Thirteen
“No, baby, you don’t understand.”
“No, baby, you don’t understand,” Mercy countered. He stood in the threshold of the kitchen, arms folded, smiling like a goofus as he watched her, clearly not understanding the severity of the situation.
“You know I think you’re adorable,” Ava said, sighing, as she turned to him.
He shrugged. “Naturally.”
“But you are so not right now.”
He feigned affronted.
“These cookies,” she continued, “are a reflection of me as a human being. If they’re all misshapen, it means I’m a sloppy mess of a person.”
“That’s stupid.”
“That’s my grandmother for you.”
“Tell her to go to hell,” he suggested.
“I can’t do that; it’s Christmas.”
“Okay, so let me do it.”
“Mercy!” She regretting snapping immediately, closing her eyes and swallowing down her useless, hormonal aggression. “I’m sorry,” she said, glancing at him again. “It’s just that...I haven’t visited with her since I got back home.”
He leaned back against the doorframe. “Since August? You moved back home and haven’t seen her at all?”
“No, and I should have, and she won’t let me forget that. Add to that all that’s changed…” She gestured between them.
“Please tell me she at least knows we got married.”
She winced. “I didn’t exactly tell her…”
“Ah, shit, Ava.”
“But I’m sure Mom told her.”
“How sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“This isn’t going to go well for me, is it?” he asked with a wry, sideways smile.
“I’m afraid not.”
He shrugged again, as if to say oh well. “It won’t be the best thing that ever happened, but it won’t be the worst either. Is there something in particular you want me to wear?”
Ava felt the faint pressure of a smile at her lips, and was glad for the brief humor. “Don’t take this the wrong way….but you don’t exactly have a diverse wardrobe.”
He gave her a mock-offended face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I can’t ask you to put on your nice sweater, because you don’t have any nice sweaters. You don’t have any sweaters, actually.”
“Is this gonna turn into a whole thing where you try to get me to dress different?”
“No, baby. Just wear what you want to. She’s going to yell at you either way.”
“Right.” He turned for the door. “You know, really, I think you’re being over-dramatic.”
“Hmm,” she murmured, “that would be nice.” But she knew what to expect. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Just like the cookies in front of her. She’d tried a new recipe, wanting to impress, pushing her meager cooking skills. Chocolate cookies, seasoned with a dash of ancho chili powder, with dark and white chocolate chips. They were too dark on bottom and the edges were crumbly.
She finished stacking them on the plate she’d take to her parents’ and turned away from them, smoothing a hand over the leaping pulse in her throat as she walked to the kitchen window to peer down at the street.
You’ve killed men before, she reminded herself. How could you be afraid of something as simple as dinner?
Because the world was scary, but family should have meant love and acceptance.
“It doesn’t always work that way,” Maggie had told her several Christmases before, on a night when Denise had had one too many glasses of Chardonnay and lit into Ghost. “But you know what? Mom wouldn’t have been happy even if I’d done exactly what she wanted. She’s not a happy person. So I stopped trying to please her, and I met your dad” – her arm had squeezed around Ava’s shoulders – “and I had you, and I love you, and your brother more than anything in the world. We’re our own family.”
Ava took a deep breath, and it fogged the window. On the other side of the glass, the first downy white flakes were begin to drift down from the triple-stacked gray clouds.
“It’s snowing,” she murmured.
Michael woke before her. It was the faint gray light of a cloudy dawn that roused him, and his consciousness filled with the soft smells of clean sheets and warm skin. He opened his eyes and there was Holly, lying on her side and facing him, one hand upturned on the mattress between them, fingers lightly curled. Her face was smooth with sleep, a delicate porcelain in the pale light, her hair in dark loose waves across her shoulders.
The scar on her wrist looked faint and silver in this morning glow, not the angry red bracelet it had been last night under the lamps.
Michael had thought, for so many years, that what his mother had suffered at the hands of his father had been the worst kind of abuse. He’d been wrong, of course. Holly was living proof of that. She’d survived worse – survived. She was a living, breathing, warm girl in the bed beside him. After all that she’d endured, she’d been whole enough to welcome him into her arms, to dig her nails into his skin and whimper against his mouth when she wanted more.
How?
His head was empty save for that question. How was she this sweet, soft thing who’d never seen The Wizard of Oz? How was she the girl, of all girls, who leaned into him rather than away?
How was he going to explain to his president that he’d killed three possible sources of information because he couldn’t stomach the idea of them drawing another breath?
He reached with one fingertip and traced the scar at her wrist. Felt the faint rough texture of the skin there. Felt the small steady beat of her pulse.
