Mercy Read online

  He tossed the empty bottle into the trash can and shut off the banker's lamp on his desk. Don't sweat it, he told himself. You've got time.

  But as he was locking the office door behind him, a thought tugged at his mind. You've got time, it said. Jamie doesn't.

  Cam thought of the total-immersion technique in which people learned languages by speaking them exclusively, living in the origin country, sleeping with Berlitz tapes murmuring beside their heads. He knew of people who had done this successfully and had come to love the language. And with this in mind, he took the next day off from work and asked his wife to go fishing.

  He hadn't asked her in three years, but he thought that if he spent every waking minute of the day with Allie, listening to her and watching her and only her, he could surely drive Mia Townsend from his mind.

  Cam was just propping up against the banister the bamboo fly rod that had been his grandfather's, when Allie appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a faded denim shirt and a baggy pair of khaki pants rolled up to the knees. She sat down on the top step and slipped on a pair of Tretorns riddled with holes. "We're going to be getting wet, right?" she said, knotting the laces. "I figured after what Arbuth did to these, there's very little left to damage." Arbuth was the neighbor's mastiff. Cam smiled, remembering how Allie had chased him with a Wiffle bat when she found the dog chewing on her new sneakers.

  Cam tucked a short-handled net into his belt and jammed a red felt hat on his head. It was dotted with bucktail streamers and woolly boogers and nymphs, several dry flies as well. He held his arms out to the sides and pirouetted slowly. Allie whistled. "You're a vision."

  She scrambled down the stairs and wrapped her arms around Cam's waist. "You see how lucky we are chat Mia came to town?" she said, and Cam stiffened in her embrace. "If it wasn't for her, I couldn't just take a whole day off."

  "Lucky," Cam repeated, pulling away. He reached for the fishing rod. He did not want to look at Allie. Having heard Mia's name again, he knew what would happen--he'd turn to his wife and he'd start comparing her flushed cheeks and pointed chin to Mia's smooth brow and tumbling curls. "Let's go," he said curtly, and moved toward the door. He left Allie standing alone, rubbing her upper arms and wondering what she'd already done wrong.

  Recovering, Allie followed Cam out the front door and, to her surprise, watched him walk toward the backyard gate. "Come on," he said, waving her closer. "We don't have all day."

  "I thought we did," Allie murmured. "I thought that was the point." She watched Cam move to the center of the slightly sloping lawn, holding the fishing pole in front of him. He pulled free some of the bright yellow line, and then with his left hand, he began to swing the rod back and forth, back and forth, like a human metronome, until the line had whizzed through the guides and was arcing over him like a monochromatic rainbow.

  "You know, I may be a novice, but wouldn't we have a better chance of catching fish if we did this near water?"

  Cam smirked at her. "You think I'm going to let you hold my grandfather's fly rod without practicing on dry ground?" He let the leader rest on the crabgrass and looked at Allie. Her hands were on her hips, her ponytail was curling over her shoulder; her feet pointed out to the sides, as if she was getting ready to do a plie.

  The last time he'd taken Allie fishing, it had been deep-water. Not his favorite kind, but he hadn't the time or the inclination then to teach Allie how to fly-fish, which in his opinion was more of an art than a sport. They had gone out for blues, and Allie-- who'd had to be shown how to work the reel--had caught the biggest fish. He could remember her dancing in little circles in her borrowed slicker when the captain presented her with a free day's pass to return, a prize for the catch of the day.

  Pulling his thoughts back, he tugged at the line. The leader had snagged on a piece of grass. "Shows you what you know." He grinned. "I have a bite." He tugged gently, until the neon-bright line snapped into the air. "Now," he said, closing his mind to anything but the beauty of what he was about to do, "it's all in the presentation." He started swinging the line in rhythm again as he backcast and false-cast, over and over. "You've got no weight on the end of your line. You're using the weight of the line itself to cast. Well, hell, you're not even really casting. You're just kind of suspending your line above the water."

  "Grass," Allie murmured.

  "Whatever." He closed his eyes, letting the sway and the motion lead him. "You want to roll the line out in front of the fish, like a red carpet . . . rolling . . . rolling . . . until finally the fly just drops"--here he made a light popping noise--"into the water."

  Then he stopped speaking. He let his arm sway from front to back, occasionally pulling out more line and feeding with his casts until the leader reached even farther. He felt the sun on the back of his neck and watched the juncos fly toward the narrow purple pass in the mountains several miles away. He breathed in with each backcast, out with each false cast, and lost himself.

  He was in New Zealand, fishing for giant rainbow trout. In the wilds of Alaska, tall grass burning his legs while he cast for salmon. With a deep breath, he pictured himself in Montana, tying two leaders in a blood knot as he prepared to fish for cutthroat. He was on Loch Leven, which had always felt like home, a small boat rocking beneath him with the currents that hid both the char and the kelpies.

  "Where are you?" Allie said.

  He blinked his eyes. She was smiling at him, and he was surprised that she could read him so well.

  Cam shook his head. "Your turn," he said, holding out the rod.

  She moved into the circle of his arms. Cam came close behind her, tucking the rod under the band of her watch. "There," he said, fitting her hand over the cork grip. "Now you won't bend your wrist." He began to move her arm back, watching the line overhead, then pushed her arm forward. "You don't want to hear the line snap. When you backcast, watch the line come out. It'll unroll and you'll see this loop unfolding itself. . . when it hangs like that, see? That's when you bring it forward."

  Allie felt her shoulder pressing against his chest, his fingers closing over hers. He arced her arm in a slow and gliding pendulum, lending her the grace she had witnessed in him moments before. She closed her eyes, beginning to feel that this was simply Cam's way of asking her to dance.

  Back, two, three, front, two, three. Back, two, three, front, two, three. Allie saw herself whirling about a glittering columned ballroom, Cam's cutaway evening attire smooth and fine beneath her hands. There was a moment when she could smell the winter coming and sense the heaviness of the air and feel her blood running and knew, at the same time, that she and Cam were in perfect rhythm. Oh, yes, she thought, this is lovely.

  "Now you do it," Cam said, stepping away, and Allie awkwardly found herself standing alone. She lifted the fly rod, trying to listen to Cam's senseless comments about lifting at ten o'clock, lifting at one o'clock, keeping her wrist straight and presenting the line. She tried to keep up the rhythm by humming music, but she could only focus on the fact that Cam was watching the twist and furl of her body as she had watched his. Her cheeks flushed, and she wished that he'd hold her close again.

  It was afternoon before Cam pronounced Allie proficient enough to hold his sacred fly rod on Wee Loch, the lake for which the town had been settled. Cam tied the Old Town canoe onto the roof of Allies car and drove to the boat launch. Then he settled Allie in the front of it and paddled to the far shore of the lake, where they were likely to find bass.

  "Okay," Cam said finally. "This is the magic place." Allie glanced around at the lily pads and stumps that dotted the little cove Cam had rowed into. Then Cam reached across the boat. The canoe tipped gently from side to side to balance itself, and Allie clutched at the gunwale, her face whitening. "Cam," she choked out, "please don't."

  Cam was casually tying a fly onto the leader of the fishing rod when she felt composed enough to turn around. "Don't what? Use the dry fly?" He frowned down at his hands. "Maybe you're right. Maybe a nymp