Mercy (17 page)

Resigned, Cam sat up and propped the pillows behind his back. "And what," he said, "do you want to talk about?"

"Things," Allie hedged. When she'd pictured them having a lively conversatio n, she hadn't gotten to the specifics.

"I'm not going to list my arrests for you," Cam said. Allie hesitated. "We could talk about what you're going to say at the prelimi nary hearing."

"No," Cam said, "we can't."

Jodi Picoult

They sat beside each other until Cam leaned over to kiss her shoulder. "I like not talking to you. I like knowing that I don't have to talk." Allie was silent. "What did we used to talk about?" she said finally, more to herself than to Cam.

She already knew the answer: Five years ago, they had not known each other

. Then, they had discussed the future, the names of their unborn children, the design of the grand mansion they would build on prime Wheelock acreag e. Now, they could say entire sentences over breakfast with a simple conne ction of their eyes. Now, they knew each other's surprises. She and Cam had always been different, and Allie had clung tenaciously to the idea that opposites would attract. She had told herself that two like jigsaw pieces, after all, would not fit.

They had started dating in the coldest days of January, and after several br andy-laced dinners at her apartment, Cam had invited her out for a walk one Sunday. It had been below zero, and he'd bundled her up in his own jacket an d snow pants and gaiters and had taken her through the woods at the base of the Wheelock Pass. She remembered staring at the thick of the forest and thi nking she was walking right into the heart of winter on its wafer-thin crust

. She had listened to Cam speak of the Chimborazo foothills, the Costa de la Luz, the city of Belfast, watching his breath fog in little circles over th e words as he spoke.

"Wouldn't you like to travel?" he had asked, and she had simply shaken her head. She told Cam that the very thought terrified her and brought back a r ecurring nightmare she had had as a child. She was in a strange city made o f stone, and everyone around her spoke in odd clicks and whirs she could no t understand. She kept thinking if she listened more closely or held her ba ck a little straighter, it would all fall into place, but instead she only felt more isolated and she always woke up not comprehending what she had do ne wrong.

"That's the point," Cam told her. "You aren't doing anything wrong. You're doing something different."

"All the same," Allie said, "I like to know what's coming next." At the end of the day he had kissed her goodbye, looking at her intently and saying that traveling was all very well and good as

long as you knew there was a place or a person you could call home.

"Do you think we're opposites?" Allie said now, her own voice sounding lou d and dramatic in the quiet of the night. "Do you?" She turned to Cam and found his eyes closed, lashes feathering his cheek. Sh e rested her head against his chest and put her arms around him, breathing i n his scent and his silence, taking--as always--his lead. Cam sat on the stool at the local coffee shop and broke apart his muffin. He poked at the crumbs with his finger, not really wanting blueberry but accep ting it in lieu of the alternative, a doughnut, which he would not let his o fficers eat on duty simply because it made them a likely butt of community j okes.

"You want something else? " Jenny was a third cousin, one of the waitresses in the shop.

"I'm all set," he said, letting her scurry to one of the four booths lined ag ainst the wall. He glanced up at the clock, which hung beside a stuffed boar'

s head, and settled back. He had ten more minutes before his shift began. Allie was going to be leaving the day after tomorrow, and it felt strange. H

e'd been apart from her before during their marriage, but not because she ha d instigated the separation. There had been training in New Braintree for hi m, and the time he had gone to the hospital for knee surgery. But Allie was the homebody. Allie held down the fort.

She'd already given him a list of food he'd have to buy when grocery shoppi ng and tasks she normally did. Was it really possible that in five years he had not learned how to work the dishwasher?

He wondered what the hell Jamie MacDonald had said that had made her wil lingly agree to leave Wheelock.

He stared down at his list, and thought of the one Allie had been writing for Mia before he left the house this morning. Twice as long. He'd almost volunt eered to deliver it to the shop, when he realized that of course Allie would be going there herself.

A jingle of year-round sleigh bells heralded the opening of the door of th e coffee shop. As if Cam had summoned her with his thoughts, Mia walked up to the counter.

