see in a picture.”
He exhaled noisily, forcing his hands flat on his thighs. He glanced away. “Yeah.”
“You wanna come look with me?”
Maybe that’s a bad idea, she thought, when he stared at her. But then he got up and came to lower down to the rug beside her, lying on his stomach at her hip, propped up on his elbows.
“Yeah, that’s the house,” he said of the top photo in her hand. “Ready for the cover of Southern Living, huh?” he asked wryly, his smile ashamed and wistful all at once.
“It’s not about what a house looks like, but how much the people who live in it love each other,” she said, and watched his face twitch with acknowledgement. She leaned over and kissed the top of his head, his hair silky against her lips. “Here.” She set the photo on the carpet with the other two. “What’s this?”
“I brought a pie,” Jackie said when she appeared at the back door, Littlejohn in tow. She held up the pie plate with a chastened expression that let Maggie know it was a peace offering in more ways than one. “It’s cherry.”
Maggie took a deep breath. “It looks great.” She opened the door wide. “Do you mind helping me set the table?”
Jackie looked relieved. “Sure.”
“Do you need any help?” Littlejohn asked as he stepped in and carefully removed his boots.
“No, sweetie,” Maggie assured. “Get you a beer and go hang out with the guys.”
Once she’d secured the deadbolt, she turned and saw Jackie pulling down plates. They’d cohosted so many dinners that each knew the other’s kitchen as well as her own, where everything was kept, which napkins would be best for each occasion, which places at the table the boys preferred (it usually reflected their positions around the table in the clubhouse chapel). Maggie realized she didn’t trust Jackie anymore, not the way she always had, and the notion saddened her in a way the thrown eggs that afternoon hadn’t been able to. So often, it was the club against everything outside of it. If you couldn’t trust one another, who could you trust? What a horrible thing internal politics were.
“There’s seven of us?” Jackie asked.
“Nine.” Maggie went to pull the silverware.
They set the dining room table, since the kitchen wouldn’t hold that many of them. Aidan and Tango showed up right as the food was being laid out, bearing Jack Daniels and a bottle of Pino Grigio for Maggie.
Aidan gave her a sideways hug. “Heard you got egged.”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Nothing a little soap won’t fix.”
He snorted in disagreement.
No one seemed surprised to see Collier. When they were all seated, and the serving platters were passed around, Maggie felt herself sagging in her chair, suddenly tired and anxious. She caught Ghost’s eye, from his place at the head of the table, silently asking a half dozen questions.
She recognized his responding look: he needed her support right now. He needed her to be the queen of the castle, solid and ready to catch him when he leaned against her.
She straightened. Queens didn’t slouch.
There was a whole history of Lécuyers spread out on the rug. Early photographs of Mercy’s grandparents, when they were in their twenties: his grandmother smooth-skinned, black-haired and beautiful, tiny even then, cinched tightly into her white wedding dress. His grandfather had been very tall and very thin, handsome, with a blade-like nose and a headful of pale hair. There was a gentleness to the austere lines of his face, a sweetness she saw in Mercy. It was from his grandmother that the ferocity had come, her black eyes chips of unforgiving obsidian.
She knew the story, but he repeated it to her anyway: how Louis Lécuyer had come to the Deep South from Quebec, searching for a warmer, more profitable life. He’d met Nanette Raintree during a brief stay in Georgia. She’d been working as a seamstress for a tailor, and Louis had stopped in to have his favorite coat mended.
“You have the prettiest little fingers,” Mercy recalled his grandfather’s first words to his grandmother. “Have dinner with me, chéri.”
Louis had faced the fragility of his dreams in Louisiana: there would be no riches and fine houses for his family. But he’d made friends with the swamp, and he’d opened a small store on the waterfront, one that he would eventually sell to Lew’s father, passed down to Lew.
There were photos of Larry and Evie, younger and unlined, and of other family friends, all of whom Mercy had lost touch with after his father’s passing.
