Page 173 of This is Why We Lied

The knife cut through her arm. Her breast. Her leg. Jon straddled her, driving the blade into her chest, her belly. Mercy tried to buck him off, to twist away, but nothing would stop him. Jon kept swinging back and forth, stabbing the knife into her back, taking it out, plunging it in again. She felt the crack of bones, the explosion of organs, her body filling with piss and shit and bile until Jon wasn’t just stabbing her, he was beating her with his fists because the blade had broken off inside her chest.

Suddenly, Jon stopped.

Mercy could hear him panting like he’d finished a marathon. He was spent from the attack. He could barely stand. He stumbled away from her. Mercy tried to take in a breath. Her face was in the dirt. She inched onto her side. Every part of her body was alive with pain. She had fallen across the stairs. Her feet were still on the porch. Her head rested on the ground.

Jon was back.

She heard liquid sloshing, but it wasn’t the waves hitting the shore. Jon walked up the stairs with the gasoline can. She heard him spreading the fuel around the inside of the cottage. He was going to burn the evidence. He was going to burn Mercy. He dropped the empty can beside her feet.

He walked back down the stairs. Mercy didn’t look up. She watched blood drip from his fingers. Stared at the shoes that Bitty had bought him in town. She could feel Jon looking down at her. Not with sadness or with pity, but with a kind of detachment she had seen in her brother, her father, her husband, her mother, herself. Her son was a McAlpine through and through.

No more so than when he struck a match and tossed it into the cottage.

The whoosh brought a blast of hot air across her skin. Mercy watched Jon’s blood-soaked shoes shuffle through the dirt as he walked away. He was going back to the house. Back to Bitty. Mercy wheezed in a slow breath. Her eyelids started to flutter. She felt blood gurgling inside her throat. She was overcome with the sensation of floating. Her soul was leaving her body. There was none of the expected calmness, the sense of letting go. There was only a cold darkness that worked its way from the edges, the way the lake froze in the winter.

Then there was Gabbie.

They were both hurtling through the air, but they weren’t angels in heaven. They were being thrown from the car at Devil’s Bend. Mercy turned to look at Gabbie’s face, but only a bloody pulp remained. An eye dangling from a socket. An eruption through her skin of shattered teeth and bone. Then an intense, searing heat that threatened to engulf her.

“Help!” Mercy screamed. “Please!”

Her eyes opened. She coughed. Droplets of blood sprayed across the ground. Mercy was still on her side, still draped across the porch stairs. Smoke fouled the air. The heat from the fire was so intense that she could feel it drying the blood on her skin. Mercy forced her head to turn, to look back at what was coming. The flames were working themselves across the porch. Soon, they would chew their way to the stairs and find her body.

Mercy braced herself for more pain as she rolled onto her belly. She pulled herself off the stairs with her elbows. The broken knife inside her chest scraped into the dirt like a kickstand. She propelled herself forward, the threat of the fire spurring her to keep moving. Her feet dragged uselessly behind her. Her pants had come undone. Dirt caked into the material, pulling her jeans down around her ankles. The exertion quickly caught up with her. Mercy’s vision started to swim again. She willed herself not to pass out. Delilah had said that McAlpines were hard to kill. Mercy wasn’t going to live to see the sun rise over the mountains, but she could make it to the goddam lake.

As usual, even these last moments were a struggle. She kept passing out, waking up, pushing herself forward, passing out again. Her arms were shaking by the time she felt water on her face. She used the last of her strength to roll onto her back. She wanted to die looking up at the full moon. It was such a perfect circle, like a hole in the blackness. She listened to her heartbeat as it slowly pumped blood from her body. She heard the soft cupping of water around her ears.

Mercy knew that she was close to death, that there was nothing that was going to stop it. She didn’t see her life flash before her eyes.

She saw Jon’s life.

Playing in Delilah’s yard with his little wooden toys. Cowering in the back of the room when Mercy showed up for her first court-appointed visitation. Being dragged from Delilah’s arms by Mercy in front of the courthouse. Sitting in Mercy’s lap as Fish drove them up the mountain. Hiding with Mercy when Dave was on one of his tears. Bringing Mercy books on Alaska and Montana and Hawaii so that they could get away. Watching her pack their bags again and again. Watching her unpack them because Dave had written her a poem or sent her flowers. Being handed off to Bitty while Mercy sneaked away to one of the cottages with Dave. Being abandoned with Bitty because Mercy had to go to the hospital for another broken bone, a cut that wouldn’t heal, a suture that wouldn’t hold.

Being constantly pushed into the arms of Mercy’s mother, his grandmother, his rapist.

“Mercy …”

She heard her name like a whisper inside of her skull. She felt her head being turned, saw the world as if she was looking through the wrong end of a telescope. A face came into view. The man from cottage ten. The cop who was married to the redhead.

“Mercy McAlpine,” he said, his voice faded like a siren passing down the street. He kept shaking her, forcing her not to give in. “I need you to look at me right now.”

“J-Jon …” Mercy coughed out the name. She had to do this. It wasn’t too late. “Tell him … tell him he h-has to … he has to g-get away from h-her …”

Will’s face swam in and out of her vision. She saw him there one moment, then gone the next.

Then he screamed, “Sara! Get Jon! Hurry!”

“N-no …” Mercy felt a trembling in her bones. The pain was unbearable, but she couldn’t give up now. She had one last time to get it right. “J-Jon can’t … he c-can’t … stay … Get away from … from …”

Will spoke, but she couldn’t make sense of his words. What she knew was that she couldn’t leave things with Jon like this. She had to hold on.

“L-love … love him … s-so much …”

Mercy could feel her heart slowing. Her breaths were shallow. She fought against the ease of slipping away. She needed Jon to know that he was loved. That this wasn’t his fault. That he didn’t have to carry this burden. That he could get out of the quicksand.

“I’m s-sorry …” She should’ve said this to Jon. Should’ve told him to his face. Now all she could do was ask this man to tell him her last words. “F-forgive … him … Forgive him …”

Will shook Mercy so hard that she felt her soul snap back into her body. He was leaning over her, his face close to hers. This cop. This detective. This one good man. She grabbed his shirt, pulling him even closer, staring so deep into his eyes that she could practically see his soul.

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