Her eyes opened. Michael saw the split second in which she reminded herself where she was and who she was with, and then she smiled at him, the gesture drowsy and content and a little shy. “Morning.”
“Hi.”
“Did you sleep alright?” she asked. “This mattress is kind of old and lumpy.”
“It was fine.”
His finger shifted, gliding up into her palm, following the line in the center of it. Holly’s fingers closed over his.
“I had a dream,” she said, her eyes coming to his face. “That your wings were real; that you could fly.”
“Wouldn’t have much need of a bike then, would I?”
She gave a quiet laugh. “No, I guess not.” Then she sat up.
His eyes fixed to the way the covers slipped down, and the gray light curved around the full globes of her breasts, the cold-tightened nipples throwing little shadows. She shook her hair out and he saw the faint pink lines of scars on her naked back: marks from the belt.
“I’d better get up if I’m going to make it to the store before work,” she said, reaching for the terry robe hooked on the bedpost and sliding her arms into it.
He frowned. “Store.”
“To get stuff for our dinner. I don’t keep turkey and stuffing on hand all the time,” she teased.
“Oh.” He sat up beside her, raked at his sleep-flattened hair. “What do you need? I can go.”
She paused and turned to him, her eyes wide. “You can?”
He felt his frown deepen. “I buy eggs and coffee somewhere, don’t I?”
“Well, yeah, but I…” Thinking better of it, she nodded. “I’ll make you a list.”
She swung out of bed, belted her robe and walked to the kitchen to do just that.
In the pure spill of light from the window, she looked like a carefully crafted miniature of a person, a little figurine. The robe sagged open a bit in front, giving him a view of the insides of her breasts and the smooth flat of her belly. He swore he could see the tunnels his fingers had dug through her hair last night.
With pen poised above a pad of paper, she said, “Oh, look, it’s snowing.”
It was a light snow, but a snow nonetheless, shaking out in slow handfuls that caught in the breeze and swirled at the windshield. Michael drove Holly’s car; he dropped her off at Bell Bar, then went to Kroger, a decision he regretted as he walked through the sliding glass doors. The place was swamped with last-minute grocery shoppers. He was jostled around amid the mothers with screaming babies and husbands with long lists, clutching his own list in white-knuckled fingers to keep from losing it in the crowd. Most people, when they turned and got a good look at his scowling face, gave him some space. But he was involved in a crush of humanity he would never normally endure.
Damn it, Holly.
Damn her Christmas dinner.
“Do you need someone to help you to your car with this?” the cashier asked him as he paid.
He gave the teenager his deepest frown and said, “What do you think?”
From the store, he went to his place, stocking everything away in the fridge and freezer. He showered, changed clothes. He tidied up.
He sat down at the kitchen table, watching the snow fall beyond the window, and he called Uncle Wynn.
“Either you’re calling to say you picked up a ham on the way, or you’re not coming,” Wynn greeted after the second ring. There were dogs barking in the background, the sound of big paws scratching at the front door. Same old Uncle Wynn. He laughed. “You’re gonna miss Christmas, boy.”
“I am,” Michael said. “Uncle Wynn, I can’t get away this year. I’ll have to come out to the farm sometime after New Year’s probably.”
A beat passed, and Wynn sighed. “That club of yours stop believing in Christmas?”
“No, it’s not because of the club,” Michael said without thinking, and wished he could pull it back.
“It’s not?” Surprise in his uncle’s voice. “I can’t remember the last time you did anything that wasn’t for the Lean Dogs.”
This wasn’t the direction he’d wanted the conversation to turn. “Yeah, well…”
“So what’s up? What’s so important you can’t have Christmas with your family?”
“There’s just something I need to take care of first.”
Wynn’s tone became suspicious, worried. “Michael, what’s wrong, son? You don’t sound like yourself.”
Then who the hell did he sound like, he wanted to know. He was damn certain his voice was normal. Unless the old man was turning psychic in his old age – a decent possibility with Wynn – there was nothing to read here. No difference.
“I’m fine,” he said tightly.
Another pause, while one of the dogs whined in the background, then: “I worry about you, you know.”
“I know.”
“Are you at least going to eat with somebody? You won’t be all by yourself will you?”
Michael felt a quick stab of guilt. Because he was staying in town, Uncle Wynn would be alone. He counted all those dogs as family, but their company only comforted up to a point.
I ought to invite him, he thought. Tell him to get in the truck and bring his favorite Dane if he wants and he can eat with Holly and me.
