Mercy

  "Mo cbridhe," Jamie murmured, his eyes wide and dry. He stood suddenly, woodenly, and grabbed for Allie's arm. "Please," he begged, "get me out of here."

  With a quick glance at Cam, Allie started to walk Jamie from the open grave. Father Gillivray recited the prayers quickly, and with Jamie already gone, everyone began to disperse. The cemetery workers began to shovel earth back over the casket, making a neat rounded hump in the spot where there had been a gaping hole.

  Cam watched it all with his hands in his pockets, figuring that this could be his penance for missing the church service. He'd make sure everything was finished all right. He watched the two men prop their shovels against a nearby oak and wipe the sweat from the backs of their necks. Then he turned around to see Mia standing behind him.

  He stared at her as if he were not going to be allowed to look at her again. He waited, his fists clenched, until the broad black hat tilted enough so that he could see her eyes. When she looked up, his stomach dived in a roller-coaster drop, as it hadn't since he was in high school.

  It was totally inappropriate to feel this way, here and now, but Cam could sense the heat of his body rising in fits and starts. Ah, he thought, as he remembered again to breathe, she's lit from the inside.

  Mia did not say a word, but stepped up to the grave and lifted one of her floral arrangements. Carefully unwrapping the wire around the single red rose, she pulled its stem from the Oasis that anchored the flowers and handed it to Cam.

  He twirled it between his fingers and brushed it against the side of his hand. Allie didn't like roses much--called them plebeian--but he'd always found them pretty. He liked their texture, smooth and downy as a woman's skin.

  With great care he pulled the green stem base from the rose so that a flutter of petals settled into the palm of his hand. He lifted these to the wind and let them swirl and dance in the air, coming to rest on the packed dirt.

  "What does it mean?" Mia asked.

  "What does what mean?" Cam said, startled, a million possible answers rushing through his mind. "Those words. Mo chridhe."

  Cam shook his head, pretending he didn't know. But in Wheelock, everyone knew a little bit of Scottish Gaelic, especially the endearments a mother or lover might use. He walked Mia back to the center of town in silence, his mind branded by the image of

  Jamie MacDonald on his knees in front of the grave, as if he were praying; Jamie MacDonald leaning toward the body of his wife and whispering, My heart.

  He had managed to crawl to a ditch when the English cannons stopped firing, and now he was facedown in a puddle, using all his strength to roll onto his back so that he would be able to breathe. Not easy, with both his kneecaps broken and his eyes running red with blood that streamed from a gash at his scalp.

  He was still holding his sword, though. He grimaced, thinking that at least he wouldn't be forsworn. He'd given his word to fight the English until he could not stand, and that was completely beyond his power right now.

  Cameron prayed for a quick and timely death.

  He had wished for his own death only once before, on the day he'd acquired his illustrious reputation. He'd been fighting beside his father, and the left arm that had surprised so many right-handed Highland enemies had also been the reason his father had been wounded: when Cameron had raised his left arm to strike, a gap had been created where there was usually a shield.

  His father had been run through the gut, and had asked Cameron for his help. There had been no question that his father was going to die, but he was too weak to take his own life quickly. And so Cameron had loaded the ball into his father's pistol; had held it to his temple while his father pulled the trigger.

  He had not killed his own father, but that was only a technicality.

  On the day that his father died, he had run back to fight the Campbells clothed only in his long white shirt and the impenetrable weave of his fury. He'd wanted to die, right there next to his father. He had not wanted to be the one who would have to go home and break the news to his mother and his brother and sisters. He did not want to be the laird of Carrymuir.

  He was only sixteen, and he killed forty Campbells himself that afternoon. He did not even receive a flesh wound.

  He'd carried his father's body home in his arms.

  The bards that went from castle to castle began to weave tales about the magic of Cameron MacDonald's left arm. When the storytellers came to Carrymuir, Cameron would leave the room. No matter how many Campbells or English soldiers he killed, it could not bring his father back. He kept trying and trying, but not even this day, this slaughter at Culloden, could do it.

  Cameron glanced up to see hooves circling toward him at an astounding speed, and he closed his eyes, praying and preparing himself, hoping he'd be knocked unconscious first.

