Дэвид Балдаччи - Mercy

Pine rose. “Thanks for the coffee.” She walked off.

McAllister moodily watched her go. “She’s a funny one.”

“Great record at the Bureau,” noted Bertrand.

“Yes, but she’s ruffled feathers along the way, too.”

“Think she’s holding anything back?”

McAllister gave the younger man an incredulous look. “Hell, Neil, of course she is.”

Mercy set the letter down on the bed, turned and walked over to the window, and looked out at a clear day over Asheville, North Carolina. The beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains sat like an obedient dog right in front of her, hoping to cheer her up.

It didn’t work because Mercy didn’t see the trees, or envision a symbolic canine, or feel cheered up. The only things she was seeing resided in her own head.

The little barefoot tomboy in dirty dungarees and a faded T-shirt dropped to the dirt from the tall tree and stood up straight and proud and stubborn. The little girl in the colorful dress sat on a blanket clutching her doll Sally and sipping on an imaginary cup of tea. The dress girl called out in a southern twang to the tall, beautiful woman with the thick hair piled high, “Told you, Momma, Lee figured it out. She got down just fine.”

Next, the beautiful woman loomed up in front of her. In the face, Mercy saw parts of her and parts of her sister. She had no idea what this Jack Lineberry looked like, but facets of him were probably in her and Lee’s features, too. She bent down and gave Mercy a hug, and her smile was a mile wide and inviting and made everything in Mercy’s life the absolute best it could be.

“You were right, Mercy; you seem to know better than your mother about Lee.”

“We’re twins,” little Mercy said. “We share everything. Even our brain .”

Her mother laughed and called out to her sister. “Lee, come over here, sweetie. I need to look inside your and your sister’s heads.”

Lee appeared in the picture in Mercy’s mind. Tough, little hands almost always balled in fists, itching for a fight with anyone. But when Lee saw Mercy and Mercy smiled, the hands uncurled, and Lee smiled back and laughed in the way she always did that made Mercy happier still.

“In our heads?” said Lee. She bent down so her mother could pretend to open up her head and peer inside.

“Now let me do your sister.”

Giggling, Mercy lowered her head, too. Their mother dutifully performed an examination and proclaimed that the girls did indeed share a brain.

“What does it look like, Momma?” said Lee.

“One side has a pretty dress and one side has dirty dungarees,” she replied and then commenced to tickle Lee until she screamed, before Mercy joined in and started tickling her mother. Then both girls went after their mom with the tickle bug, and they all ended up on the ground rolling around and shrieking with laughter.

Mercy turned from the window as the tears streamed down her face.

This memory had just come back to her fully after reading the letter. Bits and pieces had been with her for many years, but not all of it, not the most important parts.

All those years, I could have been with her and my sister, having all that fun, all that... love. And, instead, I was with the Atkinses.

But as she picked up the letter and read through it again, her mother’s words — where she had blamed herself for all that had gone bad — made Mercy feel a sudden burst of anger. Was her mother just trying to get sympathy and money from Jack Lineberry? Mercy thought there was an “oh woe is me” tone to the words.

But perhaps she was being unfair. Being that young and working against the mob had to have taken great courage. And then to have her family attacked, one daughter taken, the other left for dead? Then the man she loved nearly killed, too?

Mercy never liked other people judging her, although they too often did based on her ratty clothes or her old car, or the way she looked, her limited education, the clumsy indelicacy of her manner. To be fair, she had no right to judge others, including her mother.

Yet it was now obvious to Mercy that her mother didn’t want to be found. She didn’t want to be part of her daughters’ lives. That was her choice, Mercy supposed, though she believed it to be a selfish one. Even after reading the letter, Mercy couldn’t understand why her sister would want to find the woman. There was clearly nothing there. The woman with the piled-up hair and the tickle-bug playfulness was long gone. She had made her choice, and that did not include being there for her daughters. They all needed to move on.

She looked up when the door opened and Pine appeared there. Pine sat on the bed next to Mercy and glanced at the letter in her hand.

“Well?”

Mercy shrugged. “It’s a letter. Full of regrets, sort of like a sob story. I don’t know what you get out of it. She doesn’t want to be found, that’s clear enough. Okay, fine. Move on. There’s nothing there for you, Lee.”

Pine’s face paled and her features turned troubled. “And what she wrote made you feel... nothing?”

“Why would it?”

“Then why are your eyes red and your cheeks wet?”

Mercy dropped the letter on the bed, stood, and looked away. “I don’t need this shit, Lee, okay? I came here to deal with Desiree. I said my piece to the witch. I’m off the hook for a murder I didn’t do. Now I just want to go back to my simple little life.”

“And what about me?”

Mercy turned to look at her.

Pine’s eyes glistened, and in a low, tight voice she said, “ I didn’t choose to lose you. I didn’t walk away from you. I’ve been without my sister for thirty years, Mercy. And now that we’ve found each other you just want to walk away? Just like Mom did to me?”

Mercy didn’t wilt under this; she seemed to grow taller and broader. “I didn’t have a walk in the park, okay? The last thirty years have not been a piece of cake for me, sis . I would’ve traded with you in a heartbeat.” She lifted her sleeve. “Check these beauties out.”

Pine looked at the collection of torture marks. “I know what she did to you.”

“No, you have no fucking clue what that bitch did to me. Here, here’s what she did to me.”

Mercy stripped off her hoodie and undershirt. Her arms and torso were covered with blackened marks, scars, and lumps.

“Desiree loved cigarettes. Not to smoke them. But to burn me with them.” She pointed to three charred marks close together on her right forearm. “Do you know what she said about these?”

Pine couldn’t speak; she just stared. “She said they were like the three little pigs and I was Goldilocks. This burn was too hot and this one was too cold and the third one was just right, so she held it on me till I thought my fucking brain was going to pop out of my damn head. I was nine.”

She pulled down her pants, exposing her legs. “And these?” She pointed down both thighs where there were rows of burn marks. “That bitch wanted to make a column of ants up and down my legs. You know, like ‘ants in the pants,’ she said. I had ants in my pants. And she laughed her ass off while she’s burning ants into my skin. I was eleven.”

She tugged her bra down, revealing her breasts. “And she didn’t like the way my boobs looked. So she took a knife and carved shit on them. I was twelve. I didn’t really even have breasts yet, so all she was really doing was pushing my skin into my bones with a sharp blade.”

She touched her underpants. “And... and down... there.” Mercy bent over and started to quietly weep. She angrily swiped at the tears. “Down there she—” She waggled her head, looked like she might be sick to her stomach. “I was only... I don’t... I don’t remember how old I was. I just remember it hurt. It hurt like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”