Seventeen
1993
They didn’t cry for Shelly Andelin. They didn’t know her well enough. They cried for Noah, standing beside her grave in his dress blues, his cap in his hands, as he did his best to eulogize her. He gave a brief life history—born, lived, worked, died—while trying to humanize and personalize a woman who had withheld herself from almost everyone and everything.
Carole Stokes had praised Shelly’s steadiness and her work ethic, her reliability, and her loyalty. Carole became emotional when recounting how she met young Shelly Andelin, heavily pregnant, without a friend in the world and nowhere to go, and how her son now stood, fully-grown, a credit to her and a blessing to everyone who knew him. If our children are the gauge of a successful life, Carole said, Shelly had done just fine.
When Carole was finished, Noah looked to Mercedes, his throat working, and Mercedes stepped forward like she’d promised she would, the box of coffee mugs in her arms. It was silly, but it was something. She’d had the idea when she was packing up Shelly Andelin’s things, and Noah had embraced it, even smiling when she made the suggestion.
“Shelly Andelin never had much to say, and for a woman of few words, I found her penchant for motivational coffee mugs . . . endearing,” Mercedes said, struggling to say the right thing. “You are all the people who cared about her. Noah and I think she would want you to have something that was hers . . . a small part of her life . . . something to remember her by. She wasn’t good at conversation, and maybe you never had the opportunity to have a cup of coffee with Shelly. But now . . . we’ll all have a cup together . . . and remember her fondly.”
Mercedes began passing Shelly’s mugs, one at a time, to the group huddled around the open grave. Alma and Abuela followed behind, filling each cup with coffee from two large thermoses. There were mugs of every color, but it wasn’t the varied shades that made them remarkable. Each mug was stamped with a different quote. They weren’t cute and pithy or even funny, nor were they the rag-tag assortment everyone tends to accumulate over time. It was a very specific collection, as though Shelly had chosen each message carefully.
The sayings printed on the ceramic mugs were the kind you’d find on sappy greeting cards, the kind most people skimmed over if they read them at all. They were flowery phrases full of hope and poetic wisdom, and Mercedes had read each one as she’d washed and boxed them up, her wonder growing at Shelly Andelin’s selections. The sentiments on the mugs weren’t repeated or reflected anywhere else in Shelly’s life. Not on the walls of her home, or the words that she spoke, or the shows that she watched. She hadn’t kept a journal or read the Bible; the only books in the apartment were in Noah’s room, stacked against his wall. But Shelly’s mugs each gave a small sermon, as if her daily coffee was the closest she got to religion, and Mercedes had been fascinated by them.
Mercedes handed a mug to Noah, to Cora, and finally to Mami and Abuela, who filled their own cups and then filled the cup Mercedes had kept for herself. She wouldn’t be parting with it. It had been the last mug in the cupboard, and Mercedes had gasped, thinking Abuela’s words of wisdom had somehow become commercialized. But the quote on Shelly’s mug wasn’t the same as Abuela’s at all. It said: “In the end, only three things matter: How much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”
Mercedes had stared at the powder blue mug with its melancholy quote, and she’d pondered why Shelly had chosen it. How much had Shelly Andelin really loved? She’d lived so gently she’d barely lived at all. And Mercedes didn’t know if it was grace or fear, but Shelly had clearly let go of everything in her life but Noah. In the end, she’d released him too. Maybe she’d believed there was nothing meant for her.
When every cup was filled, Mercedes raised her mug. “To Shelly Andelin. You will be missed.”
“To Shelly,” they all agreed. The mugs were lifted in unison, and the mourners sipped, quietly sharing a cup with the woman who usually drank alone.
* * *
“Dr. Noah, it’s Moses Wright.” His voice was an uncomfortable rumble, and Noah would have known it even if he hadn’t identified himself.
“Moses, how are you?” Noah was thrilled to hear from him. He’d worried about him and wondered how he was faring.