  A man rolled from the horse not three feet away from him, and the horse magically stopped dead in its tracks. Cam turned and found himself staring at the dusty red coat of another English soldier, holding a gun.

  He smiled. "Go ahead, mo charaid," he said, throwing his arms wide. "Put me out of my misery."

  The soldier's eyes widened. He looked at the pistol and then down at his own midriff, which was saturated with blood. "I hope you linger for days," the Englishman said flatly, and he pulled the trigger on himself.

  It was several seconds before Cameron's ears cleared from the blast at such close range. He could reach the pistol, and he could also reach the reins of the soldier's horse, which stood patiently, stomping at the muddy ground from time to time.

  Cameron looked from one to the other, and then back again. He closed his eyes, and he saw his father's face, and he started to cry.

  Who would have known that given the choice, he would not take the easiest path after all?

  Angus woke up to the fading hoofbeats, his heart pounding, his head spinning. He ran his hands lightly over his limbs, checking his knees, which were spiny and knobbed with arthritis but otherwise hale. With a muffled swear at the soaked, sweaty condition of his bedsheets, he pulled himself from the bed and set off down the hall to the linen closet.

  He heard the sounds through Jamie's closed door, and his first thought was that Cameron MacDonald had galloped straight from his own mind into Jamie's, but then he shook his head at the impossibility. Ghosts, real ones, didn't behave such as that. No doubt the laddie was remembering the funeral earlier today, or even having a visit from Maggie. Angus laughed at this; they'd have to have breakfast sometime, the four of them--Angus and Jamie and the two ghosts that frequented the house.

  Gathering clean sheets into his arms, Angus tiptoed down the hall toward Jamie's door. He pushed it open gently, swearing as it creaked on its hinges. Jamie lay on top of the sheets, his hands fisted, his body twisting from side to side.

  For a moment Angus stood in the doorway. Then Jamie let out a little cry, the kind that sounds like a whimper to someone awake, but, in one's dreams, is a scream.

  The linens hit the floor with a soft sigh as Angus crossed the room and crawled into the bed with Jamie. He wrapped his arms tight around the boy and tried to keep him from tossing and shaking any more. Jamie was not seeing his Maggie, that much was clear. More likely he was seeing himself.

  And no sooner had Angus let this thought enter his mind than Jamie buried his face in Angus's neck, clinging to his uncle as if his life depended on it, and gave himself up to his grief.

  Allie had read somewhere that husbands and wives spend less than four waking hours together, and this statistic terrified her, since with Cam's crazy scheduling, she sometimes went a whole day without talking to him. She had read another statistic that said women use twice as many words in the course of a day as men do, and she wondered if this was because women were garrulous by nature, or because it took twice as long to make men understand what was being said.

  She didn't remember how, but both of these surveys tied in, somehow, to divorce.

  She considered it her personal duty to keep herself activel
y engaged with Cam whenever he was around. Their relationship was far too important to fall by the wayside over something as mundane as language.

  Allie climbed into bed and turned toward Cam, who promptly reached to his nightstand to shut off the light. She sighed and flopped onto her back, crossing her arms over her belly. "You're mad at me."

  "Don't put words into my mouth," Cam said. But he hadn't spoken to her since she'd casually mentioned over dinner that she'd be going to Cummington the next week to assist Graham MacPhee in Jamie's defense. "Then how come you aren't talking to me?"

  "I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you right now." He sighed and glanced at Allie. "You going to shut off your light?" "You don't want me to help Jamie." "You're a big girl, Allie. That's up to you."

  Allie furrowed her brow and reached for the light switch. "But you'll be on the stand for the prosecution. And I'll be with the defense."

  "I'm a witness," Cam said. "Not the DA. I don't really care one way or the other."

  She stared up at the ceiling, where the moonlight had gathered in faint white kaleidoscope patterns. "He's a very nice man," she murmured.

  "Like I said, I'm not the DA. He's the one who wants to hear that." He fumbled over the heaps of the quilt and tartan to find Allies hand, which he raised and kissed on the knuckles. "Good night," he said, glancing at the digital clock beside Allie's head.

