by Leigh Tudor
“I don’t know, Edgar,” Mercy said with wide eyes. “Do you want your future children to play on grossly inferior swings and uncalibrated teeter-totters? Or do you want those miniature Sue Ellens and adorable little Edgars to play on high-quality equipment with the latest safety features and multi-year warranties?”
With a gruff response he threw the money on the table.
“Not exactly a 323 percent markup, but fifty percent ain’t bad, considering I didn’t have to purchase gluten-free flour,” she whispered to Nate.
The youth crossed his arms. “No, you just put Edgar and Sue Ellen’s overall health in jeopardy.” Then someone caught his attention and his eyes lit up. “Hey, Trev-Man, are we ready to go?”
Mercy heart seized in her throat as she found herself facing the man she dreamed about at night and during quiet times throughout the day, and pretty much all the time in between.
He looked his usual GQ buttoned-up self, wearing a flax-colored linen shirt with the sleeves rolled past his elbows and dark jeans hanging low on hips that were notably less wide than his shoulders. His sunglasses, despite being plain, looked expensive and gave him an air of effortless class.
Not at all the type of man she wanted to marry as he was far too put together and worldly.
And that was when she saw the delicate vision standing next to him—with one slender wrist lazily resting on the crook of his elbow.
They looked to be together. Like romantically.
Maybe she shouldn’t jump to conclusions?
Hadn’t she learned her lesson?
“Ms. Ingalls,” Trevor said with a quick head nod, and then addressed Nate. “We need to be leaving soon. Where are the girls?”
“In the church basement tie-dying T-shirts with the other kids.”
Mercy’s leg began to bounce frenetically as she ran through some dignity-saving scenarios. She didn’t want Trevor to see her as single and significant-other-less while he stood there with one of the most beautiful creatures she’d ever seen within a fifty-mile radius of Wilder.
Of course, she’d thought the same about his sister, and that didn’t end well.
But look at her. She was petite and demure and perfect for him.
Mercy jumped out of her chair in a frenzy, her eyes landing on Edgar, who was chatting it up with Emmy Lou. Without thinking, she grabbed him by his bony arm and yanked him toward the couple, causing him to bump into the table despite attempting to catch himself.
She whispered in his ear, “Tell them your name is Greg and the cakes are free.”
“I’d like you to meet my boyfriend.” She just couldn’t allow Trevor to flaunt this woman in front of her. It was too humiliating. “Trevor Forrest, I’d like you to meet… Greg.”
Take that you two-timing, cologne-infused, manly specimen, you.
Silence ensued as everyone’s eyes made their circuit around the small group, all with confused expressions.
“Uh, Mercy,” Nate said, standing next to her and leaning in as inconspicuously as possible, which was not at all. “I think you mean Edgar. He’s my high school math teacher.”
Traitor!
The vision smiled, as if nothing were suspect, “Hey, Edgar. So nice to see you outside of school functions. Are you enjoying the summer break?”
Mercy swallowed heavily. She’d assumed Trevor had never met Edgar. There was no way he had been in Wilder long enough to meet him, was there?
But then this perfectly coifed, ethereal stranger appeared to know Edgar as well.
Mercy assessed the woman with a critical eye. With Mercy’s luck, which was waning of late, the woman’s babymakers were likely in perfect fertile condition and her parenting skills beyond reproach, given her career choice.
Trevor cleared his throat and gave Mercy a pitiful face. “Edgar and Maggie are colleagues. Maggie is Haley’s teacher at the elementary and Edgar teaches advanced mathematics at the high school. They see one another quite often during teacher-related functions. And, unless something has changed since I saw them last night at Lucky’s, Edgar’s in a committed relationship with Sue Ellen Whalen.”
Seemingly oblivious to the awkward moment, the woman held out her hand, “Hi, I’m Maggie. I’m new to Wilder.”
“Mercy,” she returned, shaking her hand, her face and neck on fire.
“I thought you said the Wilder sisters were geniuses?” Maggie asked, standing beside her car door with her palm out. “They seem pretty clueless to me.”
Trevor placed the last hundred-dollar bill in her hand. “Trust me, they’re brilliant and notoriously devious. But their emotional IQ leaves something to be desired and requires a bit of a nudge.”
“Nudge?” She laughed, dropping the bills in her clutch. “More like a shove into the path of a semi with spikes on the fenders.”
He grinned at the spot-on analogy. “Hey, thanks for helping me out. You’ve been great.”
“Please, I’m single and earning a teacher’s salary, so I was more than happy to help. For the right price,” she said, starting to get into the car. She then paused. “So, you’re sure Alec and Loren are going to work out? I mean, if not, I’d be more than happy to tend to that man’s wounds.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but they’ve been humping like rabid bunnies on Viagra all week.”
As a matter of fact, Trevor was now having to deal with the opposite situation with Alec walking around the store on a sex-junkie high, coming up with every imaginable excuse to drive to Newberry and returning with a kick in his step. Whereas, before their pseudo reconciliation, he would return looking as if his dog had died and on the verge of spending his spare time composing twangy country music songs.
And when he wasn’t busy trolling Loren, she was showing up at Wilder’s until Trevor finally had to say something about their less than stealthy sexcapade venue choices.