“I’m alive, Doc. Tag’s alive, though he has a tendency to find trouble.”
“Where are you? Can I help you with something?”
“We’re in France. And safe . . . at least for now.”
None of us are safe. The words trembled in Noah’s mind, an odd memory rising from years past. He pushed it away, needing to focus on Moses and the reason he was calling.
“France?”
“France. We’ve been to London, Ireland—Belfast and Tag didn’t mix—and tomorrow we’re heading to Spain. Tag has this desire to run with the bulls.”
Noah groaned.
“Yeah. That’s what I told him,” Moses quipped. He sounded good. Light. And then he got to the purpose of his call, and the heaviness returned to his young voice.
“So, Doc. Cora . . . I’m seeing her again, all of a sudden.”
Noah braced himself. Lately, every sentence that started with Cora’s name brought him grief. He rubbed at his beard.
“What do you mean, Moses?”
“She keeps showing me Lopez.”
“Mercedes?” Noah gasped.
“Yeah. Your little friend.”
Noah almost laughed out loud. He pictured Al Pacino in Scarface saying, “Say hello to my little friend,” as he wielded a grenade launcher. Somehow, the comparison of Mer to a grenade launcher wasn’t too far off the mark. But Moses wasn’t laughing.
“Did Lopez show you the pictures I drew the day she came to see me at Montlake, Doc?”
“Yeah. She did.”
Moses cursed, his relief evident across two continents and an ocean. “Good. I didn’t know how . . . shit.”
“Moses?”
“The paper dolls. You saw those?” Moses pressed.
Noah thought about the drawings, the connected figures. Him, Mer, and Cora. Him, Mer and Gia. Almost like Cora was giving them her blessing. The thought eased something inside of him. He hadn’t allowed himself to interpret the picture that way. But maybe . . . now he could.
“The man in the one picture? Cora keeps showing me that man.” Moses interrupted Noah’s thoughts.
“The man?” Noah didn’t understand.
“Yeah. Uh, you know. The paper dolls. The picture I drew with Cora, the little girl, and the man. Together. Cora keeps showing me his face. Do you . . . know who he is?” Moses asked, his words so constricted it made Noah’s throat tight.
“Cora’s showing you images of Mer with a man?” Noah asked.
“Yeah, but not . . . together. I think Lopez is in trouble.”
Noah was silent, thoughts whirling. Moses hadn’t ever called him. He wouldn’t have called him unless he was seriously concerned.
“Doc, I gotta go. I’ll try to call tomorrow. But no promises. We’ll be on the train for most of the day. If I don’t see her again, then that’s the best I got. I can’t tell you anything more. But I’ll call when I can . . . just to make sure everything is okay. Tell Lopez hello.”
“Thank you, Moses,” Noah said, but the line was already dead.
It took Noah ten minutes to get out the door. It was bedtime, but he couldn’t wait for morning. Gia’s clothes needed to be changed, she pulled off one sock before he could put on the other, and she squalled when he tried to make her wear shoes.
“We’re going for a ride, Gia Bug. Come on, help Daddy,” he begged.
“No wide,” she grumbled. “No sooz.”
“We’re going to see Mer, and you have to wear shoes if you want to walk.”
“Meh!”
“Meh,” he whispered. He didn’t know whether to be angry or afraid. He settled on both.
* * *
He didn’t tell Mer they were coming, and she was surprised to see them. Happy to see them. Her teeth flashed, and her right cheek dimpled, and the weariness he saw in her face lifted. Her pleasure hurt Noah’s chest and made him even angrier. She was holding a cup of coffee, and she stepped back from the door to let them in and reached for Gia, who reached right back. Noah brushed past her and set Gia down in the middle of her living room instead. He was there for a reason, and he didn’t want either of them getting comfortable, though Gia had plopped down and was already tugging at her shoes.
“Is there a reason you’re being a baby hog, Boozer?” Mer asked, surprise underlining her teasing. Noah moved in on her immediately.