But he didn’t do that, because he had no idea what Holly would make of his country uncle, and what Wynn would in turn make of her. It felt too soon; Holly was too fragile. Holly was…
He didn’t know what Holly was, at this point, in relation to him.
“I won’t be alone,” he said.
“Good.” Wynn’s tone shifted, became teasing. “You didn’t get yourself a girlfriend finally, did you?”
Michael smiled to himself. Girlfriend wasn’t the right word; it wasn’t descriptive enough.
**
“My babies,” Maggie called when the wind drove them into the back door. She left her steaming pots at the stove and came to greet them with hugs and cheek-kisses. She had to stretch on tiptoe to reach Mercy, and he obligingly lowered his head so she could press her lips to the side of his face.
The kitchen was hot and teeming with spicy food smells, the windows all fogged against the chill outside. There were pine boughs draped over the windows and along the tops of the cabinets, twinkling with white lights.
Mercy heeled the door shut behind them and shook the snow out of his hair. “It’s coming down harder out there.”
“I know,” Maggie said, frowning. “If it starts to stick, I want you two to stay the night.”
“I don’t think it’s going to snow us in,” Ava said, unbuttoning her coat.
“That’s irrelevant. I don’t want any of the three of you” – gesture to Ava’s slowly expanding stomach – “sliding on ice. We’ve got the extra beds, so there’s no reason not to.”
Ava sighed, but nodded.
Maggie took the cookie platter from Ava. “Come on, my new little chef, and you can help me.”
Booted footfalls announced Ghost’s entrance into the kitchen. Ava took one look at her father and had to bite down on her tongue to keep from laughing.
He always wore dark colors, all of his clothes road-beaten and well-worn. Not one of these Lean Dogs was one for fashion. But today, he’d outdone himself, no doubt in honor of his in-laws: an old Harley shirt with the sleeves torn out, his holiest, most threadbare jeans, his cut, a black bandana, and a massive leather bracelet on his left wrist. His boots looked like he’d beaten them against the driveway, even more scuffed and dusty than normal.
Mercy laughed. “There’s the son-in-law of every mother’s dreams.”
Looking proud of himself, Ghost said, “I aim to please.”
He stepped forward and he and Mercy traded hugs, something Ava was more than glad to see. The tension between them now was fraught with affection, and not the veiled menace of those first early weeks.
“Now I know,” Mercy said, “I’m the best son-in-law there ever was–”
“You are,” Maggie said from the stove.
“ – but don’t you make a picture, Poppy.”
Maggie turned, and Ava watched her mother’s face pale as she finally got a good look at Ghost. “Go change.” Her voice was flat, no-nonsense.
Ghost opened his mouth to protest. “I–”
“Change, Kenneth. If you want a seat at my table tonight, you’ll put on the blue shirt I ironed for you.”
“Your table?” he countered. “Who do you think paid for that table?”
The glare she gave him was stone-cold. Medusa-intense. Impossible to argue against.
“Fine.” He heaved a dramatic sigh. Grumbling, he left the room.
“Poppy?” Maggie asked when he was gone. “I like that.”
“When are they supposed to get here?”
“Three.”
“What time will they actually get here?”
“Two-forty-five. Bitch is early to everything.”
“Maybe she’ll be early to her own funeral,” Aidan suggested.
Ghost made a face. “Nah. Too much to hope for.”
“What I want to know,” Mercy said, “is who she hates the most.” He glanced down the length of the sofa, where they were all parked in front of the TV. Ghost was beside him, then Aidan, then Tango.
Carter sat on the floor, leaning back against the arm. Maggie had insisted he come. “Not as a prospect, but as family.” His old man wasn’t much of a dinner date, and Maggie had a soft spot for strays, as Mercy had learned long ago.
“I think it’s me,” Tango said in a cheerful voice. “I’m no relation.”
“Wrong.” Aidan made a buzzer sound in the back of his throat. “It’s me, because I’m no relation, but she has to pretend I am.”
“You’re both wrong,” Ghost said. “It’s me. I got her sixteen-year-old daughter pregnant. End of story.”
Grave nods all down the length of the sofa.
“Well thank God I didn’t do that,” Mercy said.
Ghost have him a narrow, sideways glance. “Yeah. Thank God.”
Outside, the snow fell in fat, wet flakes. It was building in the corners of the window frame, clinging to the bare branches, powdering the grass.
Maggie came to the doorway, wiping a bowl dry with a dish towel, face lined with uncharacteristic worry. The steam in the kitchen had glued thin curls of golden hair to her temples and the sides of her neck. The sleeves of her red sweater were loose where she’d pushed them up over and over.
