Mercy Snow by Tiffany Baker
Maybe it was the discrepancy of sun versus shadow or the distance from which she was viewing him, but June suddenly saw her husband the way another woman might—his mistress, maybe, or even, long ago, June herself. He was still adamantly good-looking. Bushy-haired and muscular, his jaw pleasingly square. His hands were tender along the palms and tough on the knuckles. His wrists were solid, and he walked like he wasn’t afraid of anything in the world, this husband of hers, this adored only son, heir to a paper fortune. But hadn’t he also proved himself to be a cheater and a liar? He’d caused a bus crash that had almost killed his son and did kill his son’s best friend, and, like June, he was hell-bent on covering it up.
June felt a wave of sickness wash over her. Her mouth flooded, and she bent at the waist, afraid she might vomit. She thought of what Cal had said to her in his office—that he could make everything go back to the way it used to be, but that was the worst idea in the world. Ever since Smith, going back to her old life had always been June’s biggest fear. Now, for the first time, she wondered if it had to be. Could it perhaps be possible to return to a place without also reverting to the person you used to be there? June had never thought so, but she wasn’t so sure anymore.
When she straightened up again, she saw that Cal was closing in on a tiny lamb with a black spot down near its tail, gamboling a little bit apart from its mother. A wild animal would never let a stranger approach its babe, June thought as she watched Cal. She wouldn’t have. But it was okay, she reassured herself. In a few hours, the lamb would be returned, reunited with the ewe, its displacement forgotten. She and Cal just needed to borrow it.
What happened next was not part of the plan. Cal was supposed to catch the lamb and quickly take it to the truck. He would tie it up near Devil’s Slide Road, making it look as if Mercy or Zeke had poached it. Instead June watched with helpless dismay as Cal drew a hunting knife out of his pocket. Where did that come from? she wondered as he straddled the lamb’s tiny back, yanked its neck up, and drew the blade hard across its windpipe, releasing a shockingly dark flow of blood. The lamb shrieked once, then crumpled between Cal’s legs as the other sheep ran away in confused panic. The mother ewe went with them but came trotting back halfway, torn between the close safety of the flock and the loss of her offspring. Trying not to be sick, June watched as Cal wiped the blade in the grass and then reached into his pocket and withdrew a bright child’s hat with a pom-pom on it. It was the same one Hannah had left behind during her lunch with June. This last detail had been June’s idea. Sometimes, she’d explained to Cal as she handed over the hat, it took the sacrifice of an innocent to bring about a right. Abel had seen Hannah wearing this very hat. He might not want to hear June’s complaints about the Snows, but after Hazel started haranguing him with physical evidence, he’d have to listen.
June covered her face with her hands. Hannah, she thought. What would happen to her? June had only meant to imply thieving, not a slaying, but Cal had gone and changed the story on her, upping the stakes without asking her permission. The Snows would be blamed, and this time, maybe, Hannah really would be removed from her sister’s care. And no one would ever want a girl like that. I have to go get her, June thought. I have to try to fix what’s just been done.
A soft voice came floating out of the trees. “He’s not here.”
Sweating, June turned and saw Dena Flyte drifting toward her through the dappled shadow of the wood, squinting in the sudden light. Quickly June stepped farther into the shade of the sugar bush, trying to block Dena’s view of the meadow. “What?”
Dena’s gaze was probing. “Nate. He’s not here.”
“Oh. I see.” June’s heart was racing. Had Dena heard the death bleat of the lamb? Had she seen Cal bending over it? She prayed that he went straight to the truck he’d parked on the road instead of seeking her out. How could she explain his presence to Dena? She swallowed and tried to calm her nerves. “I… didn’t expect to run into anyone out here.”
Dena offered no explanation. She must have put a stone in the sugar bush, June reasoned, although Suzie was neither an infant nor a victim of the river’s ills.
Dena smiled. “If you want, I could tell you where he is.”
For a moment June was tempted to snap that it wasn’t necessary, she could find her own son, but she didn’t want to antagonize Dena. She wriggled her sweating hands in her pockets and tried to look patient. “That would be very kind of you.”
