Stealing Mercy (35 page)

Orson stared at her for a moment and then gave a brief nod. Was it a farewell? An agreement? Mercy couldn’t read his expression, but she didn’t care. When Orson put his hand on the doorknob and then disappeared into the smoke filled hall, Mercy jumped her chair to the window. She rocked back once, twice and then pushed off with the balls of her feet, rounding her back to protect her head.

The back of the chair bounced off the window with a smack. The impact jarred her but had little more than cracked the window.

Fortunately, she’d landed the chair back on its legs. She took a deep breath and the smoke filled her body. She’d die if she stayed and even though a tumble out of a window would hurt much more than an ineffectual bounce against a window, she had to try again.

Bracing her shoulders, she rolled onto her toes and jumped. Again, she punched the window with the back of the chair. She tumbled to the floor and landed on her side. The window shattered with a crack and glass showered over her. A warm breeze circulated the room, and although it still reeked of smoke, it felt like freedom. Mercy lay on the floor, stunned. The smoke wasn’t as thick on the floor and she took a deep breath. All around her she could hear the snap and crackle of the fire, but then she heard another sound.

Her name.

*****

Trent flung open the door and it stopped suddenly. It only took him seconds to understand why. The door knob had caught Orson in the groin.

“Whoof!” Orson’s knees buckled when Trent pressed into the hall. Trent jammed a fist into Orson’s belly and followed it with an uppercut to the jaw. When the big man fell, Trent stepped over him and hurried up the stairs. Mercy had to be in one of the rooms. He took the steps two, sometimes three, at a time. The smoke grew thicker as he climbed. At the top of the stairs he saw two doors. He went in the one where he heard a loud noise and found Mercy tied to a chair, lying on her side and trying to saw through the strips of linen binding her wrists with what appeared to be a piece of glass.

Trent let out a moan of sympathy and rushed to her side. Bending beside her he ripped at the linen strips tying her to the chair. When she was free, he gathered her into his arms and pressed her face into his shoulder.

Mercy blinked back tears. “We can’t stay here,” she told Trent in a raspy voice. The smoke had made her throat raw. Gently, he pushed her away from him so he could inspect her: the glass in her hair, the red chaffed skin where she’d been tied, the ridiculous Little Bo Peep corset and pantaloons.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked.

Mercy nodded. “Let’s go,” she urged, taking his hand.

*****

In the hall, Mercy could barely see for the smoke. Still stiff, she stumbled after Trent. She didn’t see what had caused Trent to reel back and knock her off her feet.

Mercy bounced down the steps on her bottom and landed on the ground with a thud. Orson and Trent circled each other, throwing fists pell-mell. The flesh connected with sickening thuds, splattering sweat and blood. Mercy, underfoot, happened to look down and notice a jagged bit of glass tucked in the folds of her pantaloons. She pulled it out and when Orson drew close, she managed to drive the glass into his cheek.

Orson howled in pain, crashed into the stairwell. Under his weight, the steps collapsed, and exposed fire burning in the cellar below. Orson fell into the flames with a curdling scream.

Transfixed and horrified, Mercy stared at the hole of fire until Trent pulled her out the door.

Hope had been burned out of the bucket brigade. The citizens that had fought with water and vigor now mostly watched as the flames devoured the remainder of the city. The dogs loping up the hill seemed to have a greater sense of purpose and destination than the crowd milling the streets, overwhelmed by the fire’s magnitude.

Trent led Mercy up the street and paused at the gates of Denny Hill Park. “I have to go and help,” he said, turning to her and rubbing his thumb across her cheek. “Can you get home?”

Mercy nodded. “I’ll go to Georgina’s and make sure the girls arrived safely.”

“Unlike you.”

Mercy shrugged. “Hopefully, they found the road back safer than mine.”

“I have something for you.” Trent reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black, velvet bag.

Mercy’s voice caught. “How?”

Trent poured the sapphires into the palm of his hand. They sparkled and winked in the sun and reminded her of the stories her mother had told of the battles that had been fought and the wars that had raged.
We each have our own story
, Mercy thought,
and this is mine. In time, it won’t be any less miraculous than any of the others.

“You were…amazing today,” Trent said, taking her hand and pressing the Bren jewels into it.

“So were you.” She smiled up at him and closed her fingers around the jewels.

Trent held her hand and folded his fingers together so that she held the jewels, and his hand engulfed hers. “Most women…most men, would have been-”

She didn’t get to hear the compliment. She didn’t get to hear what Trent said because suddenly all she could hear were her own screams, and the crack of gunfire.

Trent fell forward, crashing into her. She stumbled under his weight and sunk to the ground with Trent’s body cradled in her arms. His labored breath blew hot across her neck and his blood soaked the front of her corset. Settling down onto the dirt path, she rolled Trent so that his head nestled onto her lap. The dirt beneath her bare skin felt cold and gritty. She tried to inspect the bullet wound, but blood pumped beneath her shaking fingers and she could only see the charred and ragged edges of his shirt and the spreading blood. Trent’s ashen faced stared up at her, his eyes begging questions she didn’t know how to answer.

Dimly, as if playing on another stage in another universe, she was aware of running footsteps and cursing. Lector and Sherriff Calhoun appeared near the north gates, thundering after Steele and ordering him to stop.

Mercy stretched out her leg and pinched a strip of the Bo Peep pantaloons and tore. The pantaloons came apart in her hands and she took a wad of fabric and held it against the red pulsating wound with shaking hands.

