Seven
1989
“In the end, only three things matter,” Abuela said. “Who He is.” She pointed at the sky. “Who you are, and who your friends are.”
“Why does it matter who your friends are?” What Mercedes really wanted to ask was why any of it mattered, but she didn’t want to hurt her abuela’s feelings.
“Our friends shape the course of our lives. You have to choose them very carefully. But if you know who He is, then He will help you know who you are. And if you know who you are, you will know who your true friends are. One thing leads to another, you see.”
Mercedes didn’t see, but she nodded. “Noah is my true friend.”
“Yes. He is. He’s a good boy.”
“Cora is my true friend.”
Abuela nodded, but a little more slowly this time. “You are her true friend. And that is important too. But Cora doesn’t know who she is.”
“Does she know who He is?” Mercedes pointed at the sky. Abuela loved to talk in mystic riddles, and Mercedes liked to tease.
Abuela narrowed her eyes, suspecting Mercedes was trying to talk circles around her.
“Only three things matter, niña,” Abuela said, shaking her finger.
“Who He is, who I am, and who my friends are,” Mercedes supplied, trying not to smile.
“If you don’t know who you are, you won’t see the world clearly, you understand?” Abuela was getting frustrated.
“Who am I, Abuela?”
“You are a child of God.”
“And who is Cora? Maybe I can tell her who she is, so she will know.”
“Mercedes—you are laughing at me.” Abuela sighed.
Mercedes was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry, Abuela. I do know who I am. I am your granddaughter, and I love you very much. I am also a tease, and sometimes I laugh when I should listen.”
“Sí. You should listen. But it is okay to laugh too.”
“So tell me . . . who is Cora?” Mercedes asked, contrite.
“She is a child of God too. We all are. But she doesn’t know it. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she sees you. And she sees Noah. And she sees her mother and her father, and everyone who has loved her and everyone who has let her down. But she doesn’t see Cora because she doesn’t know who Cora is.”
“I’ll tell her, Abuela.” Mercedes patted her grandmother’s hand. She didn’t feel like laughing anymore. She felt melancholy. Sad. Like she’d just learned her friend was suffering from an illness she knew nothing about.
“I know you will, Mercedes. You are a true friend. I will tell her too. Maybe we can save her.”
* * *
Moses was lean with youth but muscled like a man—eighteen going on thirty—and as tall as Noah, with chocolate milk skin and odd hazel eyes that made Mercedes want to twitch and look away. His hair was cut so close to his scalp that only a suggestion of hair remained, and he ran his hands over his head before dropping them into his lap. He stared at Mercedes quietly for a moment, and she didn’t fill the silence. Noah had excused himself with a soft reminder that he would check back soon. Other visitors sat in similar rooms, all of them lining a long hallway. Moses wore the standard attire of a Montlake inmate. Pale yellow scrubs and tan socks with little rubber circles on the bottoms to prevent slipping on the linoleum floors. He should have looked harmless in the odd clothing. He didn’t. A stack of drawing paper and several grease pencils lay on the table, and he picked one up, rotating it between his fingers like a drummer in a heavy metal band.
“Noah says you’re done. He said you’re getting out of Montlake. Where are you going to go?” Mercedes asked.
“Everywhere. Nowhere,” he clipped.
“Huh. Never been.” Mercedes shrugged.
A smile flickered in his eyes but didn’t touch his lips.
“You Dr. Andelin’s girl?” he asked, his voice a smoky rumble.
“Do I look like a girl to you, Moses?”
He smiled, his beautiful lips revealing straight white teeth. Mercedes got the feeling he didn’t smile often and felt honored to have witnessed it.
“You ain’t very big,” he muttered. “But no, you’re a woman. Still, that doesn’t really answer my question.”
“I’m not Noah’s girl. I’m his friend. I was his wife’s friend too. We grew up together.”
“Cora,” he supplied.
“Yes. Cora.”
He shifted, his eyes straying out the window.
“Dr. Noah didn’t tell me your name. I don’t know what to call you.”
She reached out a hand. “I’m Mercedes Lopez. Nice to meet you.”
He didn’t take it, and she wondered belatedly if there were rules about contact. Noah had left her alone with him, so she wasn’t worried about her safety. She lowered her hands to her lap.
