John Burley - The Absence of Mercy

“I can’t explain everything right now,” she said. “But I want you to know… I want you to know that I’m sorry.” She began to cry then, the tears large and shameful and naked on her face, and she refused to lift a hand to brush them away. She deserved each and every one of them. “I want you to know that I’m sorry for bringing you into this, Joel. You’re a good kid, and I love you. You… you never deserved this.”

She tried to go on, but she couldn’t. The grief and fear and regret were all muddled up inside of her, and the more she tried to talk the more she wept, until at last her son placed a hand on her forearm to quiet her.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, and she looked at him and nodded, allowing herself to accept his forgiveness for the moment. Joel leaned over and gave her a hug, and she held him tightly against her, closing her eyes and mouthing a silent prayer of gratitude that he was safe—that they both were—for the first time in months.

A few minutes later, she started the car, readying them for the next leg of their journey. “Mom,” Joel said, and she smiled over at him, smoothing his hair with her hand.

“Yeah. What is it, honey?”

His freckled face was earnest but hopeful. “Can we go home now?”

Ben sat at his desk, the calendar laid out in front of him. Susan’s attorney had called this afternoon, advising him that a review hearing had been scheduled for three months from now. Will you be available to attend? the lawyer had wanted to know. “Of course,” Ben had replied. He glanced at the year in the upper right-hand corner, listening for a moment to the quietness of the house around him. Five years, he thought to himself. Was it really possible that his wife’s incarceration was finally drawing to a close? He could feel the weight of those years pressing upon him—years he had long since become accustomed to carrying. It was hard to imagine what it would feel like when that burden was finally lifted.

His mind turned back to the day they’d been reunited. Sam had shown up on his front steps only two days after his previous visit. This time, Ben had met him at the door—instead of in the driveway with a shovel.

“Back so soon?” he asked, making no effort to conceal his irritation with Sam’s frequent, unsolicited appearances.

“We’ve got them, Ben,” the chief told him. “Susan and Joel turned themselves in at the U.S. border yesterday evening.”

Ben stood there in the doorway, trying to make sense of what he’d just heard. He’d been planning on leaving for Mexico the following day.

“They’ll be arriving at the airport late this afternoon,” Sam advised him. “They’re being accompanied by federal marshals. We’ll need you to come with us to pick up Joel.”

Ben looked down at his hands, at the postcard he was holding between his thumb and forefinger. He reached back and stuffed it into his rear pocket. “Susan and Joel are coming home? You found them, Sam?”

“Well.” The big man frowned, considering this briefly. “Technically, they found us.”

“And Thomas?” Ben asked, but Sam had shaken his head.

“We haven’t located him yet,” he’d replied. “But we will. Don’t you worry about that. We’ll find him. Sure as rain.”

For her part in the affair, Susan had been sentenced to eight years in state prison. Her attorney had been optimistic that she would be released much sooner, and indeed it now seemed that that time might be coming to an end. They’d stayed married during all of this, although Ben wasn’t sure if anything substantial remained to hold on to. He supposed it depended on how much mercy and forgiveness they had left for one another.

As a single parent, Ben had raised Joel as best he could. His youngest son was experiencing life as a teenager, becoming more independent with each passing year. There were times when one of Joel’s mannerisms—a certain facial expression or tone of voice—reminded Ben of Thomas at a slightly younger age, and although they were painful to witness, he was also grateful for those moments, for they allowed him to remember his oldest son as the boy he still loved, separate from the af f liction that had eventually consumed him.

He stood up now, stretched, and glanced about the room. Thomas’s old bedroom had been converted into a study, and it was here where Ben liked to work. The posters had been removed years ago, but the tape had left an indelible mark on the paint. The minor blemishes could have been touched up with a brush, he imagined, but Ben preferred to leave them as they were, small reminders of the boy who had once lived within these walls. In their own way, they comforted him.

Five years ago, Sam had been confident that they would find Thomas. “Sure as rain,” he had said, but in that one prognostication his friend had been wrong, for they never had managed to track him down, and as the years unfolded Ben wondered if they ever would. But “technically,” as Sam had pointed out, they hadn’t found Susan or Joel, either. His wife and youngest son had found them. They had returned home of their own free will. Because sooner or later, Ben knew, that is what we are all destined to do.

He stood at the window, looking out. He could hear the wind buffeting the house, its infinite fingers searching for entry along the eaves. Winter was coming again, the daylight hours surrendering themselves little by little to the thick, malignant reign of the night. Somewhere up the block, a trash can toppled to the asphalt and went rolling out into the street. In the living room near the front door, Alex—by now arthritic and graying around the muzzle, but still with some fire in his belly—barked twice and then fell silent. It was getting late, Ben thought. He ought to turn in for the eveni—

He leaned forward, placing his fingertips on the cold pane of glass. Someone was standing near the driveway, looking up at the house. The figure’s features were lost in the darkness, but his arms hung loosely at his sides and his left hand seemed to be clutching something long and thin and tapered to a—

Ben turned quickly and made for the stairs, taking them two at a time. He dashed across the living room to the hall, flung open the front door, and spilled out into the driveway.

The street in front of him was empty.

” Thomas, ” Ben whispered, his eyes scanning the bushes, the driveway, the yards to his left and right. The only reply was the sound of the fallen trash can, turning slowly in the street like a gravely wounded animal.

“ Thomas, ” Ben said again, louder this time, uncertain if what he had seen from the upstairs window had been real or imagined. The mind, he knew, could be a powerful thing. We see what we want to see, often ignoring the rest. He closed his eyes, listening to the restless chatter of branches in the wind, and his wife’s voice came to him then as if she had uttered the words only yesterday.

“We have to take care of each other. Just as we always have . ”

Yes, Ben thought, standing beneath the glow of the streetlamp as the shadows gathered around him. We do .

The towns depicted in this novel are real, although I have taken significant liberties in their fictional portrayal. I have been assured by a few locals, in fact, that they are pleasant places in which to live.

The creation of a novel begins as a lonely endeavor. You select a scene and a character with which to commence, conjure a vague notion of how you would like the story to end, and then go about the task of connecting the two. Things, of course, do not go according to plan. Fictional characters—products of the author’s own imagination—decide to speak up for themselves and to do unexpected things without the author’s consent. The plot veers wildly this way and that like an out-of-control motorcycle in danger of crashing into the nearest tree. During the final frenzied week of editing, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record attempts to wipe out a good portion of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States—along with the offices of both the literary agency and the publishing house with which the book and its author are newly affiliated. To say that there are forces at work here beyond one’s control is, well, somewhat of an understatement. And yet, the project finds its way to completion, and there can be no other explanation for this unlikely success except to point to the numerous people who have helped to make it happen.