“You’re not going to like the answer.”
“Dena, for heaven’s sake.”
Dena’s gaze turned canny. “You bought him a new car.”
“Yes.”
“Well, he went spinning off in it today, happy as a lark, but he wasn’t alone. Not hardly.”
“Who was he with?” Nate hadn’t been close to any of his old friends in months now, but June’s heart skipped a beat to think that he might be coming out of his shell at long last. Maybe things were going to be fine in the end.
A cold smile June hadn’t known Dena was capable of spread across her face as she looked June straight in the eye. She saw everything, June realized just as Dena spoke.
“He was with Mercy Snow.”
June fled. Things were so far from fine they were in a different realm.
Hazel knew immediately that something was terribly wrong in the meadow. Sheep didn’t lie. They couldn’t, and that was the best and worst single element about them. They were naked in their needs, bald in their dependence, and if she thought about that fact too much, it always broke Hazel’s heart just a little, for who was she to be given the charge of such splendid and simple creatures?
Normally the sheep rushed her when she came at them with a bucket full of extra feed, but today something had them spooked. Hazel paced across the field, enjoying the late-afternoon sun against her bare arms and the squeak of damp grass underneath her boots. Just that morning Fergus had said her name clearly for the first time since his homecoming, and the sound of it still rang in her heart hopeful and fierce. Spring was finally here. The lambs had been born, the frozen fields had thawed, and Fergus was coming back to her—maybe not the same as before, maybe not all of him ever again, but enough so that life could go reasonably on.
She was so lost in gratitude that she almost didn’t spot the scrap of Hannah’s hat. The rough breeze had caught the woolen strands of the pom-pom and was playing with them lazily. Frowning, Hazel stepped closer and then froze at the abomination stretched out at her boots. She crouched down over the dead lamb’s still body and pressed a thumb into the blood spilled in the grass. It was cool, but not yet congealed. Hazel rose and glanced around, a rage building so fast inside her that it reminded her of the moment when the ice plates cracked on the river and spun to life in the spring current.
She dragged the lamb to the edge of the field as the sheep watched from a wary distance. How much misfortune was one woman supposed to bear in the course of a single year? Hazel wondered, then pushed that thought out of her mind. This was a time not for self-pity but action. First she would bury the poor lamb, and then, when she was done, so help her God, she was going to get to the bottom of this mess.
A man set loose in the Great North Woods quickly discovered that he had two immediate choices on his hands. He could go mad from the vast quiet surrounding him or he could learn to use all that silence to his advantage. Over the past few months, Zeke hadn’t stuck as close to Titan Falls as Mercy probably believed. Most of the time, it was true, he was right there in close proximity to his sisters, watching them with the stony stare of a hawk, noting everything going on before him but giving away nothing. He knew, for example, that Mercy had begun meeting Nate in the sugar bush and how she really felt about him. He’d observed Mercy wending her way back to Devil’s Slide Road after time spent with Nate, her elbows cocked jauntily, a tickle of a smile dancing on her lips, and the feeling had struck him in the gut like a drunk’s sloppy fist—that Mercy wasn’t all alone, that one day she might move on, leav
Zeke didn’t mind hunger for himself. In prison he’d dropped down to the bone and hadn’t gained much back since his release. In fact, he rather thought deprivation might be his new permanent condition, and he was fine with that. It made life on the run so much easier, but it pained him to watch that process devour Mercy and Hannah. For what it was worth, Zeke was still the man of their family such as it was, and it began to occur to him that he ought to be doing more than just causing trouble.
And so, for the first time in his life, he’d started to listen—to the erstwhile advice of his dead mother, to his own lousy conscience, to the scolding of the winter wind through the bare branches. And he began to hear what he had never bothered to before in any of his travels: the long narrative threads of a specific place that made it more than just a series of random bar fronts, convenience stores, food pantries, and a quick road out.
