Have Mercy

by N. E. Henderson

  That doesn’t mean I’m not upset with Josh or Cole. I am, and I will be for a while. Josh should have told me he still had videotapes from that time; that he kept them. In all this time, that never crossed my mind.

  “What do you mean, any of them?” Jamie asks. “There are more than what I saw?”

  I was gone for eighty-nine days, nearly three months. There’s no telling how many hours of footage Josh has. I don’t have to ask him why he kept them. I can take a guess and bet I’m dead on. After all these years, he’s still punishing himself for the man he used to be. For the bad things he’s done. For the women he’s hurt.

  I eye Danny, subtly shaking my head. There’s no point in telling Jamie or any of the rest of them that answer. I really don’t want to know, and I certainly don’t want anyone else to see them. I didn’t want Danny to know about any of that, and I certainly didn’t want those kinds of images in his head—at least not of his mom. There’s plenty of ugly things he’s seen over the years. I haven’t sheltered him as much as I should have, but I always think about the what ifs. Those keep me up at night, and if the unthinkable ever happens, I want him to be as prepared as one possibly can be. It’s why I allow Josh to train him the same as he does his team—hard.

  Danny shrugs as he finally rounds the couch, obeying my request to keep that information locked away. He takes a seat adjacent from Brandon and me.

  “I want to know,” Jamie demands, placing his hands on the back of the couch Danny, Cole, and Seth are seated on. His fingers grip the soft material, squeezing it tightly.

  “No,” I say. “Let it go.”

  “Let it go?” he repeats, his eyes darkening. “That isn’t going to happen and you know me well enough to know that already.”

  “I can’t stomach seeing another,” Trey admits. He’s been quiet, sitting alone in the oversized chair directly across from Brandon and me.

  “I can’t believe you let some sicko around our son, around both of my sons. What the hell were you thinking?” Jamie places both of his hands onto his hips.

  “Watch it,” Danny bites out, his jaw locking to keep from saying something else.

  “Jamie.” I sigh. “It won’t solve—” I stop what I’m saying when my front door opens, my attention leaving Jamie to watch his mother walk in.

  Being from the south, this isn’t unusual. Anne and I are about as close as two women can get without being blood-related. I’ve never knocked on her door, not even when I was a kid, and she’s never knocked on mine.

  “Mom,” Jamie says in an almost whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  Brandon’s head pops up and Danny whips his body around to face her as Anne steps in the door, parking her luggage beside it, before quietly closing my front door. Danny’s head dips, his eyes going from her belongings and then back to his grandmother.

  “Hey, Jamie,” she starts, and it’s evident from the stress marring her still beautiful features despite her mature age that she’s been warring with herself since last night. I feel bad. I probably should have waited, but I couldn’t. It was only a matter of time before Jamie found out about his mom. “I—”

  “Grandma!” Danny’s voice comes out sounding chastising. “Did you take a cab here from the airport?”

  “Yes, Daniel, I did, and do not even start.” She holds up her hand, but I know it won’t do any good. If Danny has something to say, the boy is going to say it.

  “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come and picked you up.”

  “I’m fifty-eight years old. If I want to take a cab, I’ll damn well take one.”

  “I’m not okay with that.” He crosses his arms over his chest and Anne arches an eyebrow.

  “Can we get back to what you’re doing here, Mom?” Jamie asks, the bite in his tone makes me cringe. I know he’s going to be mad, but Anne doesn’t deserve his wrath. She did so much for Danny and me in the early days that I’ll never be able to repay her or thank her enough. “In particular, how long you’ve known about my son?”

  “Which one?” Her tone matches his and I want to roll my eyes. This reality isn’t going to go over well with Jamie. I’d forgotten Anne had told me she was coming. The least I could have done was warn Jamie that she knew about Danny. That she knows everything. I can only imagine what’s going through his mind.

  First, he learns I was actually taken and was telling him the truth. That alone had to have been hard to swallow, but then to think the baby I was carrying, his baby, was killed, and then to see him on a stage, playing guitar next to his brother that’s only six weeks younger than him? Yeah, that would have been the shock of a lifetime. And now, he’s figuring out not only did Cole and I keep Danny a secret, but his mom did too.

  “Mom.” He closes his eyes, his fingers now digging into the back of my couch. “Please tell me you did not know about him and keep that from me too.”

  “I’m sorry, son.”

  “Jen,” Cole calls my name, his voice defeated. “Please talk to him already. Just explain it so that he knows why, because I swear to God if you don’t, you’re going to force my hand and I’m going to do it myself.”

  Jamie’s eyes are still shut tight and his jaw locked. Pain and anger mask his face.

  The inevitable was bound to happen. I just never knew when, and I’m no more ready now than I was yesterday, or hell, eighteen damn years ago.

  I’ve heard the phrase, ‘the truth will set you free’ countless times. In my case, the truth scares the ever-loving shit out of me. But can I tell him everything? Can I tell him what she did?

  23

  — Jamie —

  Present

  I took off when it was clear no one was going to give me the answers I’ve been begging for since yesterday.