“Moses Wright. What do you want, Miss Lopez?” he said, his eyes coming back to hers.
“I don’t know, Moses,” she confessed. “You helped Noah. I thought maybe you could help me.”
“Did he tell you I helped him?” Moses seemed surprised. Pleased.
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t think I’m crazy?”
“No. He doesn’t.”
“Huh. Dr. Noah . . . he’s all right,” Moses said softly. “I like him. And I don’t like very many people.”
“I like him too. And I don’t like most people either.”
“I kinda got that vibe.” Moses smirked. “You’re tough. Cora—Dr. Noah’s wife—wasn’t . . . tough, was she?”
“In her own way, she was.”
He didn’t seek to fill the silence between them, but waited for her to move the conversation forward.
“You told Noah that Cora was okay. How do you know?” she asked.
“They all are. The dead, I mean. The ones I see, anyway. Maybe the ones who aren’t okay don’t get to visit.”
“They don’t scare you?”
“They scare the shit outta me,” he grunted. “But not for the reasons you think. It’s . . . unsettling . . . to never be alone.” He smirked as though the word was an understatement. “I don’t want to see them. But some things . . . we don’t get to choose. This is one of those things.”
“Most things we don’t get to choose . . . that’s why I love clothes and makeup and hair. A million choices and nobody gets hurt.”
His mouth quirked, but the half-smile faded, and his eyes shifted, growing distant. “You lose someone, Lopez? A grandma or something?”
“Yes.” Mercedes watched as he turned inward, seeing something that was hidden from her.
“She looks like you. Feels like you too. Smart. Pushy. She didn’t wait for me to acknowledge her,” he said.
Mercedes’s mouth grew dry, and her eyes were instantly wet. “You can see Abuela?”
“Abuela?” He sounded surprised. “So that’s Abuela, huh? Dr. Noah mentioned her.”
Mercedes waited, desperate to hear more.
“She’s showing me a picture. One of those creepy Catholic paintings.” He held his hand up, palm out and cupped. “Why the hell do they always have their hands like that?” he muttered.
Mercedes stared at him, perplexed.
“The woman in the picture is standing like that. There are reddish-gold sunbeams all around her, and she has a veil over her hair,” Moses expounded.
Realization struck. “She’s showing you Our Lady Guadalupe. The patron saint of Mexico. Abuela loved her. She had her picture over her bed.”
“I think . . . she wants you to know she’s seen her. Your grandma. She’s seen . . . Guadalupe.”
Mercedes gasped. “Dios mío. Abuela must be in heaven.”
“Well . . . yeah. That’s kinda the idea.”
Mercedes laughed and swiped at her eyes.
“Shit,” he whispered, eyes on her face.
“What?”
“I hoped she was gone.” He rubbed at his head wearily and shot Mercedes an accusing look. “Your grandma is with her.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Andelin’s wife.”
It was all Mercedes could do not to spin in her seat, looking for them, desperate to see for herself. Her skin prickled and her stomach dropped, and if it wasn’t for Moses’s complete lack of pretension and his own discomfort, she wouldn’t have believed him. But he had nothing to gain, and Mercedes had nothing to give him but her faith.
“Cora? Cora is with Abuela?” she asked.
“Yeah.” His grease pencil began to move over the paper as they talked, as though the motion calmed him. He sketched a simple row of figures connected at the feet and the hands. Paper dolls. He was drawing paper dolls, linked yet individualized. It didn’t take long for the details to emerge. Noah and Cora, tall and thin, stood on each end. Mercedes stood between them, smaller, shaded, holding the three of them together. Moses shoved the paper aside. Mercedes stared at it, gazing down at their unmistakable faces.
But Moses wasn’t done. He pulled a new sheet toward him and continued, the image rising from the page like a monster from the deep. Mercedes could only watch in fascinated horror as another trio of paper dolls appeared beneath his flying hand. When he was finished he flung his grease pencil, and stuck his fingers in his mouth.
“The pencil gets hot sometimes,” he explained.
He slid the sketch toward Mercedes with his free hand. The drawing was eerie. One dimensional bodies—cartoonish and simple—topped with three dimensional faces, each figure smaller than the next. Noah first. Then Mercedes, and clinging to her hand, a tiny figure with floating curls. Gia.