  "I'll be gone for at least three days," Allie announced. "Maybe four."

  Cam nodded and mumbled sleepily, "Have a good time."

  "Don't you want to tell me you're going to miss me?"

  "I'll miss you." He rolled to his side, taking most of Allies covers with him.

  For a few moments, Allie watched the patterns on the ceiling shift and congeal into the shapes of a whale, a llama, an angel. Then she reached over the nightstand and flicked on the light again. "We can't go to sleep."

  Cam flopped onto his back, shielding his eyes with his hand. "You can't," he corrected.

  Allie bit her bottom lip. "Do you now that husbands and wives spend less than four waking hours together?"

  "Couldn't this be one of the other twenty?"

  "No," Allie said. She chewed on her thumbnail. "I think we should talk more. We've hardly spoken at all this week, between Jamie and Mia and God knows what else."

  Resigned, Cam sat up and propped the pillows behind his back. "And what," he said, "do you want to talk about?"

  "Things," Allie hedged. When she'd pictured them having a lively conversation, she hadn't gotten to the specifics.

  "I'm not going to list my arrests for you," Cam said.

  Allie hesitated. "We could talk about what you're going to say at the preliminary hearing."

  "No," Cam said, "we can't."

  They sat beside each other until Cam leaned over to kiss her shoulder. "I like not talking to you. I like knowing that I don't have to talk."

  Allie was silent. "What did we used to talk about?" she said finally, more to herself than to Cam.

  She already knew the answer: Five years ago, they had not known each other. Then, they had discussed the future, the names of their unborn children, the design of the grand mansion they would build on prime Wheelock acreage. Now, they could say entire sentences over breakfast with a simple connection of their eyes. Now, they knew each other's surprises.

  She and Cam had always been different, and Allie had clung tenaciously to the idea that opposites would attract. She had told herself that two like jigsaw pieces, after all, would not fit.

  They had started dating in the coldest days of January, and after several brandy-laced dinners at her apartment, Cam had invited her out for a walk one Sunday. It had been below zero, and he'd bundled her up in his own jacket and snow pants and gaiters and had taken her through the woods at the base of the Wheelock Pass. She remembered staring at the thick of the forest and thinking she was walking right into the heart of winter on its wafer-thin crust. She had listened to Cam speak of the Chimborazo foothills, the Costa de la Luz, the city of Belfast, watching his breath fog in little circles over the words as he spoke.

  "Wouldn't you like to travel?" he had asked, and she had simply shaken her head. She told Cam that the very thought terrified her and brought back a recurring nightmare she had had as a child. She was in a strange city made of stone, and everyone around her spoke in odd clicks and whirs she could not understand. She kept thinking if she listened more closely or held her back a little straighter, it would all fall into place, but instead she only felt more isolated and she always woke up not comprehending what she had done wrong.

  "That's the point," Cam told her. "You aren't doing anything wrong. You're doing something different."

  "All the same," Allie said, "I like to know what's coming next."

  At the end of the day he had kissed her goodbye, looking at her intently and saying that traveling was all very well and good as long as you knew there was a place or a person you could call home.

  "Do you think we're opposites?" Allie said now, her own voice sounding loud and dramatic in the quiet of the night. "Do you?"

  She turned to Cam and found his eyes closed, lashes feathering his cheek. She rested her head against his chest and put her arms around him, breathing in his scent and his silence, taking--as always--his lead.

  Cam sat on the stool at the local coffee shop and broke apart his muffin. He poked at the crumbs with his finger, not really wanting blueberry but accepting it in lieu of the alternative, a doughnut, which he would not let his officers eat on duty simply because it made them a likely butt of community jokes.

  "You want something else?" Jenny was a third cousin, one of the waitresses in the shop.

  "I'm all set," he said, letting her scurry to one of the four booths lined against the wall. He glanced up at the clock, which hung beside a stuffed boar's head, and settled back. He had ten more minutes before his shift began.

