by Paula Munier
“You’re lying.” Mercy knew she was right about her grandmother’s lying, and right to call out the lie, but being right didn’t feel good. Being right rankled, as it often did. It was like finding out the sun was just a little star like all the billion trillion others in the sky. Or at least the observable universe.
“I don’t have the time for this.” Mercy watched as her grandmother bolted upright, her spine straight and her cheeks flushed.
“I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me before,” she said quietly.
Her grandmother blanched. She sank back down into the love seat and was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said finally.
Mercy waited for her to tell the truth.
She hoped that whatever that truth was, it wasn’t too bad. She’d always assumed that Patience and Red had a happy marriage, which is what she supposed all kids and grandkids assumed, unless presented with clear evidence to the contrary. Her parents had a good marriage, too. At least she thought they did. She thought good marriages ran in the family, that she was destined to meet The One. Just as her mother had met her father, and her grandmother had met Red.
Mercy believed that Martinez was The One, and that they were destined to enjoy the same sort of happy marriage she imagined her parents and grandparents had. That they’d earned their chance at happiness by fighting the good fight in Afghanistan. And that they would make the most of it, and not fall victim to the demons that destroyed other veterans’ lives when they got back home. They would beat the odds, on the battlefields of life and love and loss, because she’d inherited the ability to form a happy lifelong partnership in the same way she’d inherited her red hair and straight shooting from her grandfather and her long legs and love of the natural world from her grandmother. Or her father’s penchant for the Elizabethan poets or her mother’s tendency to overthink everything. It was in her very genes, this capacity to form a lasting pair bond. Like bald eagles and wolves and macaroni penguins.
Or so she’d thought.
“Let’s continue this conversation in the kitchen,” said Patience, with a hint of surrender in her voice. “I’ve got a cake to bake.”
Now that was the woman she knew and loved, Mercy thought. She waited until her grandmother had left the room to smile.
Patience called baking her zen. She baked the way other people did yoga or sat meditation or practiced tai chi. The fact that she was escaping to her kitchen now gave her away; she was more upset about this George Rucker business than she would let on.
The dogs looked up at Mercy, waiting for the signal that they could follow Patience into her kitchen, one of their favorite places on earth. “Oh, go on, I’m right behind you.”
They scampered off and she trailed them. She was in no hurry to force her grandmother’s hand. Even though that was her aim in coming here and she seemed to be on the edge of victory.
Patience was already at work at the marble island, her Provençal apron on and her fingers dusted with flour. The smell of vanilla and sugar and chocolate filled the air. The soothing scents of Mercy’s childhood.
She made herself at home on one of the stools on the other side of the island, and Elvis sat at her side. Sunny trotted around to Patience’s side of the island and curled up at her grandmother’s feet. Mercy was beginning to believe that the golden retriever was always drawn to the most stressed-out person in the room, whether that stress was due to anxiety or fear or just plain ordinary unhappiness. She was the mood ring of dogs.
“You’re baking,” she said to her grandmother, her voice heavy with meaning.
“I’m always baking.” Patience shrugged. “No big deal.”
Mercy surveyed the island before her. The gleaming marble surface was cluttered with mixing bowls and whisks and measuring cups, cake pans, and a stainless-steel layer cake slicer. That slicer could only mean one thing. “You’re making a doberge cake? It’s not my birthday.”
“Not yet.” Patience grinned at her, obviously pleased to change the conversation from one about her to one about Mercy.
“Not yet is right.” Her thirtieth birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks, and she was not happy about it. Just thinking about it made her feel old and inexperienced at the same time.
“You need a reason to bake a doberge cake.”
Chocolate doberge cake was Mercy’s favorite. The New Orleans specialty was a multilayered confection made of six thinly sliced layers of buttermilk cake stacked high, a delicious custard filling sweetening each layer, topped with a buttercream and fondant icing. A Big Easy makeover of the Hungarian Dobos torte. A labor of love her grandmother made only on very special occasions, namely Mercy’s birthday, and times of deep stress. The more upset Patience was, the more complicated the recipe.
Her grandmother ignored her and began assembling her ingredients—flour, baking powder, salt. Patience focused on the battered recipe card in front of her. She pulled a carton of eggs from the refrigerator and placed it in front of Mercy. “Make yourself useful. Separate five eggs for me, please.”
“Sure.” Mercy leaned over the counter and grabbed three little glass bowls, one for whites, one for yolks, and a spare. The spare was the net over which she would separate the egg, just in case yolk inadvertently spilled into the white. She cracked the first egg over the spare bowl, did the delicate dance between white and yolk, allowing the white to fall into the whites bowl, and then emptying the yolk into the yolks bowl. Time for egg two.
“Did I ever tell you about James?”
Mercy looked up at her grandmother. “James.”
“My first sweetheart.”
“No.” As far as she knew, Red had been her first and only true love. Patience met and wed him young, and when he died, she did not remarry. Instead, she went to veterinary school and set up her animal hospital. She’d been dating Claude Renault, an animal surgeon from Quebec, for many years now, but she refused to marry him. And Mercy knew he’d proposed more than once. He was a nice guy, and sometimes she felt sorry for him.
