Authors: Lauren Gilley
Mercy heeled the door shut behind them and shook the snow out of his hair. “It’s coming down harder out there.”
“I know,” Maggie said, frowning. “If it starts to stick, I want you two to stay the night.”
“I don’t think it’s going to snow us in,” Ava said, unbuttoning her coat.
“That’s irrelevant. I don’t want any of the three of you” – gesture to Ava’s slowly expanding stomach – “sliding on ice. We’ve got the extra beds, so there’s no reason not to.”
Ava sighed, but nodded.
Maggie took the cookie platter from Ava. “Come on, my new little chef, and you can help me.”
Booted footfalls announced Ghost’s entrance into the kitchen. Ava took one look at her father and had to bite down on her tongue to keep from laughing.
He always wore dark colors, all of his clothes road-beaten and well-worn. Not one of these Lean Dogs was one for fashion. But today, he’d outdone himself, no doubt in honor of his in-laws: an old Harley shirt with the sleeves torn out, his holiest, most threadbare jeans, his cut, a black bandana, and a massive leather bracelet on his left wrist. His boots looked like he’d beaten them against the driveway, even more scuffed and dusty than normal.
Mercy laughed. “There’s the son-in-law of every mother’s dreams.”
Looking proud of himself, Ghost said, “I aim to please.”
He stepped forward and he and Mercy traded hugs, something Ava was more than glad to see. The tension between them now was fraught with affection, and not the veiled menace of those first early weeks.
“Now I know,” Mercy said, “I’m the best son-in-law there ever was–”
“You are,” Maggie said from the stove.
“ – but don’t you make a picture, Poppy.”
Maggie turned, and Ava watched her mother’s face pale as she finally got a good look at Ghost. “Go change.” Her voice was flat, no-nonsense.
Ghost opened his mouth to protest. “I–”
“Change, Kenneth. If you want a seat at my table tonight, you’ll put on the blue shirt I ironed for you.”
“Your table?” he countered. “Who do you think paid for that table?”
The glare she gave him was stone-cold. Medusa-intense. Impossible to argue against.
“Fine.” He heaved a dramatic sigh. Grumbling, he left the room.
“Poppy?” Maggie asked when he was gone. “I like that.”
“When are they supposed to get here?”
“Three.”
“What time will they actually get here?”
“Two-forty-five. Bitch is early to everything.”
“Maybe she’ll be early to her own funeral,” Aidan suggested.
Ghost made a face. “Nah. Too much to hope for.”
“What I want to know,” Mercy said, “is who she hates the most.” He glanced down the length of the sofa, where they were all parked in front of the TV. Ghost was beside him, then Aidan, then Tango.
Carter sat on the floor, leaning back against the arm. Maggie had insisted he come. “Not as a prospect, but as family.” His old man wasn’t much of a dinner date, and Maggie had a soft spot for strays, as Mercy had learned long ago.
“I think it’s me,” Tango said in a cheerful voice. “I’m no relation.”
“Wrong.” Aidan made a buzzer sound in the back of his throat. “It’s me, because I’m no relation, but she has to pretend I am.”
“You’re both wrong,” Ghost said. “It’s me. I got her sixteen-year-old daughter pregnant. End of story.”
Grave nods all down the length of the sofa.
“Well thank God I didn’t do that,” Mercy said.
Ghost have him a narrow, sideways glance. “Yeah. Thank God.”
Outside, the snow fell in fat, wet flakes. It was building in the corners of the window frame, clinging to the bare branches, powdering the grass.
Maggie came to the doorway, wiping a bowl dry with a dish towel, face lined with uncharacteristic worry. The steam in the kitchen had glued thin curls of golden hair to her temples and the sides of her neck. The sleeves of her red sweater were loose where she’d pushed them up over and over.
“I’m starting to worry about Mom and Dad in this weather,” she said, voice pinched and hesitant. “Babe, do you think–”
“No,” Ghost said. “If they start to slide on ice, Denise can strap herself to the hood and breathe fire on the road as they drive.”
Mercy choked on a laugh and tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a coughing fit.
Aidan grinned, eyes crinkling into delighted slits.
Maggie’s lips pressed together, a pale hyphen in her pretty face. She turned without a word and went back to the kitchen.
“She knows they’ll show up,” Ghost said when she was gone. “God doesn’t like me enough to send them into a snow bank on Christmas. That’s just not gonna happen.”
From his spot on the floor, Carter said, “Can she really be that bad? I mean, there are people out there who actually want to kill you.”
Tango saved Ghost from answering. “Dude, you haven’t seen murderous till you’ve met a pissed off Southern mother.”
Ava came to the door, clearing her throat to get their attention. Mercy hadn’t been able to figure out, in the last few weeks, if she was self-conscious of the small roundness of her stomach, or if she was just cold all the time. Today, she was wearing an oversized navy turtleneck sweater, shapeless and masculine as it hung to mid-thigh. She’d opted for white skinny pants, instead of her usual jeans, and ballet flats – concessions to her non-biker family.
Unlike her mother, she didn’t look terrified. “Guys,” she said in a low voice, “she’s really freaking out.”
Aidan shrugged. “She gets like this every year.”
“Open up a bottle of wine,” Ghost suggested.
She sighed and nodded.
“But don’t you drink any of it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“She’s nervous, too,” Mercy said when she was gone. “But it’s coming out in an aggressive way.”
Ghost looked almost pleased. “She gets that from me.”
“To be honest, it’s cuter when you do it,” Mercy said, and couldn’t bite back the grin that bloomed in response to his president’s sharp look. “Ain’t it fun being related?”
“Shitloads,” Ghost deadpanned.
