by Tate, Kristy
*****
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.”
“Henry?” The little blond boy.
“My son. I was only seventeen, you see. Unmarried.”
“Dot had a grandson?” I put out a hand to steady myself and my box slips. I can’t imagine having a beautiful little boy in my life and not wanting to know him. To hold him, to read him stories, take him to the park, the zoo, and to share with him and introduce him to the amazing world God had created. How could Dot have turned her back on her daughter and her grandson?
The girl laughs and it sounds harsh. “I sometimes wondered what bothered Mom more, my lack of judgment, or the fact she was old enough to be a grandmother.”
She stands and catches the box as it slips from my arms. “What’s this?”
“It’s the journals and letters of your great, great grandmother, Mercy Faye.” I stammer, realizing that family had been important enough to Dot for her to want to have a personal history of her grandmother, but not important to enough to forgive her daughter. Pride, I realize, remembering Odious’ evaluation.
“I’m a genealogist,” I say, liking the word and warming to its definition. “Dot hired me to write your ancestors’ story.” I hold up the leather bound book and enjoy a swell of satisfaction.
“Oh, well, then you’ll need to speak to my dad. He’s taking care of my mom’s finances.” She takes the book and thumbs through it, stopping at the photographs.
“Oh, I don’t want to be paid.”
She looks pained. “Are you sure? This must have taken a great deal of time.” Taking the box from my arms, she says, “I insist you speak with my dad.” She disappears into the house, clearly expecting me to follow.
“I can’t stay,” I say and back out the door. I stop in the kitchen garden, my foot smashing a tiny basil plant. The crushed leaves emit a potent odor reminding me of Mercy asking Trent to kiss her. Until now, I’d hated that part of the story. At that point I’d considered Mercy silly and I’d put down the journal for a number of days. She hadn’t been in love with Trent, she just needed to hide her face. Surely there’d been easier, simpler ways to do so, less messy, less complicated and emotionally impactful. But then, she hadn’t expected to be emotionally impacted by a kiss.
The screen door squeaks back open. “My dad really wants to see you.”
I open my mouth to make an excuse.
“He pretty much begged--” She pauses and then hurriedly adds, “He’d come down here himself, but he broke his leg yesterday.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“He was rescuing Henry’s kite from a tree. I’m afraid he’s lying on the couch, restless and cranky. You’d be doing us both a huge favor.”
I sniff and slowly walk back up the path, realizing that I have the history clasped to my chest. Blinking, I wonder. I’d thought I’d given it to the girl.
She holds the door open and I slipped inside. She leads the way to the front room where Errol’s propped up on a heap of pillows on the sofa. He smiles when he sees me. “I knew you were hiding something!”
I hold up my hand. “Mr. Michaels-”
“Mrs. Michaels--” My name sounds wrong and intimate coming from him.
“Would you like to hear a story?” Sitting down in a wing back chair, I pull the glasses from my pocket. Babette, who’d been dozing at the foot of the sofa, comes to lay on my feet like a furry foot warmer. I decide to read until the end.
New York City’s night noises seeped through the wall chinks and window: the jingle of horse harnesses, the stomping of hooves, the mournful howl of a dog, but one noise, a noise that didn't belong, jarred Mercy awake.
Epilogue
December 1889
My darling Eloise,
You cannot imagine our relief and delight to receive your letter. Felicitations to you and Donovan! We can’t wait to see you and hear of your adventures. While it’s true that Miles continues to huff -
“I know I said I wouldn’t bother you again, but what do you think?” Chloe held up two swatches of satin, one yellow, one peach.
Mercy poised the quill above her letter, tipped her head, smiled and said, “You’ll be beautiful in either. Did you ask Miles?”
“He said neither,” Chloe frowned at the fabric. “His exact words were nothing at all.”
Mercy laughed. “That would make for a memorable ceremony.”
“And it’d be undoubtedly chilly.”
“And yet steamy.”
Chloe sighed, turned on her heel and left the library, still contemplating the fabric swatches. Mercy tucked her feet under her skirts and nestled against the cushions of the bay window seat. From here she could watch the snow settle over the distant mountains. The fat flakes lazily fell as if confident in their ability to slowly but surely blanket the valley floor. In the pasture the horses stood nuzzling each other; their breath rose in warm puffs of fog. In the far distance she could see the top of the roof of what would soon be her new home. Sometimes she closed her eyes and imagined that she could hear Trent and the rhythm of his hammer.
In the summer they’d been married beneath the gnarled old apple tree that would eventually sit outside their sitting room window. Someday, she would watch her children playing in the tree, swinging in the branches. She placed her hand on her belly and felt the tiny life moving. Picking up her pen, she continued her letter.
I do so hope you’ll be here in when the baby arrives in the spring. You know how lovely the ranch is when the trees are in blossom and all the flowers in bloom.
“Mercy?” Trent stood in the doorway. “I have something for you, darling.”
She unfolded herself from the cushions. “What is it?”
“Come and see.”
A smile played around his lips. In the kitchen, Hester scolded the cook. Chloe fretted over her trousse
au in the room above them. It was the middle of the day. Christmas, the proper day for gift giving, was only a few days away. Suspicion tinged her voice. “What do you have?”
Trent took her hand and pulled her close. “Mistletoe,” he said, just before he made proper use of it.
*****
About the author:
Kristy Tate lives in Southern Orange County, California with her family. She studied English Literature at Brigham Young University and at BYU's International Center in London. Stealing Mercy is her first published novel. For more information and updates on Kristy's next novel, follow her blog at:
http://www.kristystories.blogspot.com