  I know I fucked up. I fucked up in the worst possible way, and it cost us years that we can’t get back. Memories that’ll never formulate. Memories that we should have made together. I can’t stop this never-ending feeling of betrayal from manifesting. The girl I’m still very much in love with. My best friends. Hell, my youngest son even and now my mom.

  The sun was just starting to dip into the Pacific Ocean when I pulled my SUV into the driveway of the beach rental I’m staying in. It’s a twenty-minute drive from Jenna’s house and the same distance from my ex-wife’s home.

  Even divorced, I know that if Julia finds out about any of this, she’ll have a goddamn conniption fit that my ex-girlfriend is back in my life.

  Reaching above the stovetop, opening the cabinet, I pull down an unopened bottle of the best whiskey I’ve ever tasted—Blanton’s Kentucky Straight Bourbon. Not the cheapest and certainly not the most expensive brand on the market, but for me? It’s perfect and exactly what I need to take the edge off.

  After I open it, I don’t bother with a shot glass or a tumbler. Wrapping my thumb and forefingers around the short neck, I lift the bottle off the counter, bringing it to my lips and tipping it up. The burn can’t be felt until the contents hit my gut after guzzling more than I should. I’m going to feel every bit of this in the morning, but that’s something I’ll have to deal with then.

  An escape looks too appealing at the moment to worry about anything else.

  My eyes suddenly snap to attention when the alarm on the rental starts pinging telling me that someone has opened the door. A code has to be entered within fifteen seconds or the alarm will be tripped.

  Walking briskly out of the kitchen, my senses heightened with caution, I step into the living room and then stride to the foyer. The pinging stops because the correct code has been entered, but I stop dead in my tracks, as Jenna closes the door behind her.

  How did she know my code?

  She must sense that question on the tip of my tongue, because she says, “You still use the date we first met for everything, Jamie. It was the first thing I tried, and it worked.”

  She’s right, though I’ve been using that four-digit code for so long that I’d forgotten it was actually a specific date.r />
  “Why are you here?” I ask, not sure if I really want to know her answer. I’d expected Cole or even the rest of my bandmates. I didn’t expect her.

  “Because you’re right.” She sighs. “You do deserve answers, so I’m here.”

  “You’re going to tell me everything?”

  “I’ll tell you some things, but I need you not to press for everything.” She holds up her palm when I start to open my mouth to protest. “Like I said yesterday, I’m not saying I won’t ever tell you”—she shakes her head—”I’m just saying give me some time to figure out how best to tell you.”

  “There is no best way. Just spit it all out.”

  “I can’t do that, Jamie,” she tells me, again shaking her head. “Certain things about the past are going to hurt a couple of people I care a lot about, and I don’t want to hurt them.”

  I want to demand she tell me who these people are, but my pride is keeping me from going there. The way her eyes are speaking to me, she more than cares about these people she professes to care about. She loves them, and she loves them deeply to want to spare their feelings.

  I don’t like not being one of those people that she loves that much. I used to be, and deep down, I know there’s still something between us. It sparked last night, setting off emotions I’d shut off so long ago. Being inside her again, after all this time, only made me realize every ounce of pleasure I’ve been missing from my life.

  When I remain silent, not making any demands, she continues. “That morning on the night I was taken, I realized my period was late, so before school started, I bought a pregnancy test and discovered I was carrying Danny. The seniors had already taken final exams and didn’t have to attend the last week of school, so you weren’t there. Thinking back, I wish I’d skipped that day and came over to your house and told you, but I was barely seventeen and in shock and the school would have called my parents. I wanted time for it to sink in before I had to tell them their only child was having a child of her own.”

  I feel like shit imagining what must have been going through her mind. I know her parents weren’t awesome parents, but they did love her and only wanted what was best. Her mom being an OBGYN and seeing teen pregnancies as often as she did, I can’t be certain she wouldn’t have pressured Jenna to get an abortion. She wouldn’t have. I know that for a fact without having to ask her. We’d joked about babies on a few occasions and we both agreed we wanted them and wanted them together—eventually.

  “I was planning on telling you after you got off work than night, before your parents got home. I promise, Jamie, I was going to tell you.”

  “I believe you.” It’s the truth. I can see it in her eyes, and that fact right there makes me want to punch myself in the face. Had I really looked at her when she came back, paid closer attention, I realize I would have seen the same truth I’m seeing now. I was so goddamn stupid.

  “Only I didn’t make it to your house after school. The next morning I woke up and my wrists were clasped together inside metal bands. Handcuffs, only a lot thicker,” she clarifies. “I didn’t know where I was. There were no windows. Only a bare room with a metal pole that went from the floor to the ceiling and a workbench.” She shrugs. “The same room I’m guessing you saw in the video Cole showed you. I never once left that room until that last beating, ironically, the one you watched.”

  “Why did he kidnap you?” I ask.

  “Why does any human trafficker take people?” she counters and then exhales a tired breath. “Usually for profit of some sort. Exchange for drugs, sell for money, force them into prostitution. But to answer your question specifically, Josh took a job. He took me with plans to break my spirit and then sell me to whoever was willing to pay the highest amount of money for me.”

  Anger seeps into my skin, soaking every surface and penetrating my body. “Did he do any of those things to you?” I can’t help but ask, both wanting and not wanting to know the answer.

