Mercy (24 page)

There was no use in putting it off any longer. Mia stuffed her clothes into her knapsack, wrapping her old bonsai in a button-down oxford shirt and givi ng it room to breathe at the top. Then she turned off the television and the lights and drew the shades, so the room was completely dark. She listened i ntently to the sounds that came muffled through the carpet--the innkeeper's draw of a key from the cubbyhole, the whoosh of the heavy front door as it o pened, the squeal of the lazy wheel on the bellboy's luggage cart. She waite d for these noises to fall away into a background hum, so she could hear the subtle sounds of a world gone gray. Then, sitting down at the table with a piece of Inn stationery she could barely see, Mia began to write. And when s he was satisfied that she had given him all that she could, she sealed the e nvelope, scooped up the cat, and locked the door behind her.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy. --Shakespeare, Timon of Athens o

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NINE

"IT^V"hen Allie told Pauline Cioffi that Maggie MacDonald was Vr dead, Paul ine closed her eyes tightly, as if blocking Allie out of her vision would a lso dispel the news. When she opened her eyes and Allie was still standing there, she sank her teeth into her bottom lip and nodded sharply before tur ning away. "Well," she said stoically, "that was to be expected." Allie waited until she had been invited into the house to tell Pauline that J

amie was on trial for murdering his wife. She expected another denial, maybe even a burst of outrage, but Pauline only pulled a pair of socks out of a pri stine pile of white laundry and knotted them together. "I suppose," she sighe d, "that was to be expected too."

Pauline was Maggie's best friend, or so said the list that Jamie had written for Allie. They had met in an aerobics class given by the local church, the only three hours during the week that Pauline was away from her children. T

o prolong the holiday, she took Maggie out for coffee one morning, and it be came a tradition.

She was built like an apple and her house was a tangle of toys, cloth diapers

, and single shoes. She invited Allie to take a seat in the den, but did not offer her coffee. Instead, she plopped one damp, sticky toddler in a playpen, shooed the others out of the room, and listened as Allie related the circums tances of Maggie's death.

Jodi Picoult

"It doesn't surprise you that Jamie's on trial for murder?" Allie said. "Did you know him very well?"

Pauline shrugged. "Well enough to know that when Maggie asked him to kill her, he would.'

Allie leaned forward in her seat. "You knew that Maggie was going to ask him?"

Pauline nodded, as if the conversation she'd had with Maggie had been as m undane as a discussion of the weather, or brands of cereal. AUie's mind be gan to spin with the implications of putting Pauline on a witness stand fo r Jamie. Would her story uphold the confession Jamie had signed for Cam? O

r would it only be dismissed as hearsay?

"Jamie MacDonald is a blessing and a curse."

AUie's head snapped up. "What do you mean by that?"

"Maggie says it to me all the time--" she said, and then corrected herself. " Said it to me." In the low light of the afternoon Allie could see the film of tears over Pauline's eyes. "I'm sorry. I thought I was ready for this. I mea n, I knew that it was coming, and Maggie and I had talked about it, but when you get right down to it, preparing doesn't make it hurt any less." She took a deep breath and faced Allie again. "Tell me again why you're here. I'll hel p Maggie any way I can."

"You said that Jamie was a blessing and a curse," Allie prompted.

"Oh, yes. Maggie loved him to death." She stopped abruptly, realizing the implications of the idiom she'd used. "Maggie loved him to death," she rep eated softly. "She knew that Jamie would have done anything for her, so sh e figured that if she pushed him hard enough, he'd make it easier when the time came." She looked up at Allie. "Did you know her? Maggie?" Allie shook her head. "I wish I had. I wish I could." Pauline walked over to the playpen and retrieved her youngest child, a littl e girl who began to chew on the long rope of her mother's braid. "It's impos sible to tell you what Maggie was like unless you figure Jamie into the situ ation. They were inseparable, I swear. But not through any doing of Maggie's

. I used to tell her I'd swap lives with her in a second--trade her all the dirty diapers and the school lunches and the carpooling for a man who was ha nging on my every word, and Maggie said it wasn't the bliss that I 169

thought it was. I think she felt bad because Jamie couldn't let go and she coul dn't hold on as tight as he did."