  Allie was going to be leaving the day after tomorrow, and it felt strange. He'd been apart from her before during their marriage, but not because she had instigated the separation. There had been training in New Braintree for him, and the time he had gone to the hospital for knee surgery. But Allie was the homebody. Allie held down the fort.

  She'd already given him a list of food he'd have to buy when grocery shopping and tasks she normally did. Was it really possible that in five years he had not learned how to work the dishwasher?

  He wondered what the hell Jamie MacDonald had said that had made her willingly agree to leave Wheelock.

  He stared down at his list, and thought of the one Allie had been writing for Mia before he left the house this morning. Twice as long. He'd almost volunteered to deliver it to the shop, when he realized that of course Allie would be going there herself.

  A jingle of year-round sleigh bells heralded the opening of the door of the coffee shop. As if Cam had summoned her with his thoughts, Mia walked up to the counter.

  "Hi," he said.

  She froze at the sound of his voice, and then turned to face him, smiling shyly. "Hi."

  He gestured at the neighboring stool and she climbed onto it, accepting the cup of coffee Jenny placed in front of her. She took a long sip, closing her eyes, and then looked down at the square of paper in Cam's hands. "So we're both going to be orphaned," she said.

  Cam waved the paper in front of her. "I've got less to do than you do."

  "Then I'll have to give you some of my chores. You want to buy the fertilizer, or call the customers with back payments?"

  "Oh," Cam said, laughing. "Back payments. I'm much better at threats."

  She laughed with him, and he let his own voice drop out solely so he could hear the silver of her own. He stared at her, knowing he should not be doing this, especially in the coffee shop, the nesting bed of community gossip, and also knowing he could not help himself.

  He wanted to touch her hair. God, he wanted to touch it. She tore her glance away to look at her wristwatch. "I've got to go."

  Cam jum
ped off the stool. "Me too." He hesitated, unsure of how to best phrase what he wanted to say. "If you need anything over the next couple of days," he began, but then stopped, watching Mia empty her thin purse of two dollars to leave on the counter. "Mia," he said, as she turned to the door, "you left a hundred-percent tip."

  She shrugged. "I know. I always feel bad when I only get coffee. I used to be a waitress."

  "Where?"

  Mia stared at him for a long moment and then walked out the door. He followed her, falling into step on the street. "Italy, 1986," she said finally. "A cafe near the Rialto Bridge. It was called La Mano del Diavolo. The Devil's Hand."

  Cam's feet stopped moving. Mia kept walking, but he could not go forward. He had stood on the bridge in Venice and had seen the little cafe in the distance. He remembered the striped purple umbrellas and the wrought-iron chairs and marble parfait tables.

  But he hadn't stopped. He had been on his way out of Italy, en route to visit Angus, in Scotland. He looked at Mia, who had turned around, imagining her as she had been almost ten years earlier, her falling hair a river of curls, her black serving apron wrapped around her willowy form, her voice asking, Cosa desidera? He pictured her glancing left and right to see if anyone was looking, and then sitting on the terra-cotta wall to slip her shoes off, one at a time, then massaging her feet.

  He thought now that not stopping at The Devil's Hand was the biggest mistake of his life.

  "If I didn't know better," Cam murmured, "I would think you've been following me." He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "I was there."

  Mia crossed her arms over her chest. "You were where?"

  "Venice, in 1986. On the Rial to. I saw your cafe."

  Mia felt a trickle of sweat run between her shoulder blades. "Prove it," she said.

  She had not liked being a waitress; it was one of the jobs she'd had on her self-supported Grand Tour, where she worked for a few weeks or a month in a country she chose to explore. Still, The Devil's Hand had not been as bad as some: the midnight-shift truck dispatcher in Sydney, the bathroom attendant at Schonbrunn Palace--these were the difficult jobs. She could remember watching the cafe patrons, trying to determine who would give her the biggest tip. Would it be the old man with long white hair like Benjamin Franklin? The lovers who had shaved matching hearts into their scalps? The Pakistani with a shifting blue jewel in his turban? She could remember the tiny gold circles of lire, spread across the mauve tablecloths and rococo menus like a connect-the-dots puzzle. She'd pick them up and stuff them into her apron pocket, letting them sing all day with her movements.