Page 166 of This is Why We Lied

He started shaking his head.

“Jon,” Will repeated. “What did Mercy see?”

“You know what she saw!” Jon screamed. “Don’t make me say it!”

Will felt like a thousand razor blades were slicing into his chest. He had been so fucking stupid, still only hearing what he’d wanted to hear.

Mercy hadn’t told Will that Jon had to get away from here.

She’d told him that Jon had to get away from her.

THIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES BEFORE THE MURDER

Mercy stared out the slitted foyer window. The moon was so bright it was like a spotlight shining on the compound. Paul Ponticello was probably bitching with his boyfriend inside cottage five. He had a right to. The famous Mercy Temper had roared out like a lion and now she was overcome with regret. The truth was, she had been stunned by Paul’s offer of forgiveness.

Mercy deserved a lot of things for killing Gabbie, but forgiveness was not one of them.

She pressed her fingers into her eyes. Her head was killing her. She was glad Dave hadn’t picked up the phone when she’d called to tell him what had happened. God knew he loved a good go fuck yourself story, but he would’ve riled her up even more.

Her body already felt on edge. She was bloated and gross. She was probably about to start her period. Mercy had stopped using the app on her phone to track it. She’d read horror stories online about cops getting your data and cross-referencing credit cards to see the last time you’d bought tampons. All Mercy needed was Fish getting his financial records combed over. She had to talk to Dave about wearing a condom again. This time she would mean it. No amount of his sulking was worth the risk to her brother.

Dave’s brother, too, if you wanted to get technical about it.

She closed her eyes again. Every bad thing that had happened today suddenly caught up with her. Plus her thumb was aching like a motherfucker. Another stupid mistake she’d made, dropping that glass when Jon had yelled at her. The stitches had gotten soaked when she was cleaning the kitchen. Her throat felt raw and bruised from Dave choking her. She couldn’t take anything stronger than Tylenol.

Worse, what the fuck had she been thinking, talking to that doctor? Sara had been so nice that she’d lulled Mercy into forgetting that the woman’s husband was a cop. Will Trent already had a hard-on for Dave. The last thing Mercy needed was a GBI agent sniffing around the property. Thank God a storm was coming up over the ridge. Mercy doubted the honeymooners needed much of an excuse to stay inside their cottage for the rest of the week.

She thought about stupid Chuck waving around that smoking foil outside the equipment shed this morning. He was getting sloppy, distilling too much moonshine too fast to keep up with the quality control. It was time to shut that shit down. Fish had been making noises for months about how he wanted out. And it wasn’t just about the bootlegging. He wanted free from this claustrophobic prison that generations of McAlpines had built not out of pride but out of spite.

The shocking truth was, Mercy wanted out, too.

Her threats at the family meeting had been hollow after all. She would never show anyone her childhood diaries that detailed Papa’s rage. No one would find out that Papa had taken control of the lodge by attacking his own sister with an ax. Bitty’s crimes would roll away with the statute of limitations. Mercy’s letters to Jon that called out Dave’s abuse would never see the light of day. Fish could rid himself of the bootlegging and live out his solitary life on the water.

Mercy was going to break the cycle. Jon deserved more than being tied to this cursed land. She would vote to sell to the investors. She would take a hundred grand for herself and put away the rest in a trust to benefit Jon. Delilah could be the trustee. Let Dave try to get blood from that stone. Mercy would rent a small apartment in town so Jon could finish school and then she would send him off to a good college. She didn’t know how much money it took to live on your own, but she had found work the last time. She would find work again. She had a strong back. A solid work ethic. Life experience. She could do this.

And if she failed, she could always move back in with Dave.

“Who’s there?” Papa barked.

Mercy held her breath. Her father had been on the porch when she’d told Paul to go fuck himself. Papa had demanded details, but Mercy had refused. Now, she could hear her father stirring in his bed. He would stagger into the hall soon, dragging his legs like Jacob Marley’s chains. Mercy slipped up the front stairs before he could reach her.

The lights were out, but the moon poured through the windows at either end of the hall. She kept to the right side. Mercy had sneaked in and out of the house enough times to know which floorboards would squeak. She looked toward the bathroom at the end of the hall. Jon had left his towel on the floor. She could hear Fish snoring like a freight train behind his closed door. Bitty’s door was ajar but Mercy would just as soon stick her face inside a hornet’s ass.

Jon’s door was closed. Soft light fanned out from underneath.

Mercy felt some of her earlier anxiety return. On the scale of all the fights she’d had with her son, the one at dinner hadn’t been the worst, but it had been the most public. She had lost count of the number of times that Jon had screamed at the top of his lungs that he hated her. He usually needed a day or two to cool off. He wasn’t like Dave, who could punch you in the face one minute then pout because you were mad at him the next.

Lord knew that Mercy had never deluded herself into thinking she was a good mother. She was a hell of a lot better than Bitty, but that was a pathetically low bar. Mercy was an okay mother. She loved her son. She would lay down her life for him. The Pearly Gates wouldn’t be swinging open for her in the afterlife—not after all the people she had hurt, the precious life she had taken—but maybe the pureness of Mercy’s love for Jon would land her a nice spot in purgatory.

She should tell Jon about the sale. He couldn’t be mad at her for giving him exactly what he wanted. Maybe they could go somewhere together. They could vacation in Alaska or Hawaii or one of the dozens of places he used to talk about visiting back when he was a chatterbox little kid with big dreams.

Money could help some of those dreams come true now.

Mercy stood outside Jon’s door. She heard the tinkling sound of a music box. Her eyebrows furrowed. Her son listened to Bruno Mars and Miley Cyrus, not Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. She gave a light rap on the door. God knew she didn’t want to catch Jon with a bottle of lotion again. She waited, listening for his familiar lope across the floor. All she heard was the tinny sound of metal bars pricking against a rotating spool.

Something told her not to knock again. She turned the doorknob. She opened the door.

The car accident that had killed Gabbie had always been a blank in Mercy’s mind. She had nodded off in her bedroom. She had woken up in an ambulance. Those were the only two details that Mercy could recall. But sometimes, her body had a memory. A flash of terror burning through her nerves. A cold fear freezing the blood in her veins. A hammer shattering her heart into pieces.

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