“What does that mean?” Mercedes whispered.
“I draw what I see. That’s all,” Moses said, but his eyes lifted to hers, golden-green and carefully blank. “But she knows.”
“She knows what?”
“You love Dr. Andelin, right? She knows.”
“I’ve always loved him. Of course she knows. I loved her too.”
He scratched his head. “Shit,’ he sighed again. “And she loves you.”
Mercedes nodded, stunned, and grief thrummed in her chest like a sore tooth.
“Can I have these?” she whispered.
“I don’t want ‘em,” Moses grunted.
Mercedes stacked one picture on top of the other. It hurt to look at them. She folded them instead, hiding the images.
“Is that all?” she whispered.
His eyebrows rose, incredulous. “That isn’t enough?”
“I want to understand what happened to her . . . and I still don’t know.”
He sighed heavily. He picked up another pencil and began drawing circles. The circles became rocks at the bottom of a creek bed. “She’s showing me stones. Five of them. Smooth. Like river rocks.”
“Her car was upside down in the creek,” Mercedes whispered.
He nodded and continued drawing. A flag-draped coffin, haunting and unmistakable, emerged beneath his pencil. A pair of dog tags on a long chain framed the picture.
“Her dad was a marine. He lost his legs in a bombing. Came home. And killed himself,” Mercedes explained.
Moses nodded again.
“Did Cora kill herself too? Is that what she’s trying to tell me?”
His eyes flared, and his hands stilled. “I’m just drawing, Lopez. I don’t ask questions. It’s not like that. I’m not running the show. They are. They show me what they show me. I don’t talk back.”
“Have you ever tried?” Mercedes pressed.
“I don’t want to!” he snapped.
“Cora?” Mercedes said, taking matters into her own hands. Her heart was in her throat, her lungs on fire, and she stared at Moses as she spoke. “Cora, can you hear me?”
He ground his palms into his eyes. “She hears, all right,” he grumbled.
“I love you Cora. Always have. Always will. But I need to know why.”
“Shit,” Moses mumbled again, but he began to draw once more.
Three figures took shape, connected like the figures Moses had already drawn, with a tiny doll on the end. She recognized Cora and Gia. And she recognized the man.
“That isn’t Noah,” she hissed.
“No . . . it ain’t,” Moses whispered.
* * *
“How did it go?” Noah asked, walking Mercedes out to her car. She’d tried to slip away from Montlake without him knowing she’d gone, but Noah was waiting outside the door when she left the room. Maybe he didn’t trust Moses as much as she thought. She had the pictures clenched in her hands—all except that last one—and it was all she could do to not run screaming from the facility. She’d shoved the last one in her pocket before she even left the room.
“You seem shaken,” Noah said gently. “Moses is a lot to take. I tried to warn you.”
“My mind is just a little blown. He’s something else,” she said, glad they were talking about Moses and not Cora.
“He is. He’s going to be released tomorrow. I gave him my number. I told him to call me whenever he needs to. I doubt he’ll take me up on it, but I hope he will. He’s solid. Special. There isn’t a thing wrong with Moses Wright that time, friendship, and a little freedom won’t fix. He just needs to stop fighting so hard. He and David Taggert—I told you about him—have big plans. They’ll either save each other or they’ll get each other killed.”
Mercedes didn’t respond. She just wanted to get away, far away, where she could think. And rage.
“Can I see the pictures?” Noah asked.
“What?” she snapped, pulling them close.
“The pictures, Mer. Can I see them?”
“Oh. Um. Yes. They’re fascinating. He was fascinating.” She handed him the pictures Moses had drawn and unlocked her car, trying not to watch Noah’s face as he thumbed through each one.
“He signed them?” He laughed, incredulous, but he didn’t look up from the draped coffin. Mercedes watched as he moved onto the next picture.
“I asked him to. Someday Moses Wright is going to be famous. Mark my words. These are going to be worth a mint.”
“I wish I’d thought of that,” Noah said, but his eyes were riveted on the drawing of the paper dolls. It was the one with the three of them. Noah, Mercedes, and Gia. Mercedes didn’t know what to make of it, but she didn’t hide it from him. Not that one.
“Is this why you’re upset?” he asked softly.
“She asked me to take care of you and Gia. I’m guessing that’s what that picture means.”