She bounced the baby in her arms. "She told me that if it was the other way around--if Jamie had the cancer--she wouldn't be able to ... you know. Said she'd worry too much about what was going to happen to her, after. She said it wasn't like that for Jamie, since he wouldn't imagine a future that didn'

t have Maggie in it too." Pauline glanced up. "What Maggie said to me--about the dying--was that she didn't have a choice anymore. She knew she'd be usi ng Jamie horribly, but she didn't even care, if that was what it took to sto p the pain."

Allie watched Pauline press a kiss to her daughter's tangled hair, and swal lowed thickly. "How's Jamie doing?"

Allie took a deep breath. "He's angry. And frustrated. Lonely. I think he's star ting to feel guilty."

Pauline nodded. "Just like Maggie." She waved her free arm around the room

, encompassing the clutter and the discord that made up a family. "She was jealous of me. Me! She used to say that whatever else my marriage was, at least it was still equal between Frank and me. But with Jamie, well, no m atter how hard he tried--no matter how much he gave--it would only make Ma ggie feel worse, more guilty for what she couldn't give." Pauline shook he r head. "I told her she was crazy."

Allie thought of Jamie clutching Maggie's limp body in the cab of his truck, unwilling to let anyone else close enough to touch her. She thought of the way her heart lodged at the back of her throat every time she opened the doo r to the police station to visit Cam unannounced, hoping that he would say o r do something to make her believe he had wanted her there in the first plac e. "Crazy," Allie repeated. "I don't think so." Cam drove out of Wheelock with the windows rolled down, his car speeding do wn side roads in an effort to outrace his guilt. With the wind blinding him and the cold numbing his fingers and his cheeks, it was easier to forget a bout Mia. It was easier to concentrate on Allie.

The leaves were starting to fall--crimson and orange, they spi-raled like tiny, stiff ballerinas across the windshield of the car. It

Jodi Picoult

was nearly time for fall colors, that three-week stretch of October when ev eryone and his brother decided to visit the Berkshires for the scenery. It was the only month of the year when the Wheelock Inn was filled to capacity

; when the coffee shop in town had a line out the front door. Wheelock did not have the grandeur of Great Barrington or the charm of Lenox, but it was one of those towns off Route 8 that still seemed quaint and untouched. The reputation led to problems--tourists seemed to think it was a reconstructe d village, like the Shaker town down in Pittsfield, a place too cute for pe ople to really live in. He remembered once, as a child, someone had knocked on the door of the house. His mother had smiled politely at the man in his sleek Italian suit and wing-tip shoes, at the woman on his arm with a feat hered cap and a muff made of rabbit fur. "We were wondering," the man had s aid in a tight Long Island lockjaw, "have you any antiques you'd be willing to sell?"

Cam pulled over to the side of the road and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. It was impossible to think of the influx of hundreds of st rangers into a town that no longer seemed big enough for Mia, Allie, and hi mself. And with this damned murder trial in the local papers, Wheelock was guaranteed to become a circus.

Cam stepped out of the car and slammed the door shut, realizing as he stretch ed to his full height that he was still wearing a tie and a jacket, the trapp ings of a morning at Mass. He hooked his finger into the knot at his neck and pulled, loosening his tie. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt. Then he took off his shoes and socks and set them on the hood of the car. He went barefoot all the time in the house, in spite of Allie's warnings abou t drafts and colds, but the last time he'd run free outdoors had been seven y ears before. It was early October, just as it was now, and Allie had shown up at the station with a picnic. "Come on," she'd said. "No one's going to comm it a crime on a day as beautiful as this."

