Page 47 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

He caught it, loving insult for Colin already forming on his tongue…

But it wasn’t Colin standing on the boat in front of him.

I’m dreaming, he thought, because that was the only explanation.That’s it. You haven’t slept, and right now, you’re flat-out on a sleeping bag inside, and this is a dream. Because it was too wonderful, and too terrible to contemplate: Ava here, when he wanted her most; and Ava here, where it wasn’t safe.

But never in a dream was the slap of water on a boat hull, nor the tangy scent of the water itself so vivid. In dreams, she didn’t wobble, and brace a hand on the boat rail. In dreams, she beamed at him, and reached for him, eyes all melted-candy soft, pink lip pulled between her teeth because she wanted him so badly. In dreams, she didn’t kick up her chin and shoot him a challenging glare, her face pale and waxy, hair glued to her neck in sweaty straggles. She was as radiant to him as ever…but this looked toorealto be a dream.

Still, he blinked. Several times.

“Jesus,” Colin muttered, and heavy boots clomped up onto the dock. The rope was pulled from his hand.

Oh.

He hadn’t breathed in…a while.

Mercy drew in a deep, slow breath, and sparks flared at the edges of his vision. He could still see, though. Could see Colin bending to tie off the boat. See that the boat wasfullof people, actually.

But the only one he could focus on was Ava. Who straightened, and brushed her hair off her neck with a blown-out breath, lips a tired O. Then she scrounged up a smile, and said, “Hi, baby.”

Her voice, the fatigue that made it shake, was what finally convinced him he wasn’t caught in a strange hallucination, and launched him into action. Shock moved through him painfully, a lightning bolt that seized his heart and numbed his toes. “Fillette,” he breathed, “oh…” And then he lurched forward, leaned over the slapping black stripe of water between dock and boat, and grabbed her right around the waist with both arms.

Ava made a fast, wheezy sound like he’d crushed all the air out of her lungs, but wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned into him as he swung her up and out of the boat and set her boots on the planks of the dock. He cupped the back of her head, where her bun was falling down in the humidity, dropped his face against the side of her throat, and breathed for a minute.

She smelled like sweat, fresh layered over old, and the swamp, in the faint way it clung to everyone who entered it. But mostly she smelled ofhome: their dryer sheets, and their soap, the coconut shampoo she’d been using since she was a teenager. Like her skin, and their bed. Like every good thing he’d left behind when he came down here.

At first, the rush of his pulse in his ears drowned out all other sounds save the soft, close rustle of their clothes rubbingtogether. But as that faded, he became aware that Ava was rubbing a circle against the back of his shoulder with the heel of her hand, and that she was murmuring to him. “…alright, baby, it’s alright. I know.”

He was shaking. Shuddering. Hard, wracking shudders like he was struck with a high fever, and couldn’t seem to stop. He squeezed her tighter, and she shushed him like he was one of their babies, and for a little while, that was all that mattered.

~*~

The truth was, Mercy wasn’t surprised. If anything, Ava’s calm agreement to be shuttled off to London had been the surprise. There was no way his angry mama lioness had suddenly, for once in her knife-wielding, gun-toting, man-killing life, decided to stand down and let the men handle the tough business. In his hurry to leave, he’d chalked it up to the eerie detachment she’d developed when Remy was taken, but the real Ava – his Ava – was clearly still in there, behind the stone-cold veneer she’d wrapped herself in like a cloak, and despite the absolute insanity of her appearance here tonight, he was glad to see it.

“Don’t be mad at Ava,” Maggie said, once they were all crammed into a cabin that wasn’t built to fit – Jesus –tenpeople. “It wasn’t her idea.”

From her place wedged between Mercy’s hip and the arm of the couch, her legs slung over his lap, Ava turned to regard her mom and snorted, once, shoulders lifting.

Mercy grinned and massaged at the back of her neck, pleased when she leaned into the touch. “Mags,” he said, “I’m more than a little insulted on my wife’s behalf that you expect me to buy that line.”

Maggie shrugged and sipped at her beer. “Worth a shot.”

“You’re not angry, then?” Tenny asked, sounding curious – fascinated, almost – rather than apprehensive. He was sitting on the counter by the hot plate, boot heels drumming absently on the cabinet face below. “I told this one” – he hooked a thumb Reese’s direction, where he stood beside him, hands braced back along the counter edge – “you’d be ready to make crab bait of us.” His gaze, Mercy noted with approval, said that he’d accepted that possibility early on, and acted regardless.

Mercy smiled – hekeptsmiling. His face hurt from it. He hadn’t realized he was flirting dangerously close to a panic attack until he had Ava in his arms on the dock. On him, panic didn’t manifest in too-quick breaths, and sweaty palms, and a racing heart. When he panicked, his heart raced because he was swinging a sledgehammer, most likely through someone’s teeth.

He’d felt calm, upbeat, even, as he showed his three-man crew around the swamp, enlisting their capable hands in the laying of traps and the procurement of crawfish for dinner (Toly had taken one look into the bucket, walked wordlessly across the cabin, opened a can of SPAM, and started eating it with a fork straight out of the tin. Devin had shrugged and said, “Won’t be the worst thing I’ve ever sucked.”). He’d felt grounded, and sure of himself – sure that his plan to lure and then catch Boyle would work.

But then he saw Ava standing in that boat, and realized he was about a half-day from walking down Bourbon Street with a shotgun, blasting holes in storefronts and demanding Boyle show himself, like a gunslinger in a Spaghetti Western.

But now Ava was here in his lap, her jaw set at that angle that meant trouble for anyone who wasn’t him. Now he could screw his head back on straight. He was no different from the kids, really: if Mama was there, then everything would turn out alright. The monsters under the bed were only dusty socks, and the only tears to fall would be ones they drew out of other people.

To Tenny, he said, “Have you ever been able to tell your better half what to do?”

Tenny smirked, which was answer enough.

Silent up ‘til now, standing in the corner with his arms folded, Alex cleared his throat pointedly. Mercy looked at him – really looked – for the first time, and noted his pinched expression.

After Ava, no one else’s presence in the boat had been a surprise. Colin and Tenny he’d known about across the water, straight off, and where there was Tenny, there was Reese. Sight of Maggie had lifted his brows, but only for a moment. Who else would one mama trust more than her own mama?

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