Mercy Read online

  SIXTEEN

  At 8:05 on Monday morning, Mia Townsend took the clothes she'd neatly arranged in the dresser of the Wheelock Inn and rolled them into sausages, which she'd always found to be the best method for traveling. She stuffed her belongings into her knapsack and scooped up her cat with her free hand.

  Setting Kafka on her stomach, she lay down on a bed that still smelled of her and Cam from the afternoon before. She had arrived in Wheelock before him, and he'd come to the Inn instead of going home. Cam had undressed her so tenderly she thought he must have guessed her decision. But then she realized that it was simply his way of marking something that, in his mind, was not an end but a beginning.

  Her body could not let go quite so easily, and had sung to him a lullaby orchestrated by her skin moving against his, until he fell into a deep sleep at her side. Then Mia had closed her eyes and concentrated on the sounds that pushed through the walls and the windows, family sounds and leisure sounds, the hum of a weekend as it shuddered to a close.

  She turned her face into the pillow that had been Cam's. She didn't think she'd ever quite forget the scent of him, but when he'd gone to the bathroom she had stolen one of the sweatshirts he'd brought to New Hampshire, just in case. That was what she was taking this time, her keepsake of Wheelock.

  Kafka mewed and scratched at her ribs. She absently stroked his neck, and she tried to imagine every line of Cameron MacDonald's face.

  Mia took a last look through the drawers and the bathroom to check that she was not leaving a piece of herself behind. With a gentle hand, she ran her fingers down the twisted trunk of her ancient bonsai, the one that had accompanied her everywhere. This she placed on the middle of the bed, where Cam would be certain to find it.

  She locked the door to the room that had been hers for a little while. She walked downstairs and settled her bill and returned her key. Then she stepped outside.

  It was unseasonably warm for January. Fifty degrees, at least, and it was early in the morning. The snow had melted down to the bare ground in some spots, leaving the grass weak and yellow, looking violated.

  Mia took a deep breath and kept her chin held high on the way to her car, carefully avoiding a glimpse into puddles that would only show her herself.

  At 8:05 on Monday morning, Allie was rounding up the dirty laundry for dry cleaning. She took it in to Mr. Soong's place every other week, or else Cam would run out of uniforms. He had left early this morning--another meeting out of town, this one for some kind of task force. And since he'd returned after ten the previous night, he hadn't had a chance to unpack.

  Allie could remember him saying that the gun safety seminar in New Braintree had been casual, but she wasn't sure if he'd packed anything other than a uniform which might merit dry cleaning. He had several cotton sweaters that couldn't be laundered in any other way.

  She bent down to rummage through the duffel bag that was lying on its side, pulling out a pair of jeans and a wet musty set of polypropylene long underwear. She was absently thinking that the yellow sweatshirt he'd left town in was missing, when the pictures tumbled into her lap.

  They were very bad Polaroids, that was the first thing she noticed. The images were filmy and the colors a bit too awkward, so it was almost possible to believe that she was not seeing clearly as she recognized Cam and Mia standing together in front of a pond full of skaters.

  They had red eyes, like people in Polaroids always do.

  His arms were around her.

  She, Allie, had been so stupid.

  As if the images were whirling by in a carnival ride, she remembered Mia standing beside Cam in the kitchen, Mia's toothbrush in their bathroom, Mia and Cam making conversation in the flower shop with her in the back room.

  Mia's underwear in Cam's dresser drawer.

  Allie felt her spine give way. She lay on her side on the bedroom floor, holding on to those pictures, wondering why she wasn't starting to cry.

  It was what she had thought she would do, if this situation ever came about. And she supposed she'd imagined it--didn't everyone who was married consider the worst that could happen? She read Glamour and Cosmo; she knew the stories. The magazines advocated strong, ballsy women, but Allie believed that when push came to shove, if her husband was cheating on her, she would shut down her systems and retreat into her shell.

  As if the idea spurred her to action, she tore at the duffel bag with such a vengeance she broke the zipper. She ripped the pictures as best she could given the resilient Polaroid film. She found condoms in Cam's shaving kit and woodenly moved herself to the toilet, where she opened each foil pack and flushed them, one by one.

  She still wasn't crying.

  She wasn't thinking, What did I do to deserve this? She was wondering instead, What did you do to deserve me?

  She dressed quickly, because she had a great deal to do. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, hugging the information she'd unearthed to herself until it became a small, hot knot of pain as hard as unmined coal, and lodged just as soundly.

  At 8:05 on Monday morning, Jamie MacDonald was running with the wolves. At least, that was what he was pretending.

  He'd stepped barefoot into the melting snow and had walked through Darby Mac's cornfield slowly until the soles of his feet grew numb. In the winter, the field was nothing but a square of stubble sticking out above the snow. Jamie made his way between the rows, darting back and forth, stumbling to his hands and knees and going up to his elbows in snow. He hoped he'd get pneumonia.

  He pushed himself on, back and forth across the acreage, until his breath was burning in his lungs and his eyes were tearing with effort. Then Jamie sat back on his heels and threw back his head and howled in the direction of the sun. He yelled until his voice gave out. He yelled until there was nothing left inside.

  He stood up and walked back, like a man again, to the side of Angus's little house. In the dogcatcher's mesh cage were two mutts and a purebred spaniel. They jumped and yipped at him as he drew close. They pushed their hot, wet muzzles into the shell of his hand.

  Without thinking twice, Jamie unlatched the cage. He watched the dogs take off down the road, their tails twitching, their feet picking up speed as they caught the faint scent of freedom.

  At 8:05 on Monday morning, Graham MacPhee was asleep on top of a collection of dusty law books. The spine of one had carved a thick line down his cheek, and his eyes, when they started to open, were red and gritty. He had been up most of the night preparing his opening statement. Although it was Monday, it was Martin Luther King Day, and the courts weren't in session. It gave him, Jamie, everyone involved, a day of grace.

  He sat up and took a swig of Coke from a two-liter bottle, hoping to wipe out the metallic taste in his mouth. No one who could see him this morning--shoeless, disheveled, sallow--would recognize him tomorrow at the defense table.

  A woman was walking in front of his dry-erase board. "Hey," he said, wondering how the hell she'd gotten in when he hadn't yet unlocked his office door. "Mind telling me who you are?"

  At his voice, she simply touched the board where the three days before Jamie's arrest were chronicled. Her hand went straight through it. More gently this time, she reached a fingertip to one of the empty white squares that marked the night Jamie and his wife had last been alone together.

  With his heart pounding, Graham scrambled to his feet. He took a step closer to the woman as she turned to face him.

  He had seen the Polaroids taken by the medical examiner. He had seen pictures Allie had stolen from Jamie's house in Cummington. He was staring at Maggie MacDonald.

  When Graham tried to speak, nothing came out of his throat. He rubbed his eyes, but she didn't disappear. He thought of Dr. Harrison Harding, and wondered if this was a psychotic episode.

  Maggie rubbed her hand against the gaping hole in Graham's defense theory, the only period of time he could not account for before the death. And as quickly as she had appeared, she was suddenly gone.

  Gr