They had been dating for a few months. Cam liked her enough and had become accustomed to spending Sunday afternoons at Allie's apartment, reading th e newspaper. He knew that when she looked at him, she was seeing him at th e altar of the church, holding out a gold band, but this did not bother hi m. If he wanted to get married, he would do so in his own time. He had bee n forced into coming back

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to Wheelock, forced into succeeding his father as police chief, but no one w as going to make him sign the rest of his life away.

Allie had wanted to eat behind the football field at the high school--some m isguided sense of nostalgia for their roots, he supposed--but Cam insisted t hat he'd only take time off for lunch if he got to pick the picnic site. All ie agreed, as he had known she would, and he had driven her in one of the cr uisers toward Wee Loch at the northern end of town.

He remembered looking across at her when they came to a stoplight. He had w anted her to look up at him and smile--he'd silently willed this to happen-but Allie had been fixated on the dashboard of the car. Without glancing a t Cam, she'd pointed to a button. "Are those the lights?" She gently traced the button with her finger.

Cam laughed and covered her hand with his own. "Go ahead," he said. "Now

's your big chance."

Allie pushed the button for the flashing lights, and they sped toward the lak e without the siren. When Cam pulled into the shade of the trees at the edge of the water, he put the cruiser into park and sat back, arms crossed, watchi ng Allie. "Well?"

"I feel very privileged. Of course, I couldn't really see them from in here." Cam grinned. "You'd rather be an observer than a part of the action?"

"Well," Allie said, "that depends on what's being observed." Cam insisted they leave their shoes in the car--what was a picnic with shoes

? He helped her carry the Playmate slowly across the stretch of grass, givin g time for Allies feet to feel out acorns and stones he did not notice. Alli e had brought huge submarine sandwiches--pastrami on French bread, Italian s alami and provolone, roast beef and boursin. She'd packed a thermos of peach iced tea and a small container of red potato salad. There were, for dessert

, individual apple tarts. Allie told him that she'd just thrown this togethe r on the spur of the moment, but Cam knew from the bruised skin beneath her eyes that she had been planning this for days and had stayed up late to cook for him.

To his surprise, he liked the idea of that very much.

He watched her kneel on the ground to open the Playmate cooler. i Jodi Picoult

She unpacked half of the contents in an array to her left before she turned to Cam. "I forgot a blanket," she said, as if this was the worst thing in the wo rld. "I cannot believe I forgot the stupid blanket." She looked like she was going to cry, and that was just about the last thing Cam thought he'd be able to handle, so he jumped to his feet. "I ought to h ave something in the car," he said, and he ran back to the road, but only fo und emergency flares and a spare jack. When he walked back toward the lake, Allie was waiting, her hands in her lap and still filled with the apple tart s. He started to tell her they'd have to make do, but the trust in her eye s topped him. Cam had seen it before on the face of nearly every townsper-son who'd attended his father's funeral and had, afterward, put himself blindly into Cam's care. Cam knew the expression, and the burden of responsibility t hat slogged in his chest whenever he faced it. But on Allie, trust looked di fferent. Cam saw himself as Allie did, and for the first time he began to be lieve it was possible to be someone's everyday hero.

He did not remember what he said to her, or how he came to stick his knee in to one of the tarts as he caught Allie up in his arms and fell with her onto a blanket nature loaned them, made of the brilliant gold of fallen maple le aves. It was not lust that overwhelmed Cam. It was the sense that this feeli ng of invincibility would fade unless he could somehow ensure its permanence

. And the surest way was to take the person who made him feel like this, and make her a part of himself.

Cam had pulled at her clothes, frustrated by something as simple as buttons, until Allie gently pushed him back and freed them herself. As if it were perf ectly natural to be lying half-naked in the middle of the day, she held out h er arms to Cam, and he fell to her, tugging at her hair, pressing her back on the crinkling leaves, bruising her throat with his kisses. Even now, years l ater, when he closed his eyes and pictured Allie, it was with her eyes heavy and her face turned to the side, those vivid yellow leaves tangled in her hai r as if she were backed by the sun itself.