“I need to see the pictures Moses gave you at Montlake. All of them.” If he’d had any doubt she’d kept something from him, he didn’t have any now. Mer’s eyes widened, and her mouth tightened. Her poker face snapped into place a second later, but he’d seen enough. She pivoted obediently, walking to the china cabinet in her dining room. Noah followed on her heels. Setting her coffee cup aside on the dining room table, she opened a drawer in the cabinet and withdrew a thin folder. Noah yanked it from her hands.
“Noah!” she cried. Blood welled up in a long, thin line across her fingers. He’d pulled the folder too hard and sliced her finger. He set the folder down and took her hand in his, pulling her toward the kitchen sink. He ran her fingers under the cold water, still angry, still confused, but disgusted with himself. She was bleeding, and it was his fault.
“It’s a paper cut. I’ll survive,” she clipped, but he could hear the fire beneath the ice.
“You didn’t show me all the drawings, Mercedes.” He turned off the water and tugged a dish towel from the rack. The towel was red and wouldn’t stain. He wrapped it around her hand and moved to her medicine cabinet to the left of the fridge where he knew she kept her Band-Aids.
“So you come in here, stomping and barking and withholding baby hugs?” she snapped.
As if on cue, Gia strolled in, shoeless. “Meh!” she squealed.
“Mercedes,” Noah said, feeling the walls closing in. “I need to see those pictures.”
“Suit yourself.” She pointed to the dining table where he’d set the folder and stooped to pick up Gia.
He walked back to the folder, Mercedes snuggling Gia like none of it mattered. Maybe she held her too tight or maybe it was just the attention span of a toddler, but Mercedes radiated a tension Gia wasn’t used to, and Gia squawked and demanded to be released. Mercedes complied, and Gia scampered off, most likely to unload the basket of toys Mer kept for her visits. Mercedes approached him, her arms folded defensively, waiting for him to find what she’d hidden.
The picture was on the bottom of the small stack of drawings, like she’d tried to bury it and forget about it. It had the same flavor and flow as the other paper doll drawings, but it was not Noah’s face or form attached to his tiny family. He stared at it in horror, recognition dawning.
“Do you know what this means?” he whispered, raising his eyes to Mercedes.
Her eyes were wet and wide, her teeth clenched to keep her mouth from trembling. When she spoke, her voice was soft, but she made no excuses for herself and gave no apology.
“When Moses drew that picture, I knew . . . I knew it couldn’t mean anything good. Not for Cora, or you, or Gia. So I put it in that drawer, and I haven’t looked at it again. I can’t help Cora anymore. But I can protect you and Gia.”
“You can protect me?” Noah scoffed.
“I can try.”
“Moses drew this picture months ago. And you kept it from me. All this time.”
“Yes. I did,” she said, defiant.
“Why?”
“Why?” she repeated, incredulous. She laughed, but the laugh broke and shuddered like a sob. “You’ve been through hell. Cora didn’t just die. That’s hard enough. There’s a good chance she killed herself. That’s a thousand times harder. And just when I was starting to come to terms with it—when you were coming to terms with it—she gives you that?” She pointed at the picture. “Cora wasn’t ever cruel. But that is cruel, and I didn’t want any part of it. If she had a confession to make, too bad. She missed her chance, and I was not going to make it for her. Not this time. Not ever again.”
Tears were streaming down her face, and she swiped at them, frustrated. Mercedes had never been prone to tears. Anger, passion, laughter, but rarely tears. In the twenty-two years he’d known her, he’d seen her cry only a handful of times. That had changed with Cora’s death. In the last year, she’d cried more than all the other years combined. And more often than not, they were tears for him.
“Mer . . . you can’t make those kinds of choices for me. How am I supposed to trust you?” he rasped.