“We met in the seventh grade.” Patience measured out two cups of flour and tossed it into a large orange mixing bowl. “We were the smartest kids in the class—the brainiacs—and the kids teased us. I suppose we were destined to find one another.”
“Destined? What were you, twelve?”
“Destiny can strike at any age.” Patience looked at her with those bright blue eyes. “He was the first boy to ever hold my hand. The night of my thirteenth birthday party.” She smiled at the memory. “I held my own hand under my pillow for weeks afterward.”
Mercy laughed, careful not to disturb the eggshell halves in her hands. “You did not.”
“I did.” Patience measured out another two cups of flour. “We were inseparable. Kindred spirits. We took long walks in the woods, shared our favorite books, read each other poetry. We even checked each other’s homework.”
“How romantic.”
“I know it seems silly. But James was the first boy to see me as I really was and love me anyway.”
“But not the last,” said Mercy, thinking of her grandfather.
Patience didn’t answer, and that gave Mercy pause. “What happened?”
“His father got transferred. They moved out West.”
“And you lost touch?”
“We wrote letters back and forth for years. He invited me to his senior prom, but my parents refused to let me go. He went to the Naval Academy, and I promised to visit him there. But then I met your grandfather.” Patience poured two cups of sugar into a stainless steel bowl and added three sticks of softened unsalted butter.
“Do you ever regret it?”
“What?”
“Not going to that prom.”
Patience wiped her hands on her apron. “No. I loved your grandfather, and we had a good life together. Three beautiful children. And even more beautiful grandchildren.” She smiled at Mercy. “But I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different had I gone to that prom.”
“Different how?”
“I think I would have become a veterinarian much sooner.”
“Really? Grandpa Red kept you from being a vet?”
“No, not really. But he was a strong personality, and I was very young. It took me a long time to come into my own.”
“And you could have done that sooner with James.”
“Perhaps. Who knows. I do know that I wouldn’t trade those years with Red for anything.” She watched as Mercy separated the last of the eggs. “The point is, I thought James was the one for me. But it just so happened that your grandfather was the one for me.”
This was her grandmother’s not-so-subtle way of telling her that maybe Martinez was not the one for her. Maybe Troy was.
Mercy needed to get this conversation back on track, back to her grandfather and George Rucker. “And then Grandpa Red died.”
Patience hooked the bowl into her cranberry-colored KitchenAid mixer and switched it on. The whirring effectively ended their little talk.
Mercy frowned. Elvis’s ears perked. He leapt to his feet and sprinted from the room just as the woodpecker knocker sounded. Sunny followed suit.
Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat.
Patience waved a hand toward the front of the house.
“Got it.” Mercy hustled to the foyer, where she found Elvis sniffing at the slim streak of light at the bottom of her grandmother’s front door. Tail wagging.
She peered through the peephole and saw no one. Nothing. She opened the door to find a cardboard box covered with a threadbare pink blanket on the welcome mat. The blanket was moving and meowing.
She knelt down to take a closer look just as Elvis pushed the blanket aside with his nose. Six kittens—three inky black and three gray—squirmed and squealed inside. Mercy snatched up the box and pulled the blanket back over the top before any could escape. She looked around the yard, but she saw no one.
Which wasn’t unusual. Vermonters were very good about spaying and neutering their pets, so most of the rescues people adopted came from kill shelters farther south. This was especially true for the dogs. But there were always feral cats around, as well as abandoned pit bulls. Locals knew that Patience—known as the Doctor Dolittle of Northshire—would always find a place for them. It was understood that if they dropped them off on her front doorstep—as opposed to the entrance of her vet office around back—they could do it anonymously, no questions asked. Good Samaritans also dropped off donations of food, kitty litter, and other pet supplies.
Mercy started back to the kitchen, box of mewling kittens in hand, Sunny the golden retriever on her heels.
“Come on, Elvis,” she yelled over her shoulder.
She planted the box of kittens on the kitchen table. “Special delivery.”
Patience looked up from her mixer. “Grab a playpen from the pantry and set it up here. I’ll check them out as soon as I get these cakes in the oven.”
Mercy did as she was told, setting up the colorful play yard in the corner, and scooping the kittens one by one from the box and depositing them into the pen. “They’re so cute! What will you do with them all?”
“I’m sure the Cat Ladies will help.” The Cat Ladies ran a rescue organization out of an eighteenth-century farmhouse they’d inherited from a rich aunt. They found forever homes for hundreds of cats every year—and those too feral to adopt had the run of the place.
“Mr. Horgan could use some company.” Mr. Horgan was an elderly widower still grieving for his late wife, the town’s longtime librarian. Two of Mercy’s favorite people.
Patience smiled. “An excellent idea.”
“Maybe this little guy.” Mercy held up an adorable black kitty, the largest and noisiest of the litter.
“Even better. The black cats are the hardest to place in forever homes. A lot of people still let those silly old superstitions get the better of them, and they won’t have one in the house. But I doubt Walter will mind.”
