Page 71 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Without pausing for breath, Tenny rounded on her, and said, “Hey, stop making shit up. Can a brother suck his dick? I don’t think so. If anything, I have a superiority complex, and I–”

Reese had edged closer, unnoticed, and pressed a gentle hand over his mouth, stifling him.

Ava grinned, and Colin and Alex chuckled, and Tenny shot them double birds before shaking Reese off and lighting back into Gray.

The screen door, sagging thanks to the years of humid weather, scuffed over the floorboards, and Ava turned, expecting Mercy, but saw Toly instead, squinting at the brightness of the sun, dressed, now, and holding a mug of his own.

“Your man is up,” he offered by way of greeting, slurping coffee as he came down the steps. To the sparring party, he called, “Do you want to wear yourselves out before the day even starts?”

“Not all of us are drunk on nausea medication all the time,” Tenny returned, and Toly scowled.

Ava remounted the stairs and left them to their bickering.

Mercy was indeed up – sleep-rumpled and scratching idly at his stomach through his wifebeater while he stood over the stove. Maggie was up, too, folding up blankets and sleeping bags.

“Hi, sweetie,” she greeted, tiredly. “Coffee’s on – or, well.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe not.”

“Is there any juice besides red grapefruit?”

“There’s orange, baby,” Mercy said, gesturing with his spatula toward the fridge. It was a relic of the fifties, the sort of thing probably called an “ice box” in its day, but it, miraculously, still ran, and she found a jug of OJ inside.

“Was the power still on?” she asked as she poured herself a mugful.

“Nah.” Mercy scraped eggs onto a plate and then started cracking more into the pan. “The wires were still there, and there’s a generator, but I didn’t want to waste the gas on it. Devin was able to hook us back up to the transformer through the way.” He gestured again with the spatula toward the woods, and Ava had no idea how far “through the way” was, could only be glad of cold juice and the hum of the window AC unit.

Mercy stirred the eggs, and glanced back over his shoulder at Maggie, who’d moved on to tidying the couch cushions where she’d slept. She turned, caught Mercy’s gaze, then nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll go see what the guys are up to.”

“Stupid shit,” Ava called, and Maggie’s responding wave seemed to sayof course.

When she was gone, Ava sidled closer, and Mercy’s arm lifted automatically so she could duck beneath it and wind both arms around his waist. She rested her temple on his chest and watched his other hand perfectly scramble eggs. “What’s up?” she asked, just because; there was a lot that was “up,” and none of it was good, and all of it had to be gnawing on his stomach worse than hers.

He hesitated a moment, spatula dragging back and forth, scraping the bottom of the skillet. She felt and heard him swallow, before he said, “This woman. Regina. Do you think she’s really Dee’s?”

She’d broken the news of Regina’s existence – and role in holding Alex’s mother hostage – outside last night, when he’d come to check on her during her first, and ill-timed bout of morning sickness. His smile, radiant after hearing the news of her pregnancy, had frozen, and then cracked. For one awful moment, she hadn’t known if he was going to scream, sob, or simply dive into the water and swim far, far away from theinformation she’d delivered. But then, like a slowly collapsing bridge, his expression had fallen, and tucked into itself, and he’d gone somber, massaging at the spot between his brows as though it pained him. “Okay,” he'd said. “Okay, we’ll…we’ll deal with it in the morning.” And they’d gone back inside, and despite Alex’s knowing look, no one had broached the subject after catching a look at Mercy’s expression.

Now, though, it was time to face the reality of Regina, and what she’d done, and what was to be done with her. Before heading out into the swamp in their borrowed boat, they’d stashed her safely at the NOLA clubhouse, where she could be barricaded and guarded, and where Alex’s mom, Tina, could catch a few safe hours’ sleep, too nervous to stay in her own home overnight.

Ava rubbed at Mercy’s stomach and said, “I think she believes she is. Only a DNA test could prove that she’s your – that she’s related to you,” she corrected quickly.Sisterwasn’t going to be a word he ever used in this case. “But I think if she was lying about who she is, or who she thinks she is, she would have spilled her guts when Tenny shot out her kneecap.”

“Probably.” He had to take his arm from around her shoulders to dump the eggs onto the plate. “Can you hand me one of those cans of SPAM?”

She plucked one from the shelf and said, “If you don’t want to see her–”

“No. I think I need to.”

“She didn’t say much, yesterday. I think she was going into shock. Alex patched up her knee temporarily, and Tenny had some morphine tabs. Bob agreed not to give her any more this morning so she’d be clear-headed enough for us to talk to her.”

“Whatdidshe say yesterday?” he asked, head bent over the counter as he sliced the SPAM into thin flats that he then slapped down into the skillet.

“There was a lot of cussing and screaming and crying. Then she said, ‘It’s Harlan’s fault, it’s all him, don’t hurtme!’ Like she wasn’t taking hostages and shit.”

She leaned back against the counter and watched his profile, searching for a reaction, finding only the blank concentration of a chef committed to his meal.

In that moment, she could have happily strangled Regina. (Maybe not just in that moment.) Of all the people Boyle could have gone to…of all the people they could have needed to question to get to Boyle…

But that was the point, wasn’t it? That was Boyle’s whole play: getting Mercy. Devastating him physically and emotionally, playing with his psyche, driving him crazy in every way he could.

If she could go back to yesterday, if she could just look before she crossed the street toward Tina Bonfils’s house, she could have shot straight through Boyle’s windshield and ended all of this.

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