Unknown to them, the back office was not soundproof.
“Too bad.” Maggie sighed, sliding into her car and rolling down her window. “Let me know if I can provide any more Cupid-like services.”
“I may have to wait a while. You don’t come cheap.”
“Nothing worthwhile is, my friend. Now, go get your woman.”
“Easier said than done. But now that I know Greg is a fictitious character, I can make my next move.”
“Good luck then.”
He waved as she pulled away and turned back toward the church. Mercy had yet to make her escape, and it was time to confront the lying, duplicitous woman.
The number of people peppering the front lawn was starting to wane as it was time to make their trek home and start fixing lunch. He found Marleigh and Haley at the bake sale table that was now bereft of baked goods, showing off their personal tie-dye designs to Nate, who was doing an admirable job exclaiming over their artistic endeavors.
Trevor did the same, making the girls feel as if they’d just won a contract to display a joint tie-dye exhibition at the Met.
Looking for signs of a woman rappelling from the bell tower on a dare or shaming families into donating a little bit more to the playground equipment fund, he turned to Nate. “Nate, my man, give me ten to twenty minutes?”
He gave him a chin lift. “Pretty sure she’s hiding in the enclave of the vestibule.”
Wherever the hell that was. Apparently, to Madame G, learning the proper architectural nomenclature in the house of the Lord was a character-building exercise. And where he couldn’t get the kids to pick up their bedrooms any faster than a sloth after mealtime, after an afternoon with the grand dame, they could provide a detailed explanation of a narthex, nave, chancel, and transept.
He walked into the church, noting that everyone must have taken advantage of the perfect weather outside as the inside appeared empty. Just before heading to search the basement, he heard a clanging noise in the coatroom, followed by a crash, and a voice lament, “Mother, Mary, and that other guy.”
Opening the door, he peered inside and found Mercy on the floor and
trapped in the framed base of a coat hanger rack. She tried to use her arms to push herself up from the metal frame and off the floor, but the rack was mounted on wheels and kept moving, making the effort all the more difficult and comical.
“I see you’ve engaged in a sparring match with the coatrack,” Trevor said.
“Very funny,” she hissed. “It was dark and I tripped and now I’m stuck.”
“I can see that,” he said, closing the door. Leaning against it, he flipped on the light. “I guess vaulting through a herd of wild goats in the Serengeti is much easier than navigating a coat closet in the dark.”
Suppressing a grin while Mercy wrestled with the slippery and sliding rack was fast becoming an impossible task.
Mercy blew a lock of hair out of her face. “First of all, it was eastern Mongolia. Second, the males can get up to two hundred and sixty pounds and are no joke, Mr. Fancy Pants Spy Guy. Now, I don’t suppose you could muster up some basic manners and help me up?”
“Only if you ask nicely.”
“I just did.”
“Suggesting I’m lacking in manners is not what one would describe as nice.”
She glared at him, and he loved it. “How about this? If you don’t help me, I’m going to use your crotch as target practice during our next self-defense class. Unless you’re so full of yourself, you think you have the balls to withstand a deliberate kick to your junk.”
“Still not asking nicely, Ms. Ingalls.”
“Fine, I’ll do it myself.” She huffed, twisting her body as the coatrack wobbled precariously back and forth. After a few ungraceful attempts, she was able to make it onto her hands and knees and then slowly backed out of the frame with her backside high in the air and her hair shrouding her face.
“You, sir, are no gentleman,” she said, standing straight and finger-combing her hair.
“And you, my dear Mercy, are no lady.”
“How so?”
Where did he begin? “Ladies don’t lie.”
She looked away and blew out a breath. “I admit that I lied about Edgar being Greg. You see, Greg has been… out of town. He’s working on this big accounting project for this firm. So I’m sorry for trying to pawn Edgar off as Greg. I mean, there’s really no comparison…”
“Just stop,” Trevor said with a single shake of his head. “It won’t work this time.”
“What do you mean?” she asked innocently, removing a fictional piece of lint from her clothes.
Innocent. The woman was anything but.
“Your classic sleight of mouth trick, where you dazzle the listener with distracting quips making them forget the significance of the initial fabrication.”
“Sleight of mouth? Sounds like the title of a low-budget porn video.”
“And there you go again. Detract and distract.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, waving at him to move aside, “I have to find Cara and Madame Grand.”
“Cara and Madame G went home. I told them I’d drop you off.”
She stiffened as nervous energy appeared on her face. “I’m out of your way. Besides, Greg wouldn’t like it.”
“You do realize you’re lying in church?” They were five feet inside the front doors of the so-called vestibule, and she was already spouting falsehoods. “You just can’t refrain from using curse words and then bald-faced fabrications in the house of God, can you?”
Mercy pursed her lips as if realizing the gravity of the sin, wrapped her arms around her waist, and stared at her shoes. “Why can’t you accept that this was inevitable? That we had agreed to pretend to be engaged until you were officially approved by the state to be Marleigh’s and Nate’s foster parent. And then we’d split.”
“Oh, but I agree. You and I are inevitable. It’s time you came to terms with that.”