“I’m starting to worry about Mom and Dad in this weather,” she said, voice pinched and hesitant. “Babe, do you think–”
“No,” Ghost said. “If they start to slide on ice, Denise can strap herself to the hood and breathe fire on the road as they drive.”
Mercy choked on a laugh and tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a coughing fit.
Aidan grinned, eyes crinkling into delighted slits.
Maggie’s lips pressed together, a pale hyphen in her pretty face. She turned without a word and went back to the kitchen.
“She knows they’ll show up,” Ghost said when she was gone. “God doesn’t like me enough to send them into a snow bank on Christmas. That’s just not gonna happen.”
From his spot on the floor, Carter said, “Can she really be that bad? I mean, there are people out there who actually want to kill you.”
Tango saved Ghost from answering. “Dude, you haven’t seen murderous till you’ve met a pissed off Southern mother.”
Ava came to the door, clearing her throat to get their attention. Mercy hadn’t been able to figure out, in the last few weeks, if she was self-conscious of the small roundness of her stomach, or if she was just cold all the time. Today, she was wearing an oversized navy turtleneck sweater, shapeless and masculine as it hung to mid-thigh. She’d opted for white skinny pants, instead of her usual jeans, and ballet flats – concessions to her non-biker family.
Unlike her mother, she didn’t look terrified. “Guys,” she said in a low voice, “she’s really freaking out.”
Aidan shrugged. “She gets like this every year.”
“Open up a bottle of wine,” Ghost suggested.
She sighed and nodded.
“But don’t you drink any of it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“She’s nervous, too,” Mercy said when she was gone. “But it’s coming out in an aggressive way.”
Ghost looked almost pleased. “She gets that from me.”
“To be honest, it’s cuter when you do it,” Mercy said, and couldn’t bite back the grin that bloomed in response to his president’s sharp look. “Ain’t it fun being related?”
“Shitloads,” Ghost deadpanned.
“Jesus,” Mercy said, leaning his head back against the sofa. “All you boys need to lighten up. I’m with QB” – he gestured to Carter and earned a nod in return – “how bad can this old bat be?”
The doorbell chimed.
Ghost shoved to his feet. “Guess you’re about to find out.”
Bell Bar was dead. A handful of loyal barflies – single older men with nothing waiting on them at home – were spending the afternoon on stools, staring at the TV and popping peanuts one after the next between slugs of Scotch. But the main floor was empty. The girls hadn’t bothered to take down most of the chairs at the low round dining tables. Valerie and Jess sat at a booth, playing Go Fish.
Holly was in Michael’s usual booth, rolling up silverware in napkins, one eye on the newscast up in the front corner TV, one eye on the snow flurries that were beginning to accumulate in a thin powder-sugar dusting on the sidewalk. Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas” softly over the sound system.
White Christmas, she thought, adding the movie to her mental queue of films to see. She didn’t figure Michael had that one in his collection. Just the thought brought a smile to her lips, pattered like wings in her chest. Everything was different now. Maybe not forever, maybe for just a few days, but a few days was more than she’d ever hoped for. She wouldn’t think about the future tonight, only about the two of them, and this stolen time, this city lit up for the holiday, and the perfect snow falling against memory and reason, blanketing all that wasn’t sacred.
Dimly, she became aware of Val and Jess’s conversation, the fast vicious snatches of it that she could overhear.
“…don’t know why she wasn’t fired,” Jess was saying. “I mean, you get somebody murdered, you shouldn’t get to keep your job, you know?”
“Ugh, I know,” Val said. “And it’s like she doesn’t even feel bad about it. She’s a fucking robot.”
“And Carly…” A catch of real pain in Jess’s voice, as she remembered her friend. “I told Carly that she was weird, but she tried to be nice to her anyway. And look what happened!”
Holly closed her eyes as the breath left her lungs. Yes, look at what had happened. Look at what her family had done to an innocent woman, whose loved ones would not be celebrating tonight, still clenched tight by grief.
“Hey.”
She hadn’t seen Michael come in, hadn’t even felt the cold draft of air rushing through the door, but he now stood beside her, brows drawn, mouth a harsh line. The sight of him was as comforting as it was devastating. I don’t deserve you, she thought. I don’t deserve for anyone to care, not after what I’ve caused.
“You alright?” he asked, settling into the booth across from her. There was snow in his hair, fast melting, the white flecks becoming translucent. Flakes clung to his shoulders, collected in the leather seams of his cut.
She managed a thin smile. “I’m fine.”
He regarded her another second, not believing her, but finally glanced away, face harsh. “That goddamn store…the whole city of Knoxville was in there, buying cranberry sauce or whatever the fuck.”