"Hi," he said.

Jodi Picoult

She froze at the sound of his voice, and then turned to face him, smiling shy ly. "Hi."

He gestured at the neighboring stool and she climbed onto it, accepting the cup of coffee Jenny placed in front of her. She took a long sip, closing her eyes, and then looked down at the square of paper in Cam's hands. "So we're both going to be orphaned," she said.

Cam waved the paper in front of her. "I've got less to do than you do."

"Then I'll have to give you some of my chores. You want to buy the fertiliz er, or call the customers with back payments?"

"Oh," Cam said, laughing. "Back payments. I'm much better at threats." She laughed with him, and he let his own voice drop out solely so he could hear the silver of her own. He stared at her, knowing he should not be doin g this, especially in the coffee shop, the nesting bed of community gossip, and also knowing he could not help himself.

He wanted to touch her hair. God, he wanted to touch it.

She tore her glance away to look at her wristwatch. "I've got to go." Cam jumped off the stool. "Me too." He hesitated, unsure of how to best phr ase what he wanted to say. "If you need anything over the next couple of da ys," he began, but then stopped, watching Mia empty her thin purse of two d ollars to leave on the counter. "Mia," he said, as she turned to the door,

"you left a hundred-percent tip."

She shrugged. "I know. I always feel bad when I only get coffee. I used to be a waitress."

"Where?"

Mia stared at him for a long moment and then walked out the door. He followe d her, falling into step on the street. "Italy, 1986," she said finally. "A cafe near the Rialto Bridge. It was called La Mano del Diavolo. The Devil's Hand."

Cam's feet stopped moving. Mia kept walking, but he could not go forward. H

e had stood on the bridge in Venice and had seen the little cafe in the dis tance. He remembered the striped purple umbrellas and the wrought-iron chai rs and marble parfait tables.

But he hadn't stopped. He had been on his way out of Italy, en route to visi t Angus, in Scotland. He looked at Mia, who had turned around, imagining her as she had been almost ten years earlier, her falling hair a river of curls

, her black serving apron wrapped around her willowy form, her voice asking, Cosa desickra? He pictured her glancing left and right to see if anyone was looking, and then sitting on the terra-cotta wall to slip her shoes off, on e at a time, then massaging her feet.

He thought now that not stopping at The Devil's Hand was the biggest mistake of his life.

"If I didn't know better," Cam murmured, "I would think you've been follow ing me." He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "I was there." Mia crossed her arms over her chest. "You were where?"

"Venice, in 1986. On the Rialto. I saw your cafe." Mia felt a trickle of sweat run between her shoulder blades. "Prove it," she s aid.

She had not liked being a waitress; it was one of the jobs she'd had on her self-supported Grand Tour, where she worked for a few weeks or a month in a country she chose to explore. Still, The Devil's Hand had not been as bad as some: the midnight-shift truck dispatcher in Sydney, the bathroom atten dant at Schonbrunn Palace--these were the difficult jobs. She could remembe r watching the cafe patrons, trying to determine who would give her the big gest tip. Would it be the old man with long white hair like Benjamin Frankl in? The lovers who had shaved matching hearts into their scalps? The Pakist ani with a shifting blue jewel in his turban? She could remember the tiny g old circles of lire, spread across the mauve tablecloths and rococo menus l ike a connect-the-dots puzzle. She'd pick them up and stuff them into her a pron pocket, letting them sing all day with her movements. At least once during her shift she'd look to the Rialto, making a wish as ha d become her habit. She had asked for money, she had asked for adventure, sh e had asked for love. She pinned her wishes onto the foot traffic on the bri dge, believing that, like a falling star, she had a better chance if someone walking by could carry her desires farther away.

She never looked at the faces of the people on the bridge to Jodi Picoult

whom she had entrusted her dreams; she figured that they were only messenge rs, after all.