“Maybe I don’t feel the same way about you?” she said unconvincingly.
“False again. But without all the verbal window dressing.” He reached out to run the back of his hand down her arm, but she pulled back as if he were a live wire.
He decided to backtrack. “What were you doing in a dark coatroom anyway?”
She shrugged. “Licking my wounds after embarrassing myself.”
“While we’re on the subject. Why did you lie about meeting someone else? Especially when things between us were going so well?”
She twisted her fingers, as if pondering her words.
“Talk to me, Mercy. Why would such a beautiful, brave, and fierce woman be so afraid to admit her feelings?”
Mercy turned to the side as if perturbed or contemplating checking in a coat. “Since you’re so emotionally evolved, why don’t you tell me?”
“Fine. You love me; you won’t admit it, even to yourself yet, but you do. You also love my kids, and want to be a part of our family. But you’ve convinced yourself that I’m the wrong guy.”
He watched her entire body deflate.
“What? What did I say, Mercy? What aren’t you telling me?” At this point, he was all but begging.
And then she turned sad. So much so, he could feel it in his bones, her heart shrouded with deep, dark turmoil.
“You’re not the wrong guy…” She swallowed, then ran her hands up and down her arms as if the temperature in the coatroom had dropped several degrees.
“So what, you’re going to hit me again with the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ line?”
She pursed her lips together and looked away.
“Just say it.”
And then, just as quickly, she turned angry, her body all but trembling with it. “You think you know me, but you don’t,” she belted. “I don’t even know me. I mean, you know about the things I was forced to do. The sketchy things we had to do to keep our family together in the only way we knew how.”
“Yes,” he said, confused. “You already know I know about that.”
She speared him with her amber eyes, which pooled with moisture that dripped down her cheeks. “But there are things you don’t know. Things I’m not even sure about. I’m supposedly this great artist who could copy some of the world’s most valuable paintings. But am I really?” she asked, splaying her hand over her chest. “Am I really an artist? Or just a man-made version of one? Does that make me a fraud? A surgically enhanced shell of a human, designed to paint pictures for someone else’s financial benefit? Could I ever paint just for myself and make a living at it? And then I wonder, what if I couldn’t paint—what if my head malfunctioned again and I couldn’t paint anymore. Who would I be? I don’t know. Because I. Don’t. Know. Who. I. Am.
“I only recently found out that I … that I was… sterilized. Because what’s the point of procreating when my purpose was to hammer out fakes? Vile cutting into my brain and my reproductive organs are the things I know about. What if there were more things done to me that were… I don’t know… undocumented? What if there are other man-made things about me, about who I am, that… that I don’t even know about?”
“Then we’ll deal with them. Together.” He pushed away from the door and cautiously pulled her toward him. To his relief, her arms wrapped around his neck as if holding on for dear life. “There’s nothing they could have done that would have changed your soul, Mercy. And your soul, who you are as a person, is my favorite thing about you. Not your artistic skills or your childbearing capabilities, but your light heart and your innate kindness.
“Everyone is plagued with self-doubt at one time or another. I’ve come to suspect that knowing oneself is the work of a lifetime,” Trevor said gently. “And this might not be reassuring at the moment, but we both might become strangers to each other and ourselves a few more times over the years. We’ll just have to get to know one another all over again.”
He rested his forehead on hers, surprised to find that his voice was turning gravelly and his eyes damp. “They took years away from you. Please don’t let them take another second of your life. Or mine, for that matter.”
“You think I
’m kind?”
“Under ideal circumstances. You know, after peeling back all of your layers. Getting past that underbelly of snark. And then, of course, there’s your sarcasm and penchant for lying.
“So, what I’m hearing you say is that I’m perfect.”
He smiled down at her. “Yes, Ms. Mercy Ingalls. To me, you’re perfect.”
Solemnly, his thoughts sobered, turning to Nate, Marleigh, and Haley. “Listen, I really want this to be something real. And to do that takes lots of work, commitment, and communication. No more fake fiancés or fake girlfriends or boyfriends. I have three very important people I’m doing my best not to inflict any more emotional damage on, so if you’re not one-hundred-percent committed to making this work, then I’m going to have to bow out.”
“Commitment and communication aren’t attributes we Ingalls women are known for.”
“I’m intimately aware of that.”
“I can’t promise to do and say everything the right way, but I can promise to try really hard.”
“No more lying, Mercy,” he said. “That’s a hard stop for me.”
“No more lying.”
“That means even when you’re trying to protect me or others, and you convince yourself that lying is somehow part of some greater good scenario.”
“No justifications or excuses,” she said earnestly. “No more lying.”
Chapter Ten
“I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.”
— Jimi Hendrix
Cara made her way out the front double doors of Wilder Junior/Senior High and breathed a sigh of relief. Summer school was almost over and she’d have a few weeks before regular classes started up again.
She had just escaped an argument with Ally and Amarilla about a kegger being thrown that night in one of the more remote fields by a swimming hole. A favorite venue for some of the morally suspect, albeit popular kids in school.
Amarilla suggested a not-so-brilliant plan where they would all three claim to be spending the night with one another and instead, go to the party.