Half My Blood

by Lauren Gilley

  Ava slid down so she lay beside him. “Then you don’t have to.”

  When the phone rang a third time, she ignored it, burrowing through the sheets so she could lay against his side. But inwardly, she worried. If the old ghosts of New Orleans were stirring, it was Mercy who stood to be hurt the most by them.

  Holly couldn’t sleep. She should have been able to: she was exhausted, and it was late, and dark, and the ceiling fan above them whirled lazily, the breeze cool across her skin. She lay on her side, one arm curled protectively around the slight roundness of her belly. Michael was behind her; he’d tucked her in close, so they fit like spoons, and his arm was heavy and lifeless across her waist, his breath even against the back of her head.

  He wasn’t asleep either, though. She could tell.

  “Uncle Wynn was asking about names today,” she said quietly, afraid to shatter the dark.

  His hand shifted, settled over her belly, showing he knew what she was talking about. “I already told you I don’t care,” he said, not unkindly. “Pick out something you like.”

  Holly twitched a small smile. She knew he didn’t care, because she knew that, for him, it was all about the baby, and the name was just a word he’d come to find meaningful, once there was a face to put to it.

  She swallowed the nervous lump in her throat and said, “I thought, at first, maybe, about naming her after your mom. Mine too. Both of them. Camilla Lila.”

  “That’s awful,” Michael said, and she laughed.

  “Yeah, kinda. But she could have a cute nickname. No one uses middle names unless they’re scolding, anyway.”

  He was silent a moment behind her, then said, “Just name her after your mother if you want. Camilla never brought any luck to Mama.”

  She loved the way he said Mama, the rough deep edge to his voice; the wound was still raw, all these years later. And he was a secure enough man to remember her as Mama, and not “my mother.”

  Holly covered his hand with hers, fingers sliding into the grooves between his knuckles. “Lila isn’t exactly a lucky charm, either.”

  Two dead mothers, killed at the hands of their husbands. What if their names proved curses, instead of legacies?

  Michael’s breath stirred her hair. “Give her her own name, then. Fresh start. No bad memories.”

  She nodded, and squeezed his hand.

  That’s what the baby would be – a fresh start. A perfect, unblemished life escaped out from under the pall of death that had brought her parents together. A chance for them to shift the cosmic balance, steal a little bit of grace from the tattered remnants of their own hearts.

  Three

  Louis Lécuyer’s Nose

  Remy was, according to the older, kid-experienced old ladies, a calm baby. He smiled a lot, and slept well. He ate like a champ. But when he cried, he could wake the dead. Why Ava had expected anything less from Mercy’s offspring, she didn’t know. Loud, boisterous men, she’d learned, sired children with healthy lungs who knew how to use them.

  The baby monitor was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, but it wasn’t necessary, because his sudden wail could be heard from all the way down the hall.

  “I’ll get him,” Leah offered, surging to her feet. She was a little baby-crazy over him.

  Sam sent her a wry grin from her spot on the floor. “Not sure you’ve got what he’s after.”

  “I’ll bring him back to his milk dispenser,” Leah said with a laugh, blue-streaked ponytail swinging as she went around the corner.

  Ava sat cross-legged on the living room rug as they all sorted through boxes. She shook her head at Leah’s sprite-like effervescence. She was tee-minus-ten from a face-plant on the carpet and a nap; if not for the cheer and humor of the other girls, she wouldn’t be able to keep her energy at an acceptable level.

  To her left, Holly sorted the box full of Ava’s desk contents, arranging tidy piles on the rug, each labeled with a Post-It note.

  Sam was tackling kitchen boxes that had mistakenly been left in the living room and were too heavy to haul, emptying them and then toting the items to their proper place in the kitchen. As Leah returned with a squirming Remy in her arms, Sam sucked in a breath and reached deep into the bottom of her current box, drawing out a thick folder.

  “This says ‘Manuscripts.’ ” She smiled and showed Ava the front of the folder. “Are these all your old stories?”

  “Ugh.” Ava reached to accept the unhappy burden of her son with a fast smile for Leah. “Do you guys mind?” she asked, gesturing to the front of her flannel shirt.

