Mercy Read online

  The jurors that were called got worse and worse, as if the lottery itself had been fixed. After a quick recess in the late morning, everyone seemed to be over the age of sixty; everyone was Catholic; everyone had done some time in the service. Graham began to ignore Fyvel's tugs at his trouser leg and violent scribbling on his legal pad. He whispered instead with Allie: I like the way she blinks too much. Her mouth looks kind. A Mickey Mouse tie is a sure sign of nonconformity.

  Audra challenged a young woman with a shaved head, as well as a Japanese computer technician. Graham objected to a lady who ran the local organization of right-to-lifers.

  When there were fourteen potential jurors, Graham turned around to the jury box and took a deep breath. Of the fourteen, Fyvel had accepted only two: a self-professed starving artist and a nursery school teacher's aide. Allie felt strongly about the man with the Mickey Mouse tie and the fat lady with the dyed hair. Jamie said the woman with the kind mouth had smiled at him.

  Most of the jurors could go either way, but even Graham had to admit it did not look good. The average age of the jurors assembled thus far was fifty-two. The majoriry were Catholic, Republican, fairly uneducated. Fyvel threw his pencil down; it rolled off and under the defense table.

  Graham looked at the veniremen who had yet to be called for questioning. A sea of blank, old faces; no one who overtly possessed any of the characteristics that would have guaranteed a 20 on Fyvel's scale. Not, of course, that you could pick a Democrat or a Jew by just looking--but Graham had no reason to believe that the remaining prospective jurors would suddenly take a turn for the liberal.

  He had five peremptory challenges left. If he used one of them, he gave Audra the chance to get rid of one of the jurors they really liked, such as the artist or the aide. With the way his luck had been running, the replacement would be a White House Chief of Staff from the Reagan era.

  He glanced at Audra Campbell before turning to Judge Roarke to tell him that the defense accepted the jury.

  Hoecht Lake sat like a cherrystone in the middle of Braebury, ensconced in a valley that rose on all sides to become the town. It was enchanting. Cam laced Mia's skates for her and tugged her around the oval once until she felt steady enough to keep her own balance. The people that circled around laughed and bobbed in her field of vision like a sea of balloons. A little girl offered to take their picture with a Polaroid Mia had bought. Instantly the picture developed: Cam with the sun shining to rival his hair, his arms around Mia, a wide smile splitting her face.

  But when you don't know how to skate, you quickly get tired of falling down. "There's something genetically wrong with my ankles," Mia said, grabbing Cam's hand for support as she stumbled over a piece of straw stuck into the ice. "They turn in."

  "There's nothing wrong with your ankles. They're just not used to this."

  Cam gently detached Mia's fingers and skated ahead of her, turning in a sharp curve on his hockey skates to send a spray of snow into her face.

  "Show-off," Mia said.

  "Now that is genetic." Cam did a little loop around her and locked his hands on her hips. "Just glide."

  Mia felt her feet coming out from under her. "Let go," she said, pushing at Cam's palms. "I don't like going fast."

  "Mia, the trees are moving faster than you."

  He moved away, and Mia stumbled over another piece of straw sticking out of the ice. Cam straddled her and pulled her up from her armpits. "I knew that going away with you would be dangerous," she muttered. "I just didn't figure it would be quite like this."

  Cam hauled her to her feet. "If you're very nice to me, I'll let you sit the next round out."

  Mia clutched his elbow and smiled gratefully. He propelled her to one of the Adirondack benches. "I'll be back," he said, and he took off toward the separate hockey oval at a breakneck pace.

  She watched Cam dart and weave between the three hockey games in progress, leaving a thin white line on the ice where each skate had been. Suddenly, this grace of movement was not beautiful but upsetting. Mia would never skate like that. She'd never fit seamlessly into the harsh New England winters like everyone else up here; like Cam. It was just one more difference to add to the mountain between them.

  By the time Cam skated back to her, bright-eyed and panting, Mia was curled into a ball on the Adirondack bench, her toe picks digging into the scarred wood and her arms hugging her knees. She lifted her face at his approach, knowing her nose was running and her eyes were red and her skin was mottled with the cold.

  Cam's chest constricted when he saw her. All he could think was that she had hurt something when she fell and he had been stupid enough to leave her alone. "Mia?" He gathered her close. "What's the matter?"

  Her voice, hitched, was little more than a whisper. "I don't want to go skiing."

  Cam blinked. "You what?"

  She pulled back. "I don't want to go skiing. Tomorrow." Sniffling, she wiped her sleeve across her nose. "I don't want you to see something else I do terribly."

  Cam kissed her ear. His lips were at least ten degrees warmer. "We don't have to go skiing," he said, slipping his arm around her shoulders. He thought of the grammar of Gaelic, in which you did not say you were in love with someone, but that you "had love toward" her, as if it were a physical thing you could present and hold--a bundle of tulips, a golden ring, a parcel of tenderness. "I'd love you if you just sat in a chair all day."

  They sat in companionable silence, staring at an ice sculpture some burgeoning local artist had created at the juncture of the two skating ponds. It was a bird--a phoenix, Cam supposed--rising out of the pond with its wings spread.

  Something at the back of his mind burned a little, and he recalled Jamie MacDonalds voluntary confession, which he'd read again on behalf of the ADA for trial preparation. He remembered Jamie talking about an ice sculpture he'd seen somewhere on vacation with his wife, how it had been nothing but a shell with the life gone out of its eyes, how it had been like Maggie.

  Mia laced her gloved fingers through his bare ones. "You're not thinking about skiing anymore," she said.

  Cam shook his head. "Jamie," he stated, as if this would explain it all. He turned to Mia and stared into her eyes. "Do you think he was wrong to kill his wife, if he knew she was dying anyway?"

  Mia glanced away. "The papers say she asked him." Cam nodded. "Well, in my book that makes a difference."

  "I know," Cam agreed. "I'm not talking about placing the blame. I'm asking what you would have done if you were Jamie."

  Mia looked at Cam, his cheeks rough with beard stubble and his breath quick with health. She squeezed his fingers just to feel him squeeze back. She of all people knew that what you thought you would do in a given situation didn't mean a thing until you found yourself actually facing it.

  Would she kill Cam if he asked her to, for a good reason? Probably not. She was too selfish for that. She always had been. Her parents would have done what Jamie had done, in a heartbeat. Of course, they wouldn't have stopped there.

  Which brought her to the question she really thought everyone should be asking Jamie MacDonald. How could he not have killed himself, too?

  "Do you think he was right?" Cam repeated.

  Mia bit her lip. "I think love makes you lose yourself," she said carefully. "My mother used to start kitchen fires all the time because she'd get to teasing or kissing my father and forget anything was on the stove." She paused. "And I don't think my parents would have left me alone nearly as much as they did, but they were so wrapped up in being husband and wife they forgot about being a father and mother."

  She leaned close enough for her words to fall directly on Cam's lips. "I don't know about Jamie, but I understand doing something you know you shouldn't be doing, and knowing at the same time it's not wrong."

  Turning her head, she nestled closer to Cam. A single drip ran down the side of the ice sculpture, boring a hole in the snow at the side of the pond. Cam buried his face in Mia's curls, and he wondered how muc