Mercy Read online

  She couldn't breathe, at first. But she forced herself to relax. She closed her eyes so that the strobe lights were only pricks against her lids, and she made herself lean into the long, easy body before her. It was hard to be this close to another man, but she reminded herself that getting over the strangeness would be half the battle.

  The music caught them like a whirlwind and drew them tighter, so that O'Malley's cheek was pressed against her own. Allie heard him murmuring the words of a song she did not know, and she sang her own lyrics to the same rhythm: Cam did it; Cam did it; so can you.

  The only items left were the things Cam assumed no one had wanted, and that included himself. On the overturned cartons on the driveway were a few spare pairs of socks and boxer shorts, a sweatshirt he had splattered bleach on several years before, a drill that did not work.

  He left them sitting where they were and went into the house again. It was strange to see the empty spots on the wall where Carrymuir paraphernalia had been, cleared rings on dusty shelves that had once been home to mugs he'd brought back from Munich and Stuttgart. He wondered what Allie had said to the people who asked questions. He wondered if she'd lied to them, or if she'd told them the truth. He wasn't certain which one he preferred.

  The house still looked furnished, but it was a woman's house. Allies quilts were draped over the chair and the couch. Allies curtains were pulled back to let in the dying sun. Allies cookbooks stood in height order on the bookshelf.

  He sank down on the couch--his favorite chair was God only knew where--and let it come. The frustration, the fury, the embarrassment. "Damn you," he yelled, and it felt so good that he did it again. "How could you do this to me?"

  His voice was pitched so loud he could hear the echo of his outrage settling in the braided rug, the upholstered furniture. "Why did you leave me?" he said more softly, and that was when he knew that he hadn't been angry at Allie at all.

  He wondered if Mia was thinking about him.

  With a deep sigh, Cam stood up and dug his hands into his pockets. He moved through the house to get the full effect of his infidelity: the half-empty bathroom vanity, which housed no razors but a festival of lotions and bath gels and rose-colored soaps; the basement workshop, as bare as it had been on the day they'd moved in; the ridiculously tiny bedroom closet, now cavernous and spacious, littered with dust balls on the floor.

  She'd even sold his fucking pillows.

  He went into the bathroom again to take a leak, and noticed something wrapped in newspaper hidden in the dank area behind the toilet. Bending down, he drew it out. It was last Thursday's newspaper, and although he didn't think it had been intended, there was a big article about Jamie MacDonalds upcoming trial splashed across the page.

  He knew what it was before he unwrapped it. Lying on the bathroom floor, with no incoming light, the stained-glass panel had no life or color. Cam sat down and stared at it. He did not know why it had not been placed in a carton with the other gifts he had given Allie; he would never know.

  Cam could remember giving it to Allie. He'd told her to be careful with it. He'd given it to her and the whole time he'd still been thinking of Mia.

  But he supposed it was going to be that way for a while. Regardless of what had happened to Allie and when she would resurface, another part of Cam had died. It was only reasonable to expect that he would need time to properly mourn.

  Only he wouldn't let it show. He owed his wife that much.

  Wife. The word congealed on his tongue. With great care he took a swath of toilet paper and cleaned the stained-glass panel. He wiped down the bright glass shards and dusted the lead panes. Then he walked with it into the bedroom and hung it again on its cast-iron hook, back where it belonged.

  Cam stood before the stained-glass image until the moon rose behind it, and resigned himself to this day, the next one, and the next.

  hen you are married to a person for a long time and you make love, you know how long and when your husband will kiss you. You know that he'll start at your right breast, and then concentrate on your left. You know that he will move his mouth down your belly and bring you to the edge, then slide up to your mouth again and let you taste your own excitement. With somebody new, you lose this rhythm. Allie lay naked on her back in a room at the Green Gate Motel, O'Malley heavy on top of her. They had bumped noses when they kissed and scraped the enamel off their teeth and being drunk was not the only excuse for such mismatch. Allie felt nervous, but not about the act itself. She didn't know what he was going to do next, and the very newness of it, the difference, made it seem wrong.

  O'Malley had spent an inordinate amount of time licking around and inside her ear, which she did not find erotic at all. He had a tendency to whisper things that made her want to clamp her legs shut: Want to ride a cowboy, honey? I can stay in the saddle a long, long time.

  But to her surprise, she could feel her nipples tightening and her lower body going soft. She realized with a shock that this man she did not know and did not like was going to make her come.

  It's just sex, she told herself as he slipped on a condom and drove into her. It was that way for Cam; it's that way for me. It's not the same as a marriage.

  She started to cry, all the tears that hadn't fallen that morning or that afternoon on the way to Shelburne. She cried quietly at first, then loud sobs that made O'Malley pull himself from her with a bewildered look. She didn't explain to him. She didn't want to, didn't have to. She rolled to her side and curled into a ball, trying to remember the quickest way home.

  Angus and Ellen left a spot between them for Allie when they entered the courtroom in Pittsfield, but ten minutes before the jury was set to convene, she still had not appeared. "I don't know what's keeping her," Ellen said, looking at her watch.

  Graham, bouncing with nervous energy on the balls of his feet, shook his head. "She wouldn't miss opening arguments."

  "A flat tire," Angus pronounced. "I canna imagine anything else."

  Graham nodded, staring at the door Jamie would enter in a few minutes' time. "I hope she shows," he murmured. "It's going to kill him if she doesn't."

  Graham leaned against the defense table, inadvertently scattering his notes. He wondered what Jamie was thinking, ensconced for a minute of quiet in a bathroom stall. He wondered how he'd be holding up by the end of the day, the first of many.

  The defendant was the least important person in the courtroom. He wasn't involved in the case. He wouldn't be arguing his innocence. The only purpose he served was as a visual aid for the jurors while they heard testimony from others.

  Graham also knew that this case was not going to be like the civil suits he had tired. The prosecutors had their evidence. The defense wasn't going to refute it or offer any other vindicating evidence. In fact, most of Graham's own witnesses were going to say things that corroborated the State's case. But he'd try to shape the facts with their attitudes and impressions of Jamie too. In essence, Graham's role was to tell the jury. Yes, here's a body. But you've got to look at it in a different context.

  Not that Graham believed you could ever tell what the hell was going on in a juror's mind.

  Jamie came back into the courtroom looking pale and tight, and slipped into a seat beside Graham almost at exactly the same time the jury filed in and the bailiff requested that everyone rise for the Honorable Judge Juno Roarke.

  Audra Campbell was on her feet for an opening statement on the heels of Roarke's pronouncement that court was now in session. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," she said, "on September 19, 1995, Margaret MacDonald was murdered by her own husband. He drove her to a nearby town, checked into an inn, held a pillow to her face, and cut off her supply of oxygen so that she died of asphyxiation. The State will show that the defendant turned himself in to the local police and voluntarily confessed to these actions."

  The prosecutor was wearing a black wool suit that stood out from her shoulders like a linebacker's gear. She stepped around the table and crossed to st