“Yeah. Could be. But it doesn’t explain why you’re upset.”
“Do you do this to your patients?” she asked, her voice sharp.
“What?”
“Grill them?”
“Is that what I’m doing?” he wrinkled his brow, staring down at her. The February wind felt like tiny icepicks on her cheeks, but her heart was hot and her breaths shallow. She just needed a chance to think, and she didn’t want to answer Noah’s questions. She just needed to think.
“You are her husband. Gia is her child. And she’s gone. That picture doesn’t make me have the warm fuzzies. It makes me feel like a . . . thief. Like an imposter.” It was the truth, but she was still lying. She wasn’t upset for herself. She was scared to death for Noah.
Noah tipped his head to the side, waiting for her to elucidate. He was good at that. Waiting. Listening. Unraveling. When she said nothing, he handed her the pictures.
“You aren’t an imposter, Mer. You’re a life-saver.”
“I’ve got to go, Noah. I’m running late. I’ll call you,” she whispered. Rising on her toes, she kissed his cheek, just above the line of his beard. His cheek was cold, but his eyes were warm on her face when she pulled away.
“You’re overthinking this, Boozer,” he teased, repeating the line she’d used on him on New Year’s Eve.
She tried to smile and slid into her car, waving at him as she drove away. Maybe she was overthinking it. Maybe she was letting her mind conjure scenarios that had no basis in reality. But she didn’t think so. Her gut had never been wrong.
Mercedes didn’t go back to work. The sky was grey, and snow rose in great walls along the roads, but the roads themselves were clear, and she called the reception desk at Maven and told Briana to reschedule her afternoon appointments. She drove aimlessly, her thoughts scampering back across the years, trying to make sense of something she didn’t understand, something she’d never understood.
Cora fell in and out of love a dozen times before she married Noah. She was always looking for something that she never seemed to find. Mercedes assumed Cora was just waiting for Noah to fall in love with her too, and when he finally did, she would stop searching. But apparently, she hadn’t.
Cora was the first of the three of them to lose her virginity—Ryan Wilcox, sophomore year. Cora was crazy about him until she slept with him. Then she couldn’t get away fast enough. Ryan Wilcox had been interested in Mercedes first, but when Cora said she liked him, Mercedes hadn’t minded stepping aside. She wasn’t interested in love triangles or burning bridges over a romance that wouldn’t last much longer than a week.
Whether it was her cousins and their girlfriends or her friends at school, sex seemed to ruin everything, and she, Noah, and Cora had sworn they wouldn’t let boys—or girls—get in the way of their friendship. But when Noah grew up sophomore year, and suddenly all of his goodness was wrapped in a tall, handsome package, it was hard not to notice. Cora had definitely noticed.
But true to her word, Cora never made a move on Noah or attempted to change their relationship. Maybe she was reluctant to actually catch him. Maybe she valued him too much, just the way he was. Just the way they were. But everything changed when Noah enlisted. Mercedes had backed away and Cora had stepped forward.
“Will you forget me when I’m gone?” Noah asked.
“Of course not. How could I forget my best friend in the whole world?” Mercedes laughed.
Noah didn’t say anything, but kept his eyes on her face, as if he were trying to unpeel her.
“You were outside with Kurt for a long time.” He’d been sitting with Abuela for an hour, waiting for her to come inside. When he’d heard her at the door, he’d met her in the foyer and Abuela had gone to bed.
“We were making out,” she answered simply.
Noah rubbed the back of his neck and laughed, incredulous. “How can I be mad at you when you are so honest?”
“Why would you be mad at me?” Mercedes asked, flummoxed.
“You’re too good for Kurt Jespersen.”
“Of course I am. But he’s hot. And he’s a good kisser. I’m eighteen, Noah. I plan to kiss a lot of guys before I settle down with one. I’m not like Cora. She’s got her heart set on you.” She was teasing him with the truth. Cora did have her heart set on Noah, even if none of them talked about it.
“I see.” He sounded tired. “Cora is my friend, Mer. That’s all.”
“I know. But she would like to be more. You know it, and I know it.”
“What would you do if I kissed you?” Noah asked softly. He took several steps toward her and looked down into her face.
“Don’t.” Her heart was racing but her voice was firm. Calm.
“Why?”
