Mercy (43 page)

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 s tanding 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, hold ing 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 abou t. And she supposed she'd imagined it--didn't everyone who was married con sider the worst that could happen? She read Glamour and Cosmo; she knew th e stories. The magazines advocated strong, ballsy women, but Allie believe d that when push came to shove, if her husband was cheating on her, she wo uld 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 g iven 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 f lushed them, one by one.

She still wasn't crying.

She wasn't thinking, What did I do to deserve this? She was wondering inst ead, 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 i t became a small, hot knot of pain as hard as unmined coal, and lodged just as soundly.

A

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

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He'd stepped barefoot into the melting snow and had walked through Darby M

ac'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 sno w. 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 wa s 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 th e 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 littl e house. In the dogcatcher's mesh cage were two mutts and a purebred spanie l. They jumped and yipped at him as he drew close. They pushed their hot, w et muzzles into the shell of his hand.

Without thinking twice, Jamie unlatched the cage. He watched the dogs take o ff 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 collectio n of dusty law books. The spine of one had carved a thick line down his ch eek, 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 o ut the metallic taste in his mouth. No one who could see him this morning-shoeless, disheveled, sallow--would recognize him tomorrow at the defense t able.

A woman was walking in front of his dry-erase board. "Hey," he said, wonde ring how the hell she'd gotten in when he hadn't yet unlocked his office d oor. "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 th is time, she reached a fingertip to one of

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the empty white squares that marked the night Jamie and his wife had last be en alone together.

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

He had seen the Polaroids taken by the medical examiner. He had seen pic tures Allie had stolen from Jamie's house in Cumming-ton. He was staring at Maggie MacDonald.

When Graham tried to speak, nothing came out of his throat. He rubbed his e yes, but she didn't disappear. He thought of Dr. Harrison Harding, and wond ered 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.

Graham stepped up to the board. He stretched a hand out to touch the place Maggie had touched. Instead of a bare white box there was a spot, a fingerp rint. It was an unmistakable mark pressed in dark red ink, or maybe blood. T7Hen MacDonald was out for her daily constitutional at 8:35, I ?> Monday m orning. If she took off south from her house and looped around the park and the library, past the Wheelock Inn, she could get a good two-mile track. I f she was feeling particularly lively, she could make it briskly in a half hour.

She had on her Walkman, playing an Enya tape. Her jogging suit was made of natural fibers. Her sneakers allowed her feet to breathe. One of her shoelaces became untied at the Wheelock Inn. She crouched down t o fix it, unintentionally hiding herself behind a melting drift of snow. It was from this vantage point that she saw the unmarked cruiser Cam usually drove pull into the Inn's parking lot.

Ellen turned around and headed home before she could bear witness to anyth ing else.

At 8:45, Cam was informed that Mia Townsend was no longer a guest at the Wheelock Inn. Stifling an urge to grab the manager by the throat and shak e an explanation out of him, he calmly

asked the man to check his records a second time. "You must be mistaken," he said. "She must have said something else."

When Cam entered the lobby, the manager--who'd been bribed weeks ago to en sure discretion--had called out to him. Ms. Townsend had settled her bill and left early this morning, the manager said, pulling her checkout slip f rom a small pile. Cam recognized Mia's signature, the same spiky hand that days ago had registered them as husband and wife at a secluded bed-and-br eakfast.

As Cam jogged up the stairs, he told himself he didn't have time for this cr ap today. He was going to a legitimate seminar, this one on breaking and ent ering, so he had to be in Pittsfield by ten o'clock. He had come to tell Mia that he hadn't told Allie anything because it had been too late. That he wa s going to see a lawyer when the seminar was over, and speak to Allie tonigh t. He had come to see her smile at him and to hold her close, so the attract ion could come like a shock between them and he could carry the aftereffects with him all day.

He opened the door to the tiny room beside the closet with the key Mia had given him. The space was neat and markedly empty of personal effects. Excep t for the mussed bed, which still smelled of sex, and the bonsai tree in th e middle of it.

It was propped between two pillows so that the soil would not spill out. Th e image hit him more strongly than any note could have, which must have bee n why she left it.

Left it.

As he watched, the tree began to twist. It was no longer wrapped in copper wire, but gnarled through time into its unnatural shape. Cam's mouth droppe d open as the trunk split and expanded. The branch that dipped horizontally and then toward the ground flexed like a bicep and redirected itself towar d the sun. The exposed roots burrowed deep into the soil and the snipped, p inched buds began to flower with waxy green leaves.

