Mercy Read online

  They had a fancy dinner that night and drove around Lenox, following the moon. On a whim, since they were dressed nicely, they indurated a wedding reception of people they had never met. Maggie laughed when Jamie had a ten-minute conversation with the father of the bride. They danced a jitterbug they'd learned one summer at a community dance class Maggie had signed them up for, spinning and twisting until a line of sweat made a T down the back of Maggie's dress, and only then did they notice that everyone was clapping.

  They drove the car to one of the Berkshire passes and slept there, waking when the sun poured itself into the valley like a rich blush wine. Still dressed in a suit and a silk dress, they took off their shoes and socks and stockings and walked through the crab-grass at the base of the hills, looking for four-leaf clovers and winking primroses and flat, smooth stones for skipping. They drove home, faces flushed with color, and showered together. Then they sat in the middle of the bed and watched the stars come out.

  On Monday, they were nearly out the front door when Maggie pulled Jamie's arm and dragged him back to the bedroom and ripped at his clothes until he fell back on the bed with her and loved her with a fury that at any other time might have promised more.

  He drove her to Wheelock, stopping in front of his cousin's address, which he'd picked out from the phone book and located on a map he bought at the local gas station. "He'll take care of me," he said to Maggie, as they sat parked across the street. "He's family."

  For the first time, Maggie seemed to consider that Jamie would be left to face the consequences. "What's going to happen?" she asked.

  Jamie smiled at her. "Who cares? I don't have any immediate plans without you."

  Maggie was tired. All the activity, in spite of her Percoset, was taking its toll. They spent most of the day in their room at the Inn. That night, while they drank champagne from a bottle and Maggie picked pieces of pepperoni from the pizza, she told him what she wanted of him. "You ought to get married," she said. "You'd be a terrific father."

  The thought of anyone other than Maggie was ridiculous, but he did not tell her this.

  "I want you to get married again," she pressed. Jamie glanced at her. "I think you've asked me to do enough." "You'll fall in love again," Maggie said smugly. "And you'll be happy we had this conversation."

  Jamie stood up and walked to the window, where Wheelock was shutting down for the night. "There won't be anyone like you." "I should hope not," Maggie laughed. "I was one of a kind." "You were," Jamie said, turning around and looking at her. He realized they were already speaking in the past tense. "You are."

  They made love again, so slowly that Maggie cried. Jamie woke in the night when her legs twitched against his. "Do you want to know when?" he whispered in her hair. "Should it be while you're asleep?"

  "Oh, no," Maggie murmured, her lips against the pulse at the bottom of his throat. "I have to say goodbye."

  In the moments before, she had kissed him. She wove her fingers into his hair and pulled so hard it brought tears to his eyes. I would do it for you, Maggie said fiercely, and Jamie nodded. But he knew he never would have asked. He never would have been able to leave her.

  She lay on the pillow she'd slept on the night before. He placed the pillow he'd used over her face at 7:32 a.m. She put a hand on his wrist and lifted the corner of the cotton pillowcase from her mouth. "It smells like you," she said, and she smiled. It was over at 7:38 a.m.

  Jamie stopped speaking. The air in the courtroom seemed dry and stiff, and he was afraid to shift his position for fear the atmosphere would actually shatter. Graham had his hand on Jamie's arm. "You okay?" he whispered. Jamie nodded.

  "Did she try to fight you?" Graham asked. "Yes," Jamie said. "She tried once." "Why didn't you stop?"

  No matter what, she had said. "She told me not to," Jamie answered. "We had talked about it."

  "You say you killed her at about seven-thirty in the morning. Why didn't you go to the police until the early afternoon?"

  Jamie thought of Maggie, lying still on the bed, and the way he had pulled the covers to her chin. He remembered watching her from a chair across the room, bent over, his elbows on his knees, waiting. "She looked like she was sleeping." He raised his eyes to Graham. "I kept thinking that maybe, if I gave her a little more time, she might wake up."

  That night Allie dreamed of the day she'd lost her virginity. But because it was a dream, she let herself rewrite it, until her own history played the way she had wanted it to in the first place. In this recollection, Cam had realized before the fact, and left the decision up to her. It was almost as treasured a commodity--that rough rasp, Are you sure?--as the heat of his hands and the whisper of his mouth. With the power of one word, she had made time stop for both of them, something she had never been able to quite do again. Yes, she had said, when Cam touched her. She said it over and over. Yes.

  Allie woke up hugging her arms to herself and shivering. She did not want to be dreaming of Cam; she did not want to think about him at all. Although she had hoped it might have gone away by now, she could not forget the image of him in another woman's arms.

  She wondered if forgiving was any easier than forgetting.

  She sat up in bed, letting the covers fall away. Then she got up and went down the stairs.

  Cam, startled, felt her presence before he saw her standing in the dark; a few steps up from the bottom, her white nightgown gleaming with the moon.

  "You can come upstairs," she said. She began to walk back. "If you want," she added over her shoulder.

  She did not think she had ever heard anything quite as lovely as the groan of the mattress when Cam eased into his side of the bed. She sagged toward him a little, her arms still folded across her chest. They stared at the ceiling, as if they could see through it to the cold, constricting night.

  He could not read the signs. She had invited him back upstairs but he didn't know if he was supposed to touch her or to beg forgiveness or to simply accept this small concession and lie in the dark, the heat from her body snaking across the extra foot of space to warm his side.

  "Couldn't you sleep?" he asked.

  "No. Could you?"

  "I was asleep when you came downstairs." He heard Allie shift a little. "I didn't know. I wouldn't have gotten you up."

  Cam felt his erection tenting the material of his boxer shorts, a natural consequence of being this close and able to smell her skin and her shampoo, and he smiled at her choice of words. "It's okay," he said. "I'd rather be here."

  She rolled to her side. In the faint light, Cam could make out the tight lines of her mouth, the unsettled flicker of her eyes. "I have to know. Was she here? In this bed?"

  Cam thought of the weekend they had spent together when Allie was in Cummington. He had a flash of Mia, a towel wrapped around her wet hair, sitting on Allies side of the bed. And he realized that in this one instance honesty was not going to serve any purpose. "No," he lied.

  Allie flopped onto her back again. She crept to the edge of the bed, crowded out by Mia, who seemed to have taken up all the room between herself and Cam. He was thinking of her; she knew this as well as she knew her own name; and she had been stupid enough to plant the idea in his head. Mia's laugh, Mia's bright blue eyes, Mia's skilled and shaping hands. Allie clutched the mattress so that she would not fall off. She could not breathe for the lack of space.

  She thought of her buffalo cowboy. It was right there on the tip of her tongue. She would look at Cam and say, Guess what? 1 fucked someone else too. She would watch his features freeze in shock and she would say, How does that make you feel? . . . Oh, really? Now you know.

  He would not be able to tell what had happened, unless she let him know. And she realized she would not speak of it just to hurt Cam. This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone for more than a week. A security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always fe