“Remember Bob?” she said.
“Huh?” Noah wasn’t following.
“Remember how he and Heather used to smoke together out on her balcony?”
“Yeah?” he drew the word out, curious.
“She talked to him. They were friends. And then—”
“He wanted more,” Noah finished, his tone flat.
“Yep. And do you see Bob anymore?” she asked.
“Bob’s gone.”
“Exactly.”
Noah’s shoulders slumped in dejection.
“We keep our friends. But girlfriends and boyfriends . . . we exchange those, we cut them loose. I want to keep you, Noah. The only way I can do that—keep you forever—is if you and I stay friends.”
“I don’t know if I can do that, Mer.”
“Why?” she gasped.
“I like you too much.”
Without asking, without warning, he leaned in and kissed her.
His lips were soft, his breath sweet, and the tips of his fingers were light on her cheeks. But it wasn’t a kiss between friends. It wasn’t a kiss goodbye. It was a desperate hello. Her heart grew and grew, filling her chest with both terror and triumph. But she didn’t push him back or pull away. In the darkness, she returned the press of his lips, and when he deepened the kiss, she opened her mouth to him without hesitation.
She knew kissing him was a mistake. She knew it would make everything harder. But she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t turn away, and when his arms wrapped around her, lifting her so he could straighten his back and hold her against him, something snapped inside her. She kissed him with a fury and a fervor that had him pulling back and panting her name, before they were lost again in the sweet slide of their lips, the tangle of their tongues, and the shared sighs that kept them coming back again and again.
They clung to each other, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, his arms wrapped around her waist. His hands didn’t roam, and they didn’t sink to the floor. They stood in the darkened alcove, kissing like they would never get another chance, like kissing was life itself, and the moment they stopped, the world would stop too.
And stop it did.
“Will you write, Mer? Please,” Noah panted.
“Of course I’ll write,” she whispered.
“And take care of Cora. She’s not as strong as you are.”
Cora’s name was like cold water down her back. Mercedes pulled away. Staggered away. Noah’s hand shot out to steady her, but she stepped out of reach.
She’d tried to take care of Cora. When Noah was gone the first time, it wasn’t so hard. They were all still friends, still unattached, still equally connected. Noah came home when his mother died but left soon after for Kuwait. Mercedes had asked him if he was running away. He told her he was just trying to figure out where he was going, but he’d left her and Cora behind. He’d left the Three Amigos behind.
Mercedes had just finished hair school, Cora was in college, and with Noah gone and high school over, the three of them became separate islands in their own seas. Or so she thought. In actuality, she’d been the only one adrift. Cora and Noah grew closer during the time they spent apart, and Cora didn’t need Mer to take care of her.
When Noah was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, he’d made the same request of his oldest friend. “Take care of Cora, Mer.”
It was harder the second time.
Cora had been distant and dissatisfied. She was excited about her pregnancy one day, despondent and disinterested the next. Cora started avoiding Mercedes only to show up at the salon out of the blue, crying and asking her why she’d abandoned her when she needed her most. Cora was either high as a kite, full of energy and glowing with life, or completely bottomed out, struggling to brush her hair and teeth. Mercedes went over several times during Noah’s nine-month deployment just to make sure Cora made it to work. When she was going to work, sticking to a routine, she did better. Toward the end of her pregnancy, she leveled out only to plummet again after Gia was born. When Noah came home he stepped right back into his old role of caretaker. It was like his mother died, and he replaced her with someone who needed him in exactly the same way.
The thought made Mercedes wince.
“I’m sorry, Cora,” she whispered to herself. “That isn’t fair. But I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. If it is what I think it is, then I don’t want to know.”
If something happens to me, you’ll take care of them, won’t you?
Mercedes pulled into a gas station and filled up the Corolla’s tank, standing in the cold, her hands shoved into her pockets. She felt the drawing she’d hastily folded and tucked away at Montlake. She pulled it out and opened it, smoothing the lines that marred the faces staring up at her from the page. Keegan Tate. She’d recognized him immediately. Why had Moses drawn a picture of Keegan Tate with Cora and Gia? It could only mean one thing.
If something happens to me, you’ll take care of them, won’t you?
“I’m trying Cora,” Mercedes murmured. “But I can’t take care of them if I’m covering for you.”