She thought that maybe this had been the biggest mistake of her life. Mia remembered, with a jolt, the moment days ago that Cam's hand had taken t he picture of Carrymuir out of her own. She recalled the shadow that passed over his face when he refused to believe that they might have had a history which began before they'd met. She thought of him standing on the Rialto, hi s hair as bright as the lire in her apron, and she lifted her chin a fractio n. "Prove it," she said again.

It seemed incomprehensible to Cam that he could have been within a mile of Mia Townsend without knowing it. Proof? He could have told her about the vi olet tablecloths and the heart-shaped backings of the ironwork chairs, but as Mia had said before, these were things he could have learned from a post card. "I wanted to go there," he said simply. "I didn't have the time." He shifted his weight to his other side. "What were you doing at a Venetian ca fe?"

Waiting for you. The words were at Mia's lips; she held her hand over her mo uth to keep them back. Then, with a brittle smile, she jammed her hands into her coat pockets. "Well," she said brightly. "What a coincidence. We'll hav e to tell Allie."

Bringing up Allies name made her feel a little better; she was able to breat he, and her skin didn't feel flushed. Cam nodded, smiling too, and took a st ep backward. He told her to have a nice day.

Mia watched him walk in the direction of the station. Then she turned and ran down the street. But instead of going to the flower shop where Allie w as expecting her, she flew back to her room at the Wheelock Inn. She rumma ged through her knapsack, tossing papers and pencils and small bags of see dlings out of the way until she found what she was looking for. Dear Cameron, she wrote on a scrap of paper from the desk, Better late than never. Mia. She addressed a matching envelope to the police station and ma rked it personal and confidential. Then she picked up the cocktail napkin s he'd taken out of her knapsack. It was from The Devil's Hand; it was one of the things she had taken with her--she made it a point to take at least on e item from

everywhere she'd been, to give her at least the semblance of a history. She stuffed the note in the envelope and took one last look at the napkin. It was frayed at the edges and emblazoned with the cafe's logo: two faceless lo vers in a circle of fire, which--even in silhouette--seemed to leap and burn and ruin.

Mia took a deep breath and jammed the napkin into the envelope. She licked i t and closed it, sealing her future.

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/n between the bill from the lighting company and a pamphlet from the local mechanic who serviced all the cruisers was an envelope from the Wheelock I nn. Cam sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Probably a complaint abou t the way Zandy had handled the investigation of the room that Jamie MacDon ald had been using; maybe even a mention of some scrap of evidence--his off icers were always instructed to ask the parties at the scene of the crime t o contact the station if they came up with anything else. He picked up the sterling letter opener on his desk and slit the corner of the envelope. He pulled out the napkin first and what he noticed was not the Stygian logo of The Devil's Hand, but the scent of Mia Townsend--cloves and rainwater a nd sweet grass--that now seemed to fill the room. He picked up the tiny rag ged square and held it to his cheek.

He noticed the note as he went to throw the envelope in the wastebasket. The lettering was done in pencil, neat and precise, and he smiled, knowing that a s a third-grader she had never strayed outside the lines. He read the short l etter, and then read it again. He held it up to the light to see if there was anything that had been erased.

He took the note, hid it in the folds of the cocktail napkin, and placed it in h is coat breast pocket.

Jodi Picoult

Then he pulled a piece of stationery out of his desk drawer. Mia, he wrote, staring at her name on the page. He crumpled it up into a ball because the t hree letters drooped down.

Mia, he wrote a second time, on a different sheet of paper. Then he wadded the page up and threw it hard into the wastebas-ket. What the hell was he d oing?

He sat back down at his desk, slicing open the light bill and the other pieces of mail and putting them in piles for Hannah to pay or to type suitable repli es. He braced his hands, palms flat, on the desk.

He closed his eyes and made a bargain with God. // You send someone into thi s office by the time I count to twenty, he thought, / will not write this no te. Then he held his breath and began to count.

He heard Hannah shuffling through the overstuffed filing cabinets outside, and Zandy picking up his things before going home for the day. He heard the front door open and close again, and an unknown voice muffling through a r equest at the front desk. He heard footsteps in front of his office. Fourteen, fifteen.