Her smile twitch, touched with true warmth. “So it was bad, huh?”
“They were out of whole turkeys,” he grumbled. “I had to get a chicken instead.”
“That works great.”
He murmured an unhappy response.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked. “Or just grumpy?”
He gave her a long, flat stare. “What do you think?” And then, before she could answer, “When are they gonna let you leave tonight?”
“Soon, I’m thinking.” She glanced around his shoulder, toward the window. The street was alive with the swirl of snow. “Very soon.”
Ava’s first memory of her grandmother: warm yellow sweater, creamy rope of pearls, Denise’s hip against Ava’s small stomach as she was toted around the yard. Encompassing sweetness of perfume. The sun dancing in the pines, shivering shadows on the grass. Easter, and all its delicate pastels reflected in Denise’s garden, lying in the lee of the sprawling cream ranch house. Denise’s honey-colored hair, the same as Maggie’s, tickling Ava’s cheeks as their heads rested close together.
“Lily,” Ava said with a delighted laugh, pointing at the purple flowers on the tall stalks beside the garden bench.
“No, darling, those are irises,” Denise said, and her lips were wet with lipstick as she kissed Ava’s cheek.
It was a tender, loving memory, a place in time in which Ava had been so sure of her grandmother’s love of her. That had been before Ava understood the tension between the two generations of her family. Before she’d been told that her father was less than human. Before Denise saw the biker blood coming to the surface in Ava, and gave voice to her bitter disappointment.
Now, so many years after that foundation memory, Ava stood opposite her grandmother and laced her fingers through her husband’s, the dry cool skin of his palm a comfort against her own clammy hand.
Denise, a beauty queen who’d never lost her commitment, had always been slender, and had thinned further as she aged, her well-proportioned frame almost bony at this point. Today she wore a long-sleeved red dress, dark tights, dark pumps, her ever-present pearls. Her face was a window to Maggie’s future, a prediction of what she’d look like twenty-six years from now. She’d allowed her hair to gray naturally, and wore it in a sophisticated bob. She was the picture of modern Southern elegance.
And her hazel eyes were trained on Ava’s hand, where it clutched at Mercy’s.
“Grammie,” Ava said with a deep breath, “you remember Mercy. You met him a long time ago.”
Denise swallowed, the movement of her throat making the pearls around her neck leap. She already knew, and she already hated it. “I can’t possibly keep up with all the Dogs in your life, Ava.”
“You remember him,” Ava pressed. Quietly: “I know you do. And Grammie, I need you to not freak out when I tell you this.”
Denise’s frown cut sharp lines at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t bother telling me. I can see your ring, for heaven’s sakes.” She gestured toward Ava’s left hand, where it hung at her side. “Good Lord, Ava, did you have to do exactly what your mother did? Is it some sort of sick game to the two of you? Seeing who can marry the absolute worst excuse for a husband.”
Mercy gathered a breath to say something and Ava squeezed his hand hard. No.
“I don’t want to argue on Christmas,” Ava said. “Mercy and I are married–”
“Can you believe this?” Denise turned away from Ava, toward her husband, throwing up her hands in supplication. “I mean, really, can you believe this? I guess I should have known. Why would I ever think she’d do anything different from what Maggie did?” She threw an awful glare toward Maggie. “You encouraged this, didn’t you? You supported her in this.”
“Denise, honey…” Ava’s grandfather, Arthur, tried to lay a hand on his wife’s arm. He was the gentlest, meekest of men, and Denise had spent a lifetime bulldozing over everything he said.
Maggie drew herself up, chin lifting. “I did support her. Mercy loves her.”
“Listen to yourself,” Denise said in a cold, high voice. Her anger was a controlled, wicked thing. “ ‘Mercy loves her.’ Mercy doesn’t even have a real name. And he obviously can’t find his way to a barbershop.”
Maggie began to respond –
And Mercy said, “Ah man, you don’t like my hair?” He was wearing it loose today, and pulled a hand through it, studying the jagged ends with comical interest. Then he looked at Denise and fed her a long string of lilting, eloquent French.
Ava was too shocked to hide her sudden smile.
Everyone in the room was staring at him.
Mercy grinned hugely and stepped forward, hand extended toward Arthur. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced before. Felix Lécuyer, Mr. Lowe. Nice to meet you.” Turning from the handshake, he bowed to Denise. “And you, Mrs. Lowe. Ava’s been saying the best things about you.”
Ava winced.
Denise stared at Mercy with contemptuous surprise.
Arthur grinned.
Ghost said, “Can we all just start drinking already?”