Another gunshot, coming from another direction--Steele fell face forward onto the bricks. A pool of blood grew beneath his chest. Lector and Calhoun ran in circles around the park, rather like lost dogs in search of misplaced bones. They didn’t see the black cape disappearing behind the Huntington obelisk. Mercy watched as Lady Luck slipped through the gates of the park. Even though her face hid beneath the hood of the cloak, Mercy saw the grief in the set of her shoulders as she turned a corner and then disappeared into the fire fighting melee. Finally catching sight of the shooter, Lector and Calhoun bounded after Lady Luck.

“Mercy?” Trent’s voice sounded something between a croak and a rasp. His lips chapped and bloody. His face smeared with soot. Red streaks of blood crisscrossed his chest and arms, and the wound in his shoulder pumped with blood. Still, she had an irresistible urge to kiss him. Bending, she buried her face in his shoulder and ran her lips along his neck. His hair, coated in ash, looked gray and she had a sudden vision of him as old. She saw the man he’d be, if God would be so kind, in fifty years and she knew that she wanted to be there, beside him for all of those years. Home, it occurred to her, wasn’t a place, but people, and for her, one particular person. Mercy brushed the hair off Trent’s face and he shifted and attempted to sit up.

“Stay still,” Mercy whispered, running her fingers through his hair.

“Bossy,” Trent said, settling against her. “Will you always be so?”

“Forever,” Mercy promised.

Rose Arbor, Washington

As I’d hoped, the house was quiet and dark. Standing on the sidewalk, I watch the black windows for moving shadows. All looks still. Recently mulched flowerbeds, pruned rose bushes and tiny crocuses sending shoots up from the soil--someone, most likely a hired gardener was maintaining the landscaping. I was grateful, for Dot’s sake.

Why hadn’t she told me she and Odious hadn’t divorced? And why hadn’t they? Expense, maybe? If Odious could maintain a wife and mistress without either complaining, then I could see why he wouldn’t bother. But, what about the honey with the tiger striped hair--wouldn’t she want a commitment? And what about Dot--wouldn’t she like the freedom to move on?

Move on, a phrase only used by people who are so comfortably entrenched in their own lives that they don’t want to be made uncomfortable by someone else’s grief.

I shift the box from one hip to the next, trying to find a reasonable escape plan if needed. I didn’t want another run-in with Odious. Since he’s Dot’s executor I owe him a copy of the story. I just don’t know how to give it to him. I can’t just leave the box of letters and journals on the doorstep, although, they’d be somewhat protected from the weather beneath the porch. I consider the back door with a scowl, trapped by my lies.

I’d already denied any financial dealings with Dot, which was silly. Why had I done that? That’s the problem with lying, it almost always ends in humiliation. I remember when Dot had said she’d made the Key Lime pie that she brought to Margie’s bridal shower. After all the pie had been served there on the bottom of the tin, stamped in capital letters, was PAULINE’S PIES. Anyone else could have claimed to have reused the tin, but when Margie had asked for the recipe, Dot’s face had flamed red-- almost as if she had the capital letters LIAR stamped across her forehead.

The box grows heavy in my arms and I determine to take it to the back door. Dot had usually left the mudroom door unlocked, maybe Odious did the same. I pause at the garage, thinking. It’d be safe from the weather in there, but not necessarily safe from rodents. I could put in the Mercedes, but what if an alarm went off? Pushing open the picket gate, I make my way through Dot’s kitchen garden. The herbs and vegetables had been replanted, which surprises me. Someone must have taken the time with seeds or seedlings; most hired gardeners like to mow and go, not tend vegetables.

I climb the back step, my heart pounding. I decide to set it on the bench in the mud room where it’ll be safe. Odious will eventually find it and perhaps wonder, but he won’t have a reason to suspect me.

It hurts to leave Mercy. I’d grown close to her. She’d become my mentor, of sorts. I’d come to realize that although we were generations and millions of circumstances a part, we were similar in one important way. We were two women trying to rebuild a life when the one we’d always known was gone. Standing on the porch, I’m overwhelmed by the knowledge that Mercy had once stood on this very step. She and Trent had shared a marriage on this land. They had created a life together, but only after Mercy had been brave enough to forge a life of her own making.

And while it’s true that I don’t bake pies or make candy, my life can be just as sweet. I can be alone and not be lonely. I can leave Mercy here for her family to find.

The screen door screeches when I pull it open. It doesn’t matter, I reassure myself. I’m too far from any neighbors to hear and no one’s at home. I open the kitchen door with a click and came face to face with the stunning blond.

She’d been pulling on a pair of bright blue plastic clogs, but straightens when she sees me. Her mouth opnens in surprise.

Startled, I almost drop the box. “So sorry,” I gasp.

The girl blinks. “That’s okay. You’re a friend of my mom’s, right?”

“
Your mom?”

“
I recognize you from the funeral. And you played at the wake. Show tunes, which seemed inappropriate given the occasion, but so right for my mom.”

“
Your mom,” I repeat.

“
Yes. She was always so glam and Hollywood. I thought that you must have been a really good friend for you to know what she would have liked.”

“
Your mother?” The surprise is so large it’s rendered me stupid, incapable of stringing together complete sentences.

A flash of pain crosses the girl’s cheeks and she says in a small voice, “She’d never mentioned me.”

It isn’t a question, but I wish I could give an answer that wouldn’t hurt her. The girl squares her shoulders, as if bracing for an impact. “It’s okay. We hadn’t spoken in five years…” She looks up and I see her red eyes.

I swallow hard, trying to understand Dot. I can’t imagine having a daughter and not even speaking to her at the end. “Goodness. Five years, that was when your parents divorced.”

She blinks. “I’m afraid that was my fault, too.”

“
No,” I shake my head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that.” I think back to all of Dot’s slanted humor, her ribald comments about Odious and his female menagerie. She’d never even hinted at having a daughter.

She shrugs. “It’s true. She wouldn’t…she couldn’t… She said she’d never speak to me again if I kept Henry.”