And then, at the bottom of the stack, a photo Ava had been hoping to stumble across. A pretty blonde woman in a flowered cotton dress, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of the tar paper house, a blanket-wrapped baby in her arms. An old photo, older than the shots of Mercy as a teenager. A strained, unhappy look on the woman’s face. Tuft of black hair on the baby’s head.
“Your mother,” Ava guessed, and his expression proved her right: a reflection of the woman in the photo, detached, displeased.
He made a sound in the back of his throat. “Dee.” He nodded. “Poor Daddy. He thought all a whore really needed to turn her around was love. He was wrong.”
Ava sat back on her hands, a little stunned.
As if sensing it, Mercy glanced up at her. “I mean a real whore. For money.” His smile was mocking. “I’m probably lucky I wasn’t born with HIV.”
She groped for something to say.
He glanced away from her, toward the photo in her hand. “Anyhow, she’s got it now. She’s dying, Larry said. That’s why Evie wanted to go walking and get you out of the house, so he could tell me I need to go see her, one last time, before it’s too late.”
Ava swallowed. “How long do they think she has?”
“A couple weeks. A couple days. Who knows. Her organs are shutting down.”
“We should go see her, then.”
“We?”
“Yeah. I’m coming with you.”
“Nope,” he said, pushing up onto his hands and getting to his feet. “Absolutely not.”
“Mercy.”
Her tone brought him up short halfway back to the couch. He turned to her as Audioslave droned in the background. His brows lifted.
“Mercy,” she repeated, “I’m not asking you to unpack all your baggage. I’ve never asked you that, because I know you don’t want to. But your mother’s dying, and when you go to see her, I’m going with you. Because I’m not the kid you protect anymore. I’m your wife, and I’m going to support you.”
He folded his arms. “And that’s just how it is?”
“Yeah, it is.”
He walked back to her slowly, socked feet quiet across the carpet. His stride looked like a predatory stalk. “How do you think you’re gonna get there?”
She felt a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth. “The same way you get there.”
“Hm. That’ll be kinda hard considering you’ll be tied to the shower curtain rod when I leave.”
“Gosh, I married the sweetest man.”
He snorted as he lowered to the rug in front of her, crouched so she only had to tip her head back a little to meet his eyes. “You knew what you were getting into.”
“So did you,” she shot back. Then, softening. “What are you so afraid I’ll think?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “You don’t understand how badly I hate that woman. I don’t want you to see…that side of my blood.”
“Why not?” she pressed, gently.
“Because she destroys people. That’s what she does. And I don’t want you within fifty miles of the bitch.”
“She can’t destroy me,” she said, shaking her head. “And she can’t change the way I see you.”
He took a deep breath. “But it could make you rethink having kids. You won’t want a baby that’s related to her, not after you know…everything.”
Channeling her mother, she gathered one of his big hands up in both of hers and squeezed. “Mercy. Sweetheart. Trust me – your mother isn’t part of the equation. Let me be there for you. I think you need it.”
He glanced away, swallowing. She saw his grandfather in his profile, the handsome Frenchman who’d claimed some distant relation to a French lord. She saw his grandmother in the harsh line of his mouth. Quietly, he said, “Dee’s where the rage comes from. I get that from her.”
“And that rage has kept you alive. And protected the people you love.”
Awful attempt at a smile. “Not all of them, though, not all of them.”
He was on his feet again, going to the bed and falling back across it, staring up at the ceiling.
Ava sighed and started packing his memories away. This had been a bad idea. One she wished she could take back.
“I need to clean your shoulder,” she said, dying for a safe topic.
“It’s fine.”
“Nuh-uh. Shirt off, please.” She stood and stowed the box on top of the desk in the window, and went to the kitchen for the first aid supplies. When she went to the bed, she was thankful to see that he’d complied, sitting up, and shirtless.
She set the alcohol and bandages on the quilt and peeled back the tape on the old covering. She frowned. “This should look better than this by now.”
Its edges were red and oozy still, little broken red vessels moving out away from the wound beneath the skin. The bullet hole had a dark look to it that she didn’t like.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said.