  “No,” three voices said in chorus, and she discreetly thumbed open the buttons, adjusted her bra and fitted Remy to her breast. He latched on and it was, as always, a sudden shock to feel his determination.

  Sam held the folder open in her lap, turning the pages with delicate care, long fingers barely touching the edges, sunlight burnishing her dark blonde hair to a rich gold. Fine, baby hairs floated away from the crown of her head, haloing her face. “God, you’ve written a ton,” she said in an awed voice. “I feel supremely inadequate looking at this.”

  “It’s all shit,” Ava assured her. “Mostly me being emo during undergrad, all my broken heart rambling.”

  Sam glanced over with a knowing half-smile and snorted. “While you and Mercy were apart, I take it?”

  She’d told Sam some of her romantic history. Organic girl talk, as they’d studied in the student center and slowly began to relax around one another; to find a true friendship that went beyond the classroom. Sam had gone to high school with Aidan – even if he’d been too up his own ass to notice the quiet girl with the glasses in the front row – and so Samantha Walton felt like a natural addition to Ava’s small social circle.

  Ava nodded, embarrassment warming her cheeks.

  “Is it fiction?” Holly asked. She looked thoroughly interested.

  “Yeah. Except, if anyone who knows me reads it, they’ll realize what a whack-job I am.”

  Leah rolled her eyes. “Too late. We already know that.”

  “I’d love to read some of your writing,” Holly said, and one glance at her earnest expression proved she meant it.

  Ava frowned inwardly. “Well…”

  Sam continued to flip through Ava’s regrettable fictional choices. “This one’s called ‘Mon Amour.’ ” She waggled her brows. “Is it steamy?”

  “I know for a fact you don’t like steamy fiction,” Ava said, “and no. It’s just sad and emo, like I said.”

  “Can I read it?” Sam asked with a hopeful smile, already in the process of unclasping the folder’s rings so she could draw the pages out.

  “You had two stories published in that magazine,” Leah said. “And those were sad and emo, too.”

  Ava snorted. “Sure, what the hell. Have at ‘em.”

  Sam clutched “Mon Amour” to her side and passed the folder to Holly. “Here, you pick something, Holly.”

  Bless Sam; she had been instantly sensitive to Holly’s shyness and hesitancy, and had treated her with the utmost kindness, without coddling. Ava knew more than anything, Holly just wanted to be one of the girls, and not the one handled with kid gloves.

  “There was one you told me about,” Leah said, perching on the arm of the couch, thin legs swinging. She had on hot pink tube socks and white cotton cheerleading shorts. “The one about the ghost?” Her brows went up hopefully.

  Ava sighed. “It’s in there. ‘Cadence.’ ”

  Holly, a few pages in one hand, closed the folder and handed it up to Leah.

  Remy had gone slack and sleepy in her arms, and when he released her nipple, she eased him up onto her shoulder, small pats on his back until he let out a soft burp.

  “You want me to take him back?” Leah asked.

  Ava was about to say no – she loved the warm baby-smell coming off the top of his head, the brush of the black downy hair on his scalp. But then the doorbell rang.

  “Yeah, that’d be good.” She hande
d Remy to Leah and got to her feet.

  “Your boob’s still hanging out,” Leah said, helpfully.

  “Thanks.”

  She did up the front of her shirt, pushed loose strands of hair back over her ears, and went to see who was at the door. Probably not the neighbors, she reflected, given the looks they’d been shooting her biker moving crew the day before. She hoped it wasn’t them, anyway; she was in tattered old cutoffs, barefoot, the gator tattoo on her left foot dark and noticeable.

  She looked through the window first, and saw a tall, tan, dark-headed man on her front porch. Very tall. Almost Mercy tall. The sleeves were cut out of his shirt, and she could see the ridges of veins beneath his golden skin. Long ropy forearms and heavy biceps. He had big hands, and he wore his jeans very tight, just loose enough at the bottoms to go over the tops of old Timberland work boots.