“Jesus,” Mercy said, leaning his head back against the sofa. “All you boys need to lighten up. I’m with QB” – he gestured to Carter and earned a nod in return – “how bad can this old bat be?”
The doorbell chimed.
Ghost shoved to his feet. “Guess you’re about to find out.”
Bell Bar was dead. A handful of loyal barflies – single older men with nothing waiting on them at home – were spending the afternoon on stools, staring at the TV and popping peanuts one after the next between slugs of Scotch. But the main floor was empty. The girls hadn’t bothered to take down most of the chairs at the low round dining tables. Valerie and Jess sat at a booth, playing Go Fish.
Holly was in Michael’s usual booth, rolling up silverware in napkins, one eye on the newscast up in the front corner TV, one eye on the snow flurries that were beginning to accumulate in a thin powder-sugar dusting on the sidewalk. Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas” softly over the sound system.
White Christmas
, she thought, adding the movie to her mental queue of films to see. She didn’t figure Michael had that one in his collection. Just the thought brought a smile to her lips, pattered like wings in her chest. Everything was different now. Maybe not forever, maybe for just a few days, but a few days was more than she’d ever hoped for. She wouldn’t think about the future tonight, only about the two of them, and this stolen time, this city lit up for the holiday, and the perfect snow falling against memory and reason, blanketing all that wasn’t sacred.
Dimly, she became aware of Val and Jess’s conversation, the fast vicious snatches of it that she could overhear.
“…don’t know why she wasn’t fired,” Jess was saying. “I mean, you get somebody murdered, you shouldn’t get to keep your job, you know?”
“Ugh, I know,” Val said. “And it’s like she doesn’t even feel bad about it. She’s a fucking robot.”
“And Carly…” A catch of real pain in Jess’s voice, as she remembered her friend. “I told Carly that she was weird, but she tried to be nice to her anyway. And look what happened!”
Holly closed her eyes as the breath left her lungs. Yes, look at what had happened. Look at what her family had done to an innocent woman, whose loved ones would not be celebrating tonight, still clenched tight by grief.
“Hey.”
She hadn’t seen Michael come in, hadn’t even felt the cold draft of air rushing through the door, but he now stood beside her, brows drawn, mouth a harsh line. The sight of him was as comforting as it was devastating.
I don’t deserve you
, she thought.
I don’t deserve for anyone to care, not after what I’ve caused
.
“You alright?” he asked, settling into the booth across from her. There was snow in his hair, fast melting, the white flecks becoming translucent. Flakes clung to his shoulders, collected in the leather seams of his cut.
She managed a thin smile. “I’m fine.”
He regarded her another second, not believing her, but finally glanced away, face harsh. “That goddamn store…the whole city of Knoxville was in there, buying cranberry sauce or whatever the fuck.”
Her smile twitch, touched with true warmth. “So it was bad, huh?”
“They were out of whole turkeys,” he grumbled. “I had to get a chicken instead.”
“That works great.”
He murmured an unhappy response.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked. “Or just grumpy?”
He gave her a long, flat stare. “What do you think?” And then, before she could answer, “When are they gonna let you leave tonight?”
“Soon, I’m thinking.” She glanced around his shoulder, toward the window. The street was alive with the swirl of snow. “Very soon.”
Ava’s first memory of her grandmother: warm yellow sweater, creamy rope of pearls, Denise’s hip against Ava’s small stomach as she was toted around the yard. Encompassing sweetness of perfume. The sun dancing in the pines, shivering shadows on the grass. Easter, and all its delicate pastels reflected in Denise’s garden, lying in the lee of the sprawling cream ranch house. Denise’s honey-colored hair, the same as Maggie’s, tickling Ava’s cheeks as their heads rested close together.
“Lily,” Ava said with a delighted laugh, pointing at the purple flowers on the tall stalks beside the garden bench.
“No, darling, those are irises,” Denise said, and her lips were wet with lipstick as she kissed Ava’s cheek.
It was a tender, loving memory, a place in time in which Ava had been so sure of her grandmother’s love of her. That had been before Ava understood the tension between the two generations of her family. Before she’d been told that her father was less than human. Before Denise saw the biker blood coming to the surface in Ava, and gave voice to her bitter disappointment.
Now, so many years after that foundation memory, Ava stood opposite her grandmother and laced her fingers through her husband’s, the dry cool skin of his palm a comfort against her own clammy hand.
Denise, a beauty queen who’d never lost her commitment, had always been slender, and had thinned further as she aged, her well-proportioned frame almost bony at this point. Today she wore a long-sleeved red dress, dark tights, dark pumps, her ever-present pearls. Her face was a window to Maggie’s future, a prediction of what she’d look like twenty-six years from now. She’d allowed her hair to gray naturally, and wore it in a sophisticated bob. She was the picture of modern Southern elegance.
And her hazel eyes were trained on Ava’s hand, where it clutched at Mercy’s.
“Grammie,” Ava said with a deep breath, “you remember Mercy. You met him a long time ago.”
Denise swallowed, the movement of her throat making the pearls around her neck leap. She already knew, and she already hated it. “I can’t possibly keep up with all the
Dogs
in your life, Ava.”
“You remember him,” Ava pressed. Quietly: “I know you do. And Grammie, I need you to not freak out when I tell you this.”
Denise’s frown cut sharp lines at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t bother telling me. I can see your ring, for heaven’s sakes.” She gestured toward Ava’s left hand, where it hung at her side. “Good Lord, Ava, did you have to do exactly what your mother did? Is it some sort of sick game to the two of you? Seeing who can marry the absolute worst excuse for a husband.”
Mercy gathered a breath to say something and Ava squeezed his hand hard.
No
.