“Trust me?” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Me?” she cried. “I would do just about anything for you, Noah. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“This is Keegan Tate. This is a picture of Keegan Tate with my wife and daughter.” Noah shook the paper in her face, so incensed he could only stare, trembling, at the innocent rendering. “You should have told me.”
“Told you what? That your wife had an affair with Keegan Tate? Why would I do that?” she asked again.
“Because I deserve to know!”
“You’re right. You did deserve to know. But I didn’t want to be the one to tell you.”
“Who else was going to tell me, Mer?” he choked.
“After I saw that picture, I went to Keegan, and I asked him if he had an affair with Cora. He admitted to . . . to sleeping with her . . . a few times. He said the relationship was short. Not serious. And she broke it off with him before you left for Afghanistan.”
“I see. So you went to Keegan, but you didn’t come to me.” Noah was so upset he was shaking, and he set the picture down, unable to face it any longer.
“I couldn’t . . . protect you . . . or Gia . . . if I didn’t know what I was dealing with. I had to know.”
“You didn’t protect me! You betrayed my trust. I feel like a fool, like everything between us is pretense. I don’t need you to take care of me, Mer. Okay? I need you to love me enough to tell me the truth, even when it’s ugly.”
She stared at him numbly, tears dripping from her chin. She shuddered and turned away, a sob escaping from her lips. When she spoke, her voice shook and her words were strangled.
“You knew she was unfaithful, Noah. Don’t pretend you didn’t. It was the thing you wouldn’t say in the cemetery. And I respected that. I understood it. And I left it alone.”
“I didn’t know it was Keegan Tate! Hell, I don’t even know if Keegan was the only one. I found out at Gia’s well-check last March that Gia couldn’t be mine. Our blood types don’t jive. Did you know that, Mer? Did you know Gia isn’t my daughter?” He was crying now too, and Mercedes spun to face him.
“Oh, Noah,” Mercedes moaned, reaching for him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t I tell you?” he gasped. “Because it was none of your business! I wasn’t withholding information about you.”
She dropped her hand immediately and stepped back. “Okay. I see. So that weekend, when I came over and you were in a bad way, that was just after you found out. And everything that happened next—everything that has happened since—was about you getting back at Cora. You were mad at Cora, so you had sex with me.”
“This is not about you!”
“Then why are you so angry with me?” she shouted back. “What have I ever done to you but love you? My entire life, I have loved you and Cora. And now I love your daughter as if she were my own. So don’t you dare tell me this is not about me!”
Noah was too upset to think rationally, too distraught and dismayed not to say more words he didn’t mean. He swiped at the powder blue coffee cup sitting on the table, and watched as it clattered to the floor, shattering as it struck the colorful tiles Mercedes had laid herself. Then he strode to Gia, swung her up in his arms, and pushed his way out of Mercedes’s front door, not even stopping to locate Gia’s shoes or find her sweater, not looking back at his best friend who had made no move to stop him from leaving.
* * *
Noah wanted to kill him. He drove aimlessly, Gia asleep in her seat, the night soothing, the radio soft. His anger billowed and blasted and slowly dissipated out the open window into the night air. June in Utah was beautiful. Not too hot. Not too cold. He let the breeze caress him and whisper reassurances.
Keegan Tate. Gia’s father was Keegan Tate.
Cora could really pick ‘em.
Oddly, as Noah’s anger ebbed—he’d never been particularly good at holding onto it—his relief grew. Now he knew. Part of the agony was the faceless threat. Someone suddenly appearing out of the blue, and threatening his daughter—threatening him—with a custody suit. It was a relief to know what he was dealing with. Keegan Tate was no threat. If he suspected Gia was his—and he would have, knowing the timeline and his own involvement—he’d never said a word or so much as blinked in her direction.
Mercedes hadn’t done anything wrong.
He was angry because he felt like a fool. He was embarrassed. He was in love with Mer, and she’d kept something very important from him. Something that she should have showed him. Something their relationship demanded she reveal.