  Her stomach lurched, like it was her belly full of milk and not Remy’s. The first stirrings of dread raised the fine hairs on her arms, set her pulse to pounding in her ears. Whoever this man was, the way he carried himself was too familiar.

  He turned and saw her through the window, waved, flashed her a smile. Tilted his head toward the door, asking her to open it.

  That smile.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  Her hands were shaking as she turned the deadbolt and opened the door a fraction, wedging herself into the opening the same way she’d seen her mother do, a physical barrier. This is my house, and I’m the queen, and you’ll come in only if I want you to. She had to tip her head back to meet the man’s gaze, something she was well-accustomed to.

  Their faces weren’t identical; there were subtle differences. This man’s jaw was a little wider, his forehead broader, his brows more heavily slanted. His eyes were dark, but so were lots of people’s. And though the hair was that same silken black, he wore it clipped short; much more respectable.

  It was the nose that was irrefutable proof. Smiling dark eyes looked down the length of a narrow, autocratic nose. She recognized it from the faded photos. From the daily sight of the same noise on her beloved’s face. There was a man standing on her doorstep with Louis Lécuyer’s nose, and his name sure as hell wasn’t Felix.

  Mercy’s half-brother.

  Dee Lécuyer hadn’t been lying. The bitch.

  “Well hey there,” he said, and the Cajun accent she knew so well came rolling off his tongue. Deep voice. Similar voice.

  Ava broke out in a cold sweat all over.

  He gave her a dazzling smile. It wasn’t right – that was Mercy’s smile. Where did he get off using it?

  “I’m looking for somebody,” he said, “and maybe you can help me, sweetheart.” Boyish tilt to his head, twinkling eyes.

  So this was what Mercy must look like to other women. She’d never been on the other side of this sort of thing; she’d been in love with Merc before she was old enough to know what flirting was.

  She realized she still hadn’t said anything, was standing with her mouth slack like an idiot, and gave herself a shake. When she spoke, she was surprised to hear the bite in her voice.

  “You’re looking for Mercy.” When his brows went up, she said, “Er…Felix. Right?”

  He gave her another grin. “Felix Lécuyer, that’s the one. Does he live here?”

  She narrowed her eyes. Him showing up at their door like this was unnerving; the alarms were pinging in the back of her mind. “How could you possibly know that? We just moved in yesterday.”

  “We…? Oh!” His eyes sprang wide and he coughed a short laugh. “Jesus Christ. We? You’re her, then. You’re his little girl.” He folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe, close enough that she took a step back, and was forced to open the door wider. “Shit,” he said, laughing again. “Mom said you were just a little jailbait thing, but I didn’t think Felix would really go for that. Goes to show you never really know a guy, do you?”

  Ava choked down her initial response and prayed for a dose of her mother’s queenly grace. She shut her eyes a second – see Maggie, be Maggie – and then opened them again, lifting her chin at what she hoped was an imperious angle.

  “I’m assuming you’re Colin?”

  Another blazing grin. “That’s me, sweetheart.”

  “Alright, Colin.” She pulled on her snappiest, coldest, most-educated voice. The I-watch-too-much-BBC voice. “Several things. For starters, age of consent in Tennessee is eighteen, so not jailbait.”

  His smile flared, and then began to dim as her list continued.

  “Second, unless I’m mistaken, you haven’t seen Felix in twenty years, so you know nothing about our relationship, or him either, for that matter. Third, I met gators down in your swamps with better manners than to show up unannounced and begin insulting their hostesses. And fourth, I have no idea how you got this address, so you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  His cheeks colored, faintly; his smile was quietly mocking, and genuinely amused at the same time. “You’ve got some claws on ya, huh?”

  “Oh, you have no idea.”

  Growing serious, his smile still in place, but his eyes penetrating, he said, “I hear you saved Felix.”

  “I’ll do it again if I have to.” She wanted him to read the threat in her eyes, and thought that he did.

  He held her gaze a moment, then glanced away, across the yard, toward the Jeep he’d left in the driveway. When he looked at her again, he’d composed himself, chastened and polite. “Can I come in?”

  Ava heard Leah step up behind her. “Who is it? Are we gonna have to shoot him?”