Sunny leaned her pretty golden muzzle on the edge of the playpen, the better to guard the little feline newcomers. The kittens fell over themselves as they explored their new home.
“They’re probably hungry. Why don’t you—”
Another, louder rat a tat tat interrupted Patience, and she stopped mid-sentence. She raised an eyebrow at Mercy. “More kittens?”
“I’ll go.”
“No, you stay here with your new charges. Find a litter box for that pen.”
Patience left the room and Mercy started for the pantry again. She heard Elvis bark and stopped short. Elvis had not returned to the kitchen when she’d called him. He’d stayed at the door. Maybe knowing there were more kittens to come.
But if it were just more kittens, he would not be barking.
Something was wrong.
Mercy sprinted through the kitchen and down the entry. Elvis had dropped down on his haunches by the front door. Still, tense, ears perked.
This was his alert position, the posture he assumed when he sniffed out weapons or explosives. IEDs had been his specialty in Afghanistan.
Patience stood at the door, her back to Mercy. Her hand on the knob.
She twisted it. Pulling at the door.
“Wait!” yelled Mercy. Just seconds too late.
Her grandmother turned toward Mercy.
Elvis leapt to his feet. He rose up on his back legs and lunged at her grandmother. Pushing her away from the door. She stumbled, cursing as she fell to the floor.
Mercy threw herself on top of her grandmother just as a deafening roar filled her ears and a blinding light seared her eyes.
The last thing she felt before she felt nothing at all was the soft brush of fur against her cheek.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She dreamed of mewling kittens abandoned on doorsteps and barking dogs abandoned in kennels, and she struggled to rescue them all but they kept on slipping away. Out of their boxes and off their leads and into the cold, dark night after the rat a tat tat of the Pied Piper.
Beyond her reach. She called and called and called for them to return to her. The sounds of their howling retreating into the midnight gloom on the heels of the man with the staccato song. She caught a last glimpse of Elvis—Elvis!—as he disappeared into the shadows after the Pied Piper, his black-tipped tail dissolving to black.
She opened her eyes and there he was. Wesley Hallett. He was sitting in an orange plastic chair at the side of her bed. Her hospital bed. For a moment she thought she must still be dreaming. But Hallett was real. “What happened?”
“From what I understand you were in an explosion yesterday. Don’t you remember?”
She remembered a great flare and a great noise and a great fall. But that was all she remembered. There must be more.
Elvis. She jolted upright, and her brain drubbed inside her skull. Her body throbbed from the exertion. She closed her eyes and fell back, teeth clenched against the pain. No way was she tearing up in front of this guy again.
Hallett held his right hand out, palm up. “Hey, take it easy.”
She turned her head slowly, carefully, deliberately until the man came into full view. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard what happened and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She reached for the remote and raised the bed so she could sit up and look him in the eye. “You wanted to make sure Elvis was all right.”
He shrugged. “I wanted to make sure you were both all right.”
She knew if Elvis were hurt, Hallett would be with him, not her. So he was okay. Relief flooded her. “Where is Elvis?”
“At home with your family.”
A flash of Patience hitting the floor pierced the banging that beat against her bones from the inside out. She willed away the pain. “Is my grandmother all right?”
“Apparently she broke her arm in the fall. But she’s okay otherwise.”
If that were true, my family wouldn’t be here, Mercy thought. If by family Hallett me
ant her parents. She’d find out the truth, but first she needed to get rid of this guy. She couldn’t deal with him and her mother at the same time.
“What about Sunny?”
He looked at her blankly.
“The golden retriever. My friend’s dog.”
“That I don’t know.” Hallett started to rise from his chair. “But I can find out for you.”
“That won’t be necessary. My mother will know. I’m sure she has everything in hand.”
He sat back down. Not what Mercy had in mind.
“Look, Patience is fine. Elvis is fine. I’m fine.” She wanted him out of her sight and out of her life right now. Forever. But she knew he wouldn’t give up on Elvis that easily. Because she wouldn’t. “You can leave now.” She didn’t know how she could say it plainer than that.
He gave her an appraising look, the kind her mother gave her whenever she saw her only daughter after any length of time. A look that said, Really? You still haven’t done anything with your hair? Your career? Your life?
“Really. We’re all fine.”
“I know that Elvis has PTSD.”
She wondered who told him that. “All of us have PTSD. Some worse than others. You know that.”
Hallett grabbed the bed’s metal sidearm that separated them and leaned forward. “An explosion like this is bound to provoke reactions in both of you.”
It was true that when she first brought Elvis home, he would sometimes behave erratically, especially in the face of triggers like slamming doors and thunderstorms and fireworks. She didn’t like that kind of noise much, either. But together she and the shepherd had overcome their fears and when they found themselves on the wrong end of gunfire last summer, they had both performed like the capable and experienced soldiers they were. She was proud of Elvis, and proud of herself.
“I don’t know why you keep putting yourself in these situations.” Hallett’s face softened. “But you do. And you keep dragging Elvis into them, too.”