Mercy Read online

There was a pretty wreath on the front door. Curly willow had been twisted into the shape of a heart, and dried red and white roses were snaked through its turns. Allie dug Jamie's house keys out of her pocket and opened the door.

  The house was neat and very quiet. Allie knew from Jamie that he and Maggie had left Cummington in a hurry, but there didn't seem to be any dust, and the polished wood floor that ran down the length of the hall was unmarked by muddy boots or black heel prints. The house smelled of lemon wax, evergreen, and something that Allie could not put her finger on but would have bet was a fragrance that simply signified Maggie herself.

  "Well," she said aloud, more to hear the way her voice sounded in someone else's home than anything else, "we've got work to do." She hung her coat over the knob of the banister and dug Jamie's list out of the back pocket of her jeans. "The file boxes are in the study," she read, and she poked her head into the first room off to the right.

  It was a dining room, decorated with a large oval cherry table and an Irish lace runner. An oversized pewter goblet sat in the center of the table, filled with chubby wax grapes. From the dining room she stepped into the den, where the vacuous black eye of the TV screen stared back at her, and the simple dips of the couch showed that Maggie and Jamie liked to sit side by side.

  I should be in forensics, she thought, tabulating the hundreds of things she had already learned about Jamie and his wife simply by stepping through a few rooms of his house. She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, wrinkling her nose as she poured the sour milk down the sink drain and threw some moldy bread into the trash. Then she found the study.

  It was painted an old-world blue, and one wall was filled with ancient yellowed books that Allie could not imagine anyone having the patience to read. There were two desks in the room: one the wide, tilted run of an architect's workspace, the other a simple oak structure with hideaway cabinets. Allie moved to the architect's desk first. Jamie had mentioned that Maggie was an illustrator, or she had been before it became too difficult to work. There were no pictures-in-progress tacked to the surface, but a small bowl painted with Mickey Mouse's face held markers in all the colors of Allies own roses: sage and lemon and honey and shell pink; sky blue and aubergine, topaz and ivory. Allie picked the markers up and rolled them between her palms, resisting the urge to draw a rainbow.

  Clipped to the corner of the white desk was a photograph of Jamie and Maggie. Allie peered closer, fascinated by the mobile smile of Maggie's mouth and the shine of Maggie's eyes. Jamie's arm was looped around her shoulders, his face was turned in profile as he pressed a kiss onto her cheek.

  Allie touched her finger to the spot on Maggie's cheek that Jamie was kissing, then touched her own mouth. Feeling slightly guilty, she pulled the photo from its clip and tucked it into the pocket of her chamois shirt.

  Jamie's desk held all the bills and all the tax records. She found the fire-resistant strongbox under the right drawer, just as he'd said she would. The key was already in the lock; she had only to turn it to reveal their marriage certificate, their passports, the deed to the house, and their insurance. She took a manila envelope from the desk, emptied its contents, and placed these things inside. Then she removed the picture from her pocket and slipped it gently on top of the other documents.

  If she was the jury, she knew what she'd believe more.

  Allie walked upstairs to the bedroom and opened the three doors inside to find two closets and the bathroom. One entire shelf in the linen closet was filled with ovulation-predictor tests, carefully stacked. She took one out and stared at the fuzzy picture of a mother and child on the package. Maggie and Jamie had no children, neither did Allie and Cam. The difference was, Maggie and Jamie had wanted a baby. Allie did too--she had from the moment she'd starred dating Cam--but even now, years later, he insisted he wasn't ready. And in this, like all other things, she would wait for him.

  Allie closed the linen closet and walked to the other side of the bedroom. She sat down in front of Maggie's vanity table and sprayed a bit of perfume from an atomizer onto her neck. Joy. She knew the smell; she had never been able to afford it. To the left of the perfume was deodorant. To the right was an army of amber plastic vials containing Demerol, Valium, and a host of other medicines that Allie did not recognize.

  Oh, Maggie, she thought, staring into the mirror, I would have moved them. I would not have kept them in a place where I could see them every time I looked for my own reflection.

  With the precision of a research scientist, Allie wrote down the names of the prescription drugs and their dosage strength on the front of the manila envelope.

  In retrospect, she could not say what had made her do it, but Allie methodically began to get undressed. She tucked her sneakers under the vanity table and hung her shirt and jeans over the chair and walked into Maggie MacDonalds closet.

  She dressed in a filmy camisole the color of apricots, and an ankle-length skirt made of silk faille in all the shades of a sunset. It was big at the waist, so she hiked it tighter with a leather belt embroidered with a Native American bead design. Then she found a big blue turtleneck sweater that reached to her knees and seemed to swallow her alive.

  Maggie had been much taller.

  In a hatbox on the top shelf of the closet she found a wig that was the same color as Maggie's hair. She didn't think Maggie had been wearing a wig; surely that would have come out during the autopsy. More likely this was from a year or so ago, when she had undergone chemotherapy that did not work.

  Allie crouched in front of the vanity table and tugged and pushed her own dull brown hair under the neat mesh cap until a swing of artificial hair came to touch in two points at the base of her chin.

  She went through the drawers of the lingerie chest, pulling on thigh-high stockings and then argyle socks and tennis Peds over those. She wrapped a scarf printed with exotic fruit around her neck, and a longer, more diaphanous one about her hips. In the top drawer she found Maggie's old bras, as wispy and thin as a memory, buried beneath the sturdy white cotton prosthetic ones for a mastectomy patient.

  Feeling sick, Allie clamped her hand to her mouth with the intention of running to the bathroom, but when turning around she faced the bed. For the first time she noticed that it was unmade. In a house where everything had its place, where dust didn't deign to settle, the tangled blue sheets and knotted, rolled comforter seemed to be a violation. She inched closer, dropping down to the edge of the bed and reaching for a pillow; She brought it to her face, smelling Jamie's aftershave and Joy.

  It was possible that Maggie had felt too sick to make the bed on the day they left, or that Jamie had been the last one to leave it. For all she knew, Maggie might not have even been sleeping upstairs at that point, too tired to go up and down. But Allie could see them as clearly as the bright patterns woven into the skirt she wore: Jamie and Maggie, about to walk out the door of their house, until Maggie turned suddenly and grasped Jamie's hand and dragged him back up the stairs to make love one last time in their own home.

  She lay down on the bed in Maggie MacDonald's clothing, pulled the sheets over her head, and wept.

  Cam's face turned the same way as Mia's when they kissed. They scraped teeth and mashed noses before getting it fight, but the simple act of finding their way together instead of having an expected pattern made his head swim. They sat on the couch, kissing like teenagers, their hands trapped between their bodies like gypsy moths, darting beneath clothing and batting against skin.

  She smelled, felt, and tasted different than Allie, and Cam allowed himself to think this just once. Then he concentrated on learning the texture of the backs of her hands; the feel of the pulse at her temple; the clear, heady scent of her hair.

  He undressed Mia slowly, waiting for her to clutch at the sides of her shirt or make a tiny cry of protest, but when she did nothing he simply continued. She sat on the couch on the white blur of her big shirt, which unfolded beneath her legs like the opened petals of a lily. Then