“Liar.” His skin twitched as she ran her finger around the outside of the wound. “It hurts like a bitch.” On impulse, she pressed her hand to his forehead. “You don’t have a fever, do you?”
He looked insulted. “Yeah, but it’s not up there.” He plucked her hand up and moved it, pressing it over the fly of his jeans. “That’s the only place that’s overheated, baby.”
She wasn’t in the mood for cheap come-ons. She pulled her hand away, and picked up the alcohol. “Nice try. I’m still worried about this. It just looks…raggedy.”
“How scientific, Dr. Lécuyer. Prescribe me something.”
“Smartass.” But she was smiling. “At least let me clean it out.”
“Do I get a treat if I do?”
“Yes.”
“That bastard.” Ghost flicked his cigarette away across the dark yard. As dry as the grass was, it’d probably smoke a little hole in the turf, and Maggie would chew him out.
“He swore,” Aidan said, rolling his eyes, “that he was nearby, and responded to the 9-1-1 call. Knows nothing about Jace or that girl or Andre, he swears.” He snorted. “You shoulda seen the sweat pouring down his face.”
“Like he’s not pulling Jace’s strings,” Collier said with disgust. “I kept Andre’s phone. He got a text, someone asking about ‘the other one.’ Now we know it’s Jace.”
Ghost couldn’t remember ever having a headache this bad. It was like screws in his temples, an awful pressure that compressed his skull. There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to dull it. “So.” He lit another smoke to have something to do with his hands. “Fielding knows we know. He’ll take Jace into custody to keep him safe. What about the girl?” He shot a glance to his son.
Aidan shook his head. “I was gonna have to break in to get to her.”
“So?”
“So?” He bowed up his back, a little daring show of rebellion. “What was I supposed to do? Kill her? Jace is our rat. She’s not important.”
Ghost frowned. He didn’t like loose ends. “Where’s Greg?” They didn’t need one more liability.
“At the clubhouse. RJ’s keeping him company.”
Behind him, the back door opened. It was Jackie. “Baby, we ready to go?”
“Yeah, honey,” Collier called, and she came out onto the patio, pie plate held against her chest.
“Thanks for coming,” Ghost told her, and she nodded. In the dark, he could just see that lingering note of fear in her eyes. Then he pegged Collier with a look that dared the VP to do something stupid again. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
They’d come to a rough understanding, in the hayloft of Richard’s old cattle barn. Collier’s sins would be dealt with once all of this was past. Ghost had too many enemies – too many devils in every corner – to be without his vice president and longtime friend. He didn’t doubt Collier’s loyalty to the club, even if that loyalty had been manifested in a dishonest way. There would be a table full of brothers to answer to, but not now. Now, they had shit to do.
“Right,” Collier said, “first thing.”
His heartbeat was strong. She measured it with her hand pressed to the tattoo of her teeth on his chest. Thick, hard punches against her palm as he struggled to get his breath back, his pecs heaving. Healthy, she reassured herself. No infection, no fever. Healthy, strong, steady, nothing wrong.
She loved his pulse for another reason too. She loved that it thundered through his skin when he was inside her, and after, like now, when she rested her head on his arm in the aftermath. She loved that it was reflective of his urgency, his intensity, the fervor of the way he’d claimed her.
She felt his breath in her hair as he rolled his head toward her. “You okay?”
It took her a second to find her voice. “Yeah.” She wiggled her fingertips against his chest. “I’m okay.”
“You made this…sound…”
“Did I?” It was hard to stay awake, her eyelids flickering. “I don’t remember.”
“It was a good sound.”
“Mmm. Good.”
He kissed her forehead, his lips moving slowly. She had the sense he wanted to mount her again, the intention she felt pulsing through him. But they were both too tired, and he knew it.
“Tomorrow,” he said with a sigh.
“Tomorrow what?”
“We’ll go see Dee. Tomorrow.”
Thank you, she thought, and then sleep took hold.