  “Maybe,” Ava said, filled with warmth toward her friend. To Colin: “What do you want?”

  “A word with Felix.”

  “He’s at work. He won’t be home ‘til five-thirty.”

  Colin shrugged. “I can wait.” When she frowned at him, he lifted both hands in a defenseless gesture. “You won’t even know I’m here. I swear.”

  Still frowning, feeling like it was a terrible decision, she opened the door wide and stepped back, nearly colliding with Leah. “Leave your boots by the door, please.”

  He gave her another broad smile. “Yes, ma’am.” And shucked his boots before stepping into the foyer.

  This is a terrible idea, Ava berated herself.

  As if he agreed, Remy let out another pealing scream.

  Ava turned to take him from Leah, knowing he needed a diaper change, and caught Colin’s wide-eyed interested look.

  “Yours?” he asked, nodding to the baby.

  “Mine and Mercy’s.”

  Beside her, Leah was staring at Colin with horrified interest. “Oh my God. He looks–”

  “Yeah,” Ava said.

  “Is he–”

  “Yeah.”

  Holly and Sam were still on the floor when they walked into the living room, but not trying to be coy. They stared with open surprise and curiosity. As if scripted, both gasped at the sight of Colin.

  So she wasn’t imagining the resemblance, Ava thought. That was good.

  She shifted Remy up onto her shoulder and raised her voice to be heard above his crying. “Colin, these are my friends: Leah, Holly, and Sam. Girls, this is Colin O’Donnell. Mercy’s brother.”

  Colin looked much too at home on her sofa, sipping tea from one of her mismatched mugs, long legs stretched out in front of him. She’d put a kettle on – after Leah unearthed it from its box – in the hopes that something so domestic would drive Colin out to wait in his Jeep. Instead, he’d jovially accepted a cup and planted himself on the couch, asking each of them questions, keeping up light chitchat.

  Holly was the last to leave, and she lingered at the front door, touching Ava lightly on the arm. “Should I stay?” she whispered. “I can.”

  Ava smiled. “No, I’ll be fine. Mercy should be home any minute.”

  Eyes widening, Holly nodded. “Right. Be careful.” She left in a hurry, and Ava didn’t blame her. Judging by Mercy’s clipped tone over the phon
e when she’d called to tell him Colin was here, it wasn’t going to be a pretty reunion between the brothers.

  Ava closed the door and returned to the living room, frowning at the sight of Colin’s socked feet up on the coffee table. His gaze was fixed on Remy, who was staring back at the man from his swing, eyes never swerving as the motor rocked him forward and back.

  “Serious little guy, isn’t he?” Colin asked.

  She snorted. “Maybe he’s overcome by the family resemblance.”

  He glanced at her, a fast darting of eyes, a tightening of his expression; it furthered the likeness to Mercy. “About that…you keep saying ‘brother.’ Not sure I like that.”

  “Not sure you have a choice in it. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

  He grinned, but it didn’t go to his eyes. “All the time, darlin’, but I ain’t laid eyes on Felix in a long time, so wouldn’t do me much good there.”

  She leaned against the wall; she was exhausted from the move, and the day’s sorting, and the last thing she wanted was the big blow-up about to happen.

  “So you’re in denial,” she said. “That’s original. Evie didn’t tell you the truth?”

  He stiffened, a subtle shift in energy toward something darker. Something Lécuyer. “You wanna say something about my mama?”

  “No. I already said my piece to her face. Trust me – I don’t want to think the worst of my father-in-law.” Even if he was long dead. “But you look so much like my husband it’s scary. The truth is, Colin, if your mother is insisting Larry O’Donnell was your biological father, she’s lying to you.”

  He opened his mouth to say something –

  And the growl of Mercy’s Dyna echoed against the front of the house.

  “Daddy’s home,” Ava said to Remy with false brightness. To Colin, she said, “I’d tread very carefully if I were you.”

  He scowled at her. “He’s got some things to answer for.”

  “And you walked into something you can’t hope to understand,” she shot back. “Mercy isn’t a goodtime Louisiana boy; he never was. You’d be smart to remember that.”