Lori Armstrong - No Mercy

Not only wasn’t Hope asleep, she wasn’t alone. Jake sat beside her on the sofa. They didn’t notice me. I lurked in the shadows. Hiding. Listening. Waiting. Doing what I do best.

Hope clutched Jake’s hand. “I’m sorry-”

“Ssh. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay! I’ve been stupid and selfish.”

“I never blamed you.”

She cried harder. “See? You should blame me. I’m so sorry. I planned to tell him.” Her breath hitched and she was having difficulty speaking. “Now it’s too late and he never knew.” Sobs burst forth and her whole body shook.

The knots in my stomach tightened. I shifted slightly, intending to show myself, and berate Jake for whatever stupid thing he’d said to upset her, but Jake’s words froze me to the spot.

“Even when he didn’t know, I knew. I always treated him like my son.” He gently smoothed the damp curls from her brow, as if he’d done it a thousand times before.

My mother always cautioned me nothing good ever came from eavesdropping. For most of my life I thought it was bad advice. Now I wished I’d taken that advice and slunk away when I’d had the chance. Maybe I should’ve swallowed that whole bottle of Valium.

Levi was Jake’s son. Jake was Levi’s father. Not Hope’s late husband, Mario Arpel. The phrase repeated in my head like a bad song lyric: Jake was Levi’s father. Jake was Levi’s father.

My spirit shriveled; I felt my muscles and bones threaten to liquefy. A burst of white light rushed past me as the years disappeared to a spring morning my senior year in high school. I sang along with Tanya Tucker on the radio. When I climbed out of the shower, I noticed blood between my thighs. A trickle rapidly became a torrent. Blood discolored the sunny yellow bath mat. Cramps seized me, and I had to bend over the bathtub from the intense pain.

I could barely crawl across the hallway to use the phone. Sophie had gone into Rapid City and I hadn’t wanted my father to worry, so I called my best friend Geneva. By the time she arrived, I was floating in and out of consciousness and lying in a pool of blood.

Geneva called 911. All dispatch calls went through the sheriff’s office first, so my father pulled up the same time as the ambulance.

The rest of the images from that day were blurry. One memory is crystal clear; the ghostly paleness of my father’s face as they loaded me in the back of the ambulance.

Spontaneous abortion at age eighteen isn’t uncommon. But nearly hemorrhaging to death and having a hysterectomy at age eighteen is.

I hadn’t even known I was pregnant. Once the pregnancy ended it was pointless to talk about it. To Dad. To Sophie. To Geneva. Especially to Jake.

Within a month, my body hadn’t shown signs of menopause. Within two months, I left the ranch, my childhood, and the memories of Jake and me far behind.

Or so I’d thought.

A floorboard creaked in the kitchen. Jake lifted his head and saw me by the china cabinet. Our eyes met. No reason for me to hide the murderous rage in mine. I felt triumphant at the fear in his.

He leaned down to whisper in Hope’s ear, then slipped out the front door.

Coward.

I dug deep until I found the tranquil mind-set that helped me to survive combat situations. I inserted myself into the warm spot Jake had vacated and fussed over my sister, tucking the afghan under her elfin chin.

Her face resembled one of those wax carvings at the tourist traps in Keystone outside of Mount Rushmore. When her bloodless lips moved, I nearly leaped to the ceiling.

“You heard, didn’t you?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

More tears fell. “Do you hate me now?”

“I couldn’t ever hate you, Hope.”

“Really?”

“Really. I know we haven’t always been close… I don’t know if it was because I was gone, or because of stuff from when we were kids, but I am here for you now. I’ll always be here for you.”

“Thanks.” Her throat muscles worked, but her voice was still scarcely a whisper. “For the first time I really feel like you mean that, Mercy.”

“I do.” I changed the subject lest I start crying again. “Sure you don’t want me to have Doc Canady give you something to help you sleep?”

“I won’t take anything, so stop badgering me about it.” She wiped beneath her eyes. “And stop asking me if I can keep quiet about how he”-her breath hitched in an effort to finish-“how Levi died. I’m good at holding a secret.”

Boy, was she ever. “All right.” Needing something to do with my hands, I fiddled with the fat gold yarn tassels on the afghan.

“Where’s Shoonga?”

“On the porch. You want me to get him?”

She nodded.

I cut through the kitchen and opened the screen door. The dog looked up from his usual spot by the stairs. “Shoonga. Come.”

Shoonga cocked his head like it was a trick. We never let animals in the house. He’d been on the receiving end of Sophie’s broom a time or two, so I didn’t blame him.

I patted my thigh. “It’s okay, Shoonga, you can come in.”

The dog stood and slunk past me, tail tucked between his short legs. He waited in the kitchen, whining, until I led him to Hope’s side. Shoonga licked her hand and dropped on the carpet next to the couch.

“You need anything else?”

“Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“You don’t even have to ask.” I sat beside her and rubbed my knuckles over the baby-fine hair on her forearm, like my mother used to do when I was sick as a child. Hope had known so little of our mother; I wanted to give her something that’d always calmed me. The repetitive motion helped her relax until her breathing slowed. When I was certain she was out, I briefly snuck upstairs, then came back down and grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey and a glass on my way outside.

The night air retained the day’s dry heat. I poured three fingers of whiskey and knocked it back. Don’t know why I bothered with a glass. According to my best guess, I’d drained half a bottle throughout this nightmare day. I wasn’t drunk; I was absolutely numb.

As much as I didn’t want answers about Hope and Jake, I knew I’d have to ask questions. Since waking Hope wasn’t an option, that left me one other choice.

I drained the bottle, loaded my Sig.357, and melted into the shadows.

The tiny foreman’s cabin was far enough away from our house that I had time to consider how many times I’d done this in my life as a sniper, slithering through the darkness in silence as elusive as smoke.

I owed a good part of my skill to the shooting basics my father had instilled in me from the time I’d been old enough to curl my small fingers around a trigger. Shooting was what I’d loved best and where I’d excelled. In basic training I’d finished at the top of my class in marksmanship.

The army noticed and optioned me to join their elite team, The U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). But I didn’t want to be a competitive shooter; I wanted to be a soldier. Actually, my dream was to be an Army Ranger. When I’d told my sergeant, he’d laughed in my face. A woman an Army Ranger? Never happen.

A month later his female CO, Major Martinson, yanked me out of the duty roster. She offered me an opportunity of a lifetime. For several years she’d petitioned for a chance to prove women could excel in stealth combat. With cases all over the country decrying the military’s sexual discrimination policies, General John Ehrlich relented and gave Major Martinson the go-ahead. She selected an elite group of six women, all army, all with specialized skills, all with a medical anomaly that wouldn’t differentiate us from the boys, so “female issues” when in the field wouldn’t be an issue.