Moreover, Zeke found to his surprise that he was part of the story. At least he was as of dawn today when he’d snuck out to the ravine. He knew he shouldn’t have lingered, but he’d whittled a little twig angel for Hannah, and he wanted to leave it for her in the smokehouse. He smiled when he saw all her battered treasures lined up on the old shelf: her pilfered library books with titles he couldn’t even pronounce, curling scraps of wire, stray buttons, and, tossed under the three iron hooks, a dented coffee can. Idly he looked inside, first thinking it was empty, but then he spotted something Hannah had never bothered with or maybe just never noticed—some sepia pieces of paper wound to the inner curve of the tin like a second skin.
He pulled them out eagerly. The ink was faded and the type smeared on the first piece of paper, but the seals looked official enough and there was no mistaking the name printed across the top: “The Duncan Home for Girls.” Zeke peered closer at the writing. It seemed to be some type of record of admittance from fifty or so years ago—no names, just the circumstances and dates of children deposited. The second paper was an invoice. Zeke didn’t think too much of it until he read the name Henry McAllister next to a surprisingly sizable amount.
Zeke folded the pages and slipped them into his back pocket, his mind going into hunting mode, stalking and creeping, following the trail. Mercy had mentioned early on that Hazel was an orphan, raised nearby in an institution that had shut its doors for good some years earlier. It had to be the same place. What if, he mused, there was some kind of connection between Hazel and the McAllisters, and what if that connection was a blood one? It might explain why Hazel had chosen to linger for all these years on the outskirts of Titan Falls, an oddity with her sheep and her wool when the rest of the village was paper to its core. Maybe she really did love the quiet scoop of her valley and the art of husbandry, or perhaps she had reasons for staying that were more complicated than anyone knew.
Zeke cracked the smokehouse door and put an eye up to the slit, checking for an all-clear before he made for the trees again, but this time he had a solid destination in mind. He was many things, but he wasn’t a common thief. Ever since he’d stolen it, that damn ram had been weighing on his conscience. Now he thought he might finally have a way to pay it back.
As Nate drove down Devil’s Slide Road, Mercy once again considered his suggestion to run away together. He had some money coming to him, he’d said. How much could he mean? She had no intention of really going through with the scheme yet couldn’t help but think: What if they really did take Hannah and just flee? They could be a little family somewhere far away from the likes of rivers and trees. Hannah could finally go to a decent school. She could have a whole shelf of brand-new books to her name.
Suzie’s scarlet mitten lay on the seat next to Mercy, its frantic color an insult against the dull leather. Nate seemed to have aged in the hour since they’d found the mitten and closed up the cabin. He’d left Titan Falls a mere boy, Mercy thought, and here he was returning almost as embittered as she was. It was a transformation even the bus crash and the trauma of losing Suzie hadn’t accomplished, and Mercy was more than a little sorry for it. Even Nate’s voice seemed to have deepened, ripened by the shock of what he now knew. “Do you have any idea where your brother is?” he asked, grim.
Mercy stared down into the ravine as they sped along. “No.” Zeke was everywhere and nowhere all at once. That was the problem. He could be standing right behind the closest tree and you would never even know unless he chose to let you.
There was something else, too. Mercy wasn’t sure she wanted Zeke anywhere near Nate. Nate was nothing like those two men in the woods had been—nowhere even close—but Zeke wouldn’t have cause to know that. And if her brother found out that Mercy had a fantasy of running away with Nate… well, there was no telling what he might be tempted to do. “You can take apart a whole,” he always said, referring to their bond, “but you can’t undo it.” Words Mercy used to find comforting but which chafed now. She turned to Nate. “I need to handle this my way. Give me an hour and I’ll see if I can track down any trace of him. If not, then we’ll go to Abel. Agreed?”
She held her breath. For a moment she was afraid Nate would keep driving into town, but when they arrived at the pull-off that led to the path to the clearing, he suddenly stepped on the brakes hard, throwing Mercy off balance. She gasped as the seat belt cut across her chest, knocking the wind out of her, and when she looked up, she saw June McAllister’s car pulled to the side of the road just ahead of them.
“Isn’t that your mother’s car?”
Nate’s voice was wooden. “It is.”
“What is she doing out here?”
“I don’t know.”
Mercy bit her thumbnail. “This is bad.” She pocketed the mitten.