No longer a bonsai, the tree began to grow the way nature had intended. Cam leaned against the wall of the room where he had fallen in love, and rea lized that this time, there would be no visit to Bally Beene, no tracking Mi a across the country.

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The tree festooned in a burst of pink blossoms. This time, there was no goin g back.

At 9:05, at Glory in the Flower, Allie stood in front of the parson's bench that held the bonsai trees and watched, transfixed, as they burst free of th eir copper wire. As if they were hatching, their branches tussled and stretc hed, breaking the coils that bound them, until they looked like they had mon ths before when Mia and Allie brought them home from the nursery. Allie had come to make sure that her assistant was not around; would never come around again. She had played the scenarios out in her mind driving to the center of town. She would storm in and scream at Mia and tell her to ge t the hell out of her life. She would be extra sweet and go about business as usual and then, when Mia least expected it, drop the bomb that she knew. She would offer her a week's extra salary and simply dismiss her. Her rage had not lessened. In fact, Allie felt more in control of herself than she had in a long, long while.

But the bonsais beneath the window had distracted her. They had claimed her attention so completely that she'd missed seeing the geraniums which Mia h ad toppled from their pots to carpet the floor, the worktable, the counter. The petals were blue and mauve and purple, pink and red and white. They cau ght on the bottom of Allies shoes and stuck to the ankles of her slacks. Ge raniums meant: / shall never see him.

By the time she had hung the Closed sign on the door and visited the liquor store for spare boxes, the snow had nearly melted. The lawn was virtually clear; there were only a few white spots left to remind Allie it was winter

. With great deliberation she spent the morning sifting through her husband

's belongings, removing every trace of him from the house. She set his shoe s and his books and his fishing poles and power tools out on overturned car tons that lined her driveway; she sat with a strongbox beneath a makeshift clothesline hung with his uniforms and casual wear and his one sports jacket. Good weather drew people to garage sales.

Allie bartered and bargained, her objective to clear the tables rather than to make any given amount of money. She told shoppers

Jodi Picoult

to send their friends along. She made deals: two-for-one on sports equipmen t. Buy a uniform, get a pair of shoes for free. She watched the evidence th at her husband existed disappear in the arms of neighbors who had simply be en passing by. She felt the winter sun, just as unexpected and hot as her a nger.

And she waited for Cam to come home.

If you forgive people enough, you belong

to them, and they to you, whether either person

likes it or not--squatter's rights of the heart.

--James Hilton, Time and Time Again

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A Hie remembered once hearing a song that said the first person you fell in love with stole your heart. The first person you made love with stole your soul. And if these were one and the same, you were damned. She was huddled over her stool at the country-western bar in Shelburne Falls

, watching people whose lives had not hit rock bottom line dancing to the li vely strains of a fiddle. She had left Cam standing in front of the cartons from which she had sold his possessions, left him standing right in front of the house, and had walked into the center of town. From there, she'd hitche d rides until she was far enough away from Wheelock to breathe again. The on ly reason she'd come to Rodeo Joe's was because it was the first place she'd found in Shelburne Falls with a liquor license, and she planned to get riproaring drunk. She fingered the napkin beneath her glass--a straight shot of tequila, her s ixth. Rodeo Joe's motto promised her, personally, a shit-kickin' good time. Allie wondered if she could get her money back. After all, you never could g et drunk when you most needed to.

A man in a red western shirt hooked a leg over the stool beside hers like it was a horse. He nodded a greeting, then gestured to the bartender. "Rexie, th e lady's next one's on me."

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She stared at him. How long had it been since someone had bought her a dri nk? "That's very nice, but I'm not going to be good company."

"Draw a bad one today?" he asked. His voice had that wide western sound, a nd he was talking with rodeo lingo, as if he ranched in the middle of Mass achusetts. Allie bent down over her drink, trying not to smile. Country-we stern did that to people--made them wear big hats and say things they woul dn't otherwise be caught dead saying. The man beside her was probably a ta x accountant on State Street in Boston.

"Cowboy," she said, "I should never have climbed into the chute." He was not as tall as Cam, and his body was not as muscular, but he was in good physical shape. Rangy--like he played racquet-ball instead of working out at Gold's. The features of his face were sharp, almost to the point of discord, but came together in a way that made him look honest and rough. Hi s hair was darker than Cam's. And he didn't have a dimple in his chin. Allie pushed her drink away, disgusted. When would she stop measuring ev erything by that benchmark?