Page 79 of Fearless

He put on his storyteller’s voice, that faraway stamp of memory coloring his tale. “There was this gator – big son of a bitch, half of one front leg missing. Daddy had this Ahab thing for him, wanted to be the one to bring him in; wantedhisname on the tag…”

Diving into the swamp with him like this brought up the same old questions; she wanted to pick at the scab, pry up the boards and find out what dark thing had happened that made him hate Louisiana. She always asked, and he always dodged her and sent her off on another topic before she realized what he was doing.

Tell me this time, she asked silently.Tell me about the bad thing now, now that we’re all stripped down and you’ve been inside me.

But she was so tired, and the deep rumble of his voice was so soothing. Later, she assured herself. She’d ask later.

“Now, Daddy never caught him, no,” Mercy said, his voice a lullaby. His accent thickened when he told swamp stories, the Cajun flavor shoveled on in spades. “No one did. But the story went that Big Son was like a pet gator, and he mighta been too smart to take a bait, but he’d eat right out of your hand if you fed him. There was this spot, this shady place in one of the glades, and a deep pool, and you could find Son there, if you’d a mind to feed him. He’d come up if you called him. Three rocks in the water, one after the next. It had to be three. The first one – that coulda been a fish jumping, a frog diving in. The second – after the second, Son would start listening. He’d think about coming up. And after the third, there he was. ‘Come get it, you big son of a bitch,’ and he’d swim right up to you. I heard murderers fed bodies to him, so no one would ever know…”

Eighteen

Five Years Ago

“You boned him? Or he boned you. Whichever.” Leah’s eyes bugged over the rim of her cappuccino mug. “I am so…proud-slash-freaked-out. If that’s even a thing.”

Ava felt a blush flooding her cheeks and sipped her latte to cover it. “I didn’t say ‘bone.’ ”

Leah rolled her eyes. “You said ‘slept with,’ like my grandmother would say. Thepointis – you did him. Like, for real, full-on penetration did him, right?”

Ava nodded.

They were at Stella’s, on the patio, with fresh-baked cookies and coffees, enjoying the lull just after the lunch crush. Leah’s father had suggested they hang out at his coffee shop, just down the street, but Leah had said, “Sorry, Daddy, but Stella makes better biscotti.” And flashed him a grin and shoved Ava out the door ahead of her.

Stella did make better biscotti, but they were after the privacy. Ava had texted Leah, asked if she was up for a snack, and walked around the corner from Mercy’s in the daylight, feeling bold and adult and more than a little wicked. He’d already been gone, off to work at the Dartmoor bike shop. “Don’t eat all my Pop-Tarts,” he’d admonished, and kissed her and smacked her on the ass and left her still half-asleep and dreamy in his bed.

Leah had barely been able to contain her questions until they’d been seated and served.

“Thank God,” she said now, reaching for a chocolate-dipped biscotti. “You’ve been pining after him your whole life!”

Ava didn’t protest; that was true.

“You know I want the details.”

Ava made a face. It felt wrong somehow, a betrayal, to gossip about Mercy, reduce him to some boy who’d smiled at her across the crowded cafeteria. Whatever they had, it wasn’t as cheap as that. “I don’t know…”

“Ugh. At least tell me if it was any good or not.”

“ ‘Good’ probably isn’t the best word for it.”

“Justtell me,” Leah said, verging toward whiny. “You had sex with possibly the scariest person I’ve ever met – I want to know how it was!”

Two fifty-something women having a late lunch glanced sharply in their direction, their eyebrows slanted at disapproving angles.

“Shh,” Ava whispered. “I don’t want anyone to know.”

“So it was bad.”

“It was amazing.” Because that was the only way she could think to describe it on short notice. “It’s just complicated.”

Leah sighed and slumped back in her chair, bummed not to have the gritty play-by-play. “It always is.” She broke off a chunk of cookie and rolled it across her plate with thumb and forefinger like a wheel. “People say women are complicated – no, it’s the men. They’re the ones that always make things difficult.”

An impromptu meeting broke out in the common room over a mix of afternoon coffee and beer. Mercy had showered, but wished he hadn’t pulled on last night’s shirt: he could smell Ava on it. He prayed no one else could.

“Okay, Ratchet,” James said as he lit what Mercy figured was his fourth smoke of the day. “Hit us with the recap.”

The secretary whipped open his zippered folder notepad and turned to the most recent sheet. He didn’t beat around the bush. “I talked to the agent – Doug Ambrose – listing the house for rent, and he said the last renter – Jonathan Smith–”

Several of them snorted.

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