“I know.” From the way Nate said it, Mercy knew that all bets with Zeke were off.
The clearing was too quiet. The RV door was open, Mercy found, but inside, it was empty. The place stank of stale upholstery and trash. Mercy blushed to have Nate see the conditions in which she lived. She wanted to reassure him that she knew perfectly well that garbage needed to go out and that food speckled with green was no good, but the prickle of unease she was feeling was too strong for her to worry about anyone’s good opinion now.
“Hannah?” she called, but there was no answer from the sleeping loft. “Hannah?” Mercy climbed the ladder only to find the mattress empty.
“Follow me,” she barked, flying out of the RV to the smokehouse and flinging its door open, but it, too, was vacant. Hannah’s trinkets sat on their shelf—the poppet that Zeke had made her, a carved angel, the jar of coins, and an old coffee can dented to hell and scorched on its bottom. Mercy peered inside and then stuck her hand in. Nothing.
“Hannah?” she called again, louder this time. Please don’t let June have her, she prayed, but her stomach flip-flopped as her mind formed the words.
From down in the ravine, so faint she might not have heard it at all had it not been for her heightened concern, Mercy heard a cry. She cocked her head, willing it to come again, and it did, fainter this time, as if the sound were traveling away from her. That wasn’t good.
“Come on.” She ran out of the smokehouse, grabbed Nate, and headed into the forest, past Gert’s erstwhile grave, where the earth suddenly gave way and plunged down to the river. Mercy moved with a lithe surety, hopping between the trees as Nate slid and stumbled after her, trying to keep up.
Mercy heard her little sister before she saw her. “No!” Hannah was protesting. “Get away from me. I don’t want to go with you! Hel
Mercy burst out of the trees to see June McAllister advancing toward Hannah, who was trapped between her and the river. She took a panicked step backward, her heel only a few inches away from the water now, but June kept coming toward the child. “If you don’t come with me, they’ll put you in a home,” June was pleading. “You don’t want that, do you?”
Mercy started running to save her little sister, but before she could reach her, Hannah turned and did something desperate. She plunged into the river—knees, then hips, then finally her birdlike shoulders slipping under the water.
“Hannah!” Mercy screamed, hovering on the bank. Every cell in her body wanted to fish the child out of the river, but her feet were paralyzed.
“Get her!” June wheeled on Mercy. She seemed to be saying something about Abel arriving soon. “You need to get her out of here!” One of Hannah’s arms shot from the water, and then her head slipped under. This time Mercy didn’t think twice. She dived straight into the icy water.
Under the surface it was black and cold. Mercy had no breath and no blood anymore to move her limbs. Frantic, she tried to paddle her arms and legs, but they were numbed from the frosty water and wouldn’t comply. Her foot briefly slid along the bottom, but that dropped away again as the current pulled at her. Where was Hannah? Water flooded Mercy’s mouth, then spilled down her throat. Where was the bank?
Just then she felt a pair of arms squeezing her waist and tugging her to shore. Her head lolled forward as blackness closed in around her. Nate, she thought as she felt mud touch her cheek, but when she opened her eyes, she saw the hilt of a knife carved with a stag. Not Nate.
She looked up and saw Nate pulling Hannah from the river, her body limp, her lips blue, but her chest heaving, thank God. Mercy tried to say her sister’s name, as if uttering it would be enough to make her dry, but before she could, there was a loud gun crack, and then Mercy’s nerves exploded. She tried to pull Zeke’s arms away from her, to run back to Hannah and the river, but there was an almighty stinging weight in her chest, an anchor she couldn’t escape. She looked down and watched as a bloom of blood spread across the front of her with alarming speed. Her vision tunneled, and she heard someone crying her name, but whether it was Nate or her brother, she couldn’t figure. She tried to sit up, but the pain grew too intense. There was so much she wanted to say and couldn’t. Her time for talking, it seemed, was over. Others would have to take up the thread. She arched back into the wet mud, her eyes rolling to Zeke, and he, as if he finally understood what she’d been trying to tell him all along, bent over her, his bony ribs making a cage over hers, heart to heart, his weight indeed the other half of her as she floated from this life to the next.