But Mer had been trying to protect him, to protect Gia, and she had seen no point in stomping on Cora’s memory. Hadn’t he said the very same thing at the cemetery? The truth is, they were both still trying to take care of Cora. Maybe it was time they stopped.
He hadn’t told Mercedes about the day at the pediatrician. He’d kept that from her, and regardless of what he’d said, it worked both ways. Mer had been given a picture, drawn by a psych patient who claimed to commune with the dead. It wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to go on, to destroy someone’s reputation over, or to break his heart with. He probably would have done the same in her shoes.
Thoughts of Moses brought back the conversation that had started it all.
I think Lopez is in trouble.
“Damn it!” Noah said out loud, realizing he’d driven away from Mer’s house in such a snit, he’d forgotten why he’d gone in the first place.
“Damn it,” a little voice said from the back seat, and Noah sighed heavily. He had completely failed at life today. He’d thought Gia was asleep. He looked in his rearview mirror, and she smiled and kicked her bare feet. He was half an hour from home, driving aimlessly, and Mercedes might be in trouble.
“Let’s go find Mer,” he said, turning the car around.
“Go Meh!” Gia clapped.
* * *
Noah called Mercedes and waited as her phone rang and rang and eventually went to voice mail. No Mer. He’d left her house two hours ago. It was now midnight. She was probably in bed. Where he should be. Where Gia should be. He’d rolled up the window and turned down the radio and Gia had fallen asleep in her car seat once more. But Noah had a nervous prickling in his gut, and his mind wouldn’t settle. He didn’t want to leave things the way they were. He also needed to make sure she was okay. Moses Wright wouldn’t have called him for nothing. He drove to her house and sat, staring at her darkened windows, feeling like an idiot. He climbed out and lifted Gia from her seat. She lay limply against his shoulder and didn’t stir when he knocked on Mer’s door.
He knocked for several minutes but no one answered. He tried her phone again. Several times. He didn’t know what to do. He knocked harder and rang the bell. Alma came to the door, bleary eyed, wielding a broom like a bludgeon. She put it down when she saw him.
“Alma, I’m sorry. Mercedes and I argued. I’m worried about her.”
She stared at him wearily. “You made her cry, Noah.”
“I know.”
“It’s very late.”
“I know that too. I’m tired. Gia’s tired. But I need to see Mercedes. Will you let me in?”
“She’s not here.”
“Are you lying to me, Alma? Did Mer tell you to lie? Because I’m worried. I need to know if she’s all right. If she’s in her room, angry with me, that’s fine. But if she’s not, then I need to find her.”
“You love her,” Alma said.
“Yes. I do.”
“She loves you.”
“I know.”
“So marry her!” she snapped. “Marry her, and give Gia a mother. Give me a grandchild!”
“I would marry Mercedes tomorrow if she would have me.”
“Si?” Alma gasped.
“Yes. But she . . .” Noah wasn’t sure if he could explain. He didn’t understand it himself, why Mer was fighting him so hard, why she resisted the obvious.
“She is stubborn,” Alma supplied.
“Yes.”
“And afraid.”
“Yes. I think so,” he sighed.
“She’s not here, Noah.”
“Okay. Then I need to find her.”
“You leave the bebé. Go find my daughter.”
He sighed. He eased Gia into Alma’s arms, knowing she would be better off in a bed than driving around with him.
“Do you have any idea where she went?” he asked
“She said something about Keegan and the salon,” Alma murmured, kissing Gia’s soft head.
“Keegan?” The nervous flutter in his stomach became an angry swarm. “I thought Keegan Tate had left Maven.”
“He did. But he’s back, and Mercedes is looking for a new job. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, but she’s been upset.”
“Damn it, Alma. Why hasn’t she called me? Why hasn’t she told me any of this?”
“She needs to be strong. She needs to fix things. She’s good at loving, but she’s not very good at being loved. You will have to convince her, Noah.”