  “He didn’t sell me. He never made it to that point. I wasn’t exactly easy to break.” Her admission gives me a small amount of relief. I know first-hand that she’s a fighter. No one is going to take her down without going to the mats with everything they’ve got. It’s why she always fit in so well with me and my friends. Her mind is strong.

  “Luckily for me,” she goes on, “I was different than any of the others he’d taken before me, but also—”

  “You weren’t his first or his last?” my voice booms, cutting her off. How the hell does she willingly occupy the same room with that monster and not shoot him in the goddamn head for what he did to her? For what he tried to do to our son?

  “I was his last,” she tells me, all too calm for my liking. “What I was saying, or trying to say, is that I was different but just enough like another that he’d taken a few years before me. That was my saving grace.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Remember Maggie? Danny’s girlfriend and Josh’s sixteen-year-old daughter?”

  “Yes,” I bite out. I hate that my son is seeing anyone connected to that sicko. Danny says he loves her, and I can actually understand that type of love at his age. I had it once, but that doesn’t mean I can be okay with him seeing her, yet knowing the things her father did to his mother. He’s admitted that he’s seen multiple videos of the torture Jenna went through. I only saw that one and I’m itching to rip him apart piece by piece.

  “Maggie’s mom, Jessica, was Josh’s first. We’re both redheads and that’s what reminded him of her.”

  Wow. Fucking wow. How many women has he brainwashed?

  “Let me get this straight. He took her, sold her or traded her, and now she’s the mother of his child?”

  “She’s his wife. The love of his life, and yes the mother of his daughter,” she says almost to the point of exasperation.

  “What in God’s name did he do to you to make you think what he did was okay? Was acceptable in any form?”

  “It’s not whatever it is you’re thinking,” she tries to reason with me. “I’m not brainwashed. I know it wasn’t okay. It’s still not okay, but what’s done is done and there is no going back in time to change things. Josh isn’t the same person he was then, and I like to think I had a little to do with changing him for the better.”

  “He should be behind bars right now,” I roar at her, not understanding why she doesn’t feel the same way. “No, he should be six feet underground if I’m being honest here.”

  “Believe it or not, I understand that logic and why you feel that way. I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

  “Jesus, Jen.” I sigh, realizing how I’ve easily transitioned from thinking of her as Elise to now calling her by the first name she used to hate. “Did he threaten you, that if you told me about Danny, he’d come back?”

  “No,” she answers, no hesitation present.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me about our son?” I ask, steering away from the conversation about the man I think brainwashed her. I can see there is nothing I can say at this point that’s going to change the way she sees him.

  “When I first came back, I had no idea if I was still pregnant. Then you wouldn’t believe me when I tried to tell you I was kidnapped, and that I had not and would not have just up and ran away. You wouldn’t hear me out. You didn’t want to believe me. Whatever it was she had filled your head with,” she spits out, her hatred for her former best friend evident in her tone. “You ate it up and she was the only person you believed. The only person it seemed you trusted.”

  “I thought you abandoned me—us.”

  “But you had no reason to believe that or think that. What did I ever do that made you question my love for you, my devotion to us?”

  I’m silent for a long pause. She knows the answer is nothing, zero, zilch, and that I’m being a coward by not verbalizing it, so finally, I sigh and then say, “Not a thing.”

  “Then why was it so easy for you?” she whispers.

  I turn my head, cocking it
to the other side. Easy? Nothing about that time was easy. It was a struggle just to breathe, let alone get out of bed. I spent many days and nights drowning in a bottle of booze.

  “Easy isn’t what I’d call it. It was pure hell.”

  “But you still believed every word she said about me.”

  “I didn’t at first. In fact, I was the last one. Except for Cole, and I didn’t believe her until . . .” The images conjure up and I have to close my eyes, clamping down to try to get them to leave. I’ll never be rid of them.

  “Until what?” she asks, pulling my eyes open once again. Her brows are furrowed, and her brain is turning, wondering what I stopped short of saying.

  “Until she showed me pictures of you and him.”

  “What?” Her mouth hangs open, and her eyes implore mine to explain.

  “Give me a minute,” I tell her before walking away, going into my bedroom.

  I still have the photos. God only knows why I’ve kept them all these years. They’ve caused nothing but agony for me every time I look at them. But I guess they’re a reminder on bad days when I question myself on days that the pain of the loss of love gets to be too much.

  After I take them out of the small, wooden box on top of my dresser where I toss my watch and wallet each night, I turn to find her standing in the doorway, waiting for me. Holding them up, I walk over to the king-sized bed and sit down on the mattress. It’s a good minute of her staring at me like the items in my hand have the ability of launching themselves at her and biting, but she finally pushes off the doorframe and strides toward me.

  When she stops by the bed, she slowly sits, her leg pulling onto the mattress, mirroring the way I’m seated in front of her.

  “She showed me these,” I say, flicking them out for her to take. She’s hesitant but eventually lifts her hand slowly, accepting the two tattered four by six photographs, her hand showing a slight tremble. As she scans them, holding one in each hand, her eyes glance back and forth between the two.