Mercy Page 11

  He tossed the empty bottle into the trash can and shut off the banker's lamp on his desk. Don't sweat it, he told himself. You've got time.

  But as he was locking the office door behind him, a thought tugged at his mind. You've got time, it said. Jamie doesn't.

  Cam thought of the total-immersion technique in which people learned languages by speaking them exclusively, living in the origin country, sleeping with Berlitz tapes murmuring beside their heads. He knew of people who had done this successfully and had come to love the language. And with this in mind, he took the next day off from work and asked his wife to go fishing.

  He hadn't asked her in three years, but he thought that if he spent every waking minute of the day with Allie, listening to her and watching her and only her, he could surely drive Mia Townsend from his mind.

  Cam was just propping up against the banister the bamboo fly rod that had been his grandfather's, when Allie appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a faded denim shirt and a baggy pair of khaki pants rolled up to the knees. She sat down on the top step and slipped on a pair of Tretorns riddled with holes. "We're going to be getting wet, right?" she said, knotting the laces. "I figured after what Arbuth did to these, there's very little left to damage." Arbuth was the neighbor's mastiff. Cam smiled, remembering how Allie had chased him with a Wiffle bat when she found the dog chewing on her new sneakers.

  Cam tucked a short-handled net into his belt and jammed a red felt hat on his head. It was dotted with bucktail streamers and woolly boogers and nymphs, several dry flies as well. He held his arms out to the sides and pirouetted slowly. Allie whistled. "You're a vision."

  She scrambled down the stairs and wrapped her arms around Cam's waist. "You see how lucky we are chat Mia came to town?" she said, and Cam stiffened in her embrace. "If it wasn't for her, I couldn't just take a whole day off."

  "Lucky," Cam repeated, pulling away. He reached for the fishing rod. He did not want to look at Allie. Having heard Mia's name again, he knew what would happen--he'd turn to his wife and he'd start comparing her flushed cheeks and pointed chin to Mia's smooth brow and tumbling curls. "Let's go," he said curtly, and moved toward the door. He left Allie standing alone, rubbing her upper arms and wondering what she'd already done wrong.

  Recovering, Allie followed Cam out the front door and, to her surprise, watched him walk toward the backyard gate. "Come on," he said, waving her closer. "We don't have all day."

  "I thought we did," Allie murmured. "I thought that was the point." She watched Cam move to the center of the slightly sloping lawn, holding the fishing pole in front of him. He pulled free some of the bright yellow line, and then with his left hand, he began to swing the rod back and forth, back and forth, like a human metronome, until the line had whizzed through the guides and was arcing over him like a monochromatic rainbow.

  "You know, I may be a novice, but wouldn't we have a better chance of catching fish if we did this near water?"

  Cam smirked at her. "You think I'm going to let you hold my grandfather's fly rod without practicing on dry ground?" He let the leader rest on the crabgrass and looked at Allie. Her hands were on her hips, her ponytail was curling over her shoulder; her feet pointed out to the sides, as if she was getting ready to do a plie.

  The last time he'd taken Allie fishing, it had been deep-water. Not his favorite kind, but he hadn't the time or the inclination then to teach Allie how to fly-fish, which in his opinion was more of an art than a sport. They had gone out for blues, and Allie-- who'd had to be shown how to work the reel--had caught the biggest fish. He could remember her dancing in little circles in her borrowed slicker when the captain presented her with a free day's pass to return, a prize for the catch of the day.

  Pulling his thoughts back, he tugged at the line. The leader had snagged on a piece of grass. "Shows you what you know." He grinned. "I have a bite." He tugged gently, until the neon-bright line snapped into the air. "Now," he said, closing his mind to anything but the beauty of what he was about to do, "it's all in the presentation." He started swinging the line in rhythm again as he backcast and false-cast, over and over. "You've got no weight on the end of your line. You're using the weight of the line itself to cast. Well, hell, you're not even really casting. You're just kind of suspending your line above the water."

  "Grass," Allie murmured.

  "Whatever." He closed his eyes, letting the sway and the motion lead him. "You want to roll the line out in front of the fish, like a red carpet . . . rolling . . . rolling . . . until finally the fly just drops"--here he made a light popping noise--"into the water."

  Then he stopped speaking. He let his arm sway from front to back, occasionally pulling out more line and feeding with his casts until the leader reached even farther. He felt the sun on the back of his neck and watched the juncos fly toward the narrow purple pass in the mountains several miles away. He breathed in with each backcast, out with each false cast, and lost himself.

  He was in New Zealand, fishing for giant rainbow trout. In the wilds of Alaska, tall grass burning his legs while he cast for salmon. With a deep breath, he pictured himself in Montana, tying two leaders in a blood knot as he prepared to fish for cutthroat. He was on Loch Leven, which had always felt like home, a small boat rocking beneath him with the currents that hid both the char and the kelpies.

  "Where are you?" Allie said.

  He blinked his eyes. She was smiling at him, and he was surprised that she could read him so well.

  Cam shook his head. "Your turn," he said, holding out the rod.

  She moved into the circle of his arms. Cam came close behind her, tucking the rod under the band of her watch. "There," he said, fitting her hand over the cork grip. "Now you won't bend your wrist." He began to move her arm back, watching the line overhead, then pushed her arm forward. "You don't want to hear the line snap. When you backcast, watch the line come out. It'll unroll and you'll see this loop unfolding itself. . . when it hangs like that, see? That's when you bring it forward."

  Allie felt her shoulder pressing against his chest, his fingers closing over hers. He arced her arm in a slow and gliding pendulum, lending her the grace she had witnessed in him moments before. She closed her eyes, beginning to feel that this was simply Cam's way of asking her to dance.

  Back, two, three, front, two, three. Back, two, three, front, two, three. Allie saw herself whirling about a glittering columned ballroom, Cam's cutaway evening attire smooth and fine beneath her hands. There was a moment when she could smell the winter coming and sense the heaviness of the air and feel her blood running and knew, at the same time, that she and Cam were in perfect rhythm. Oh, yes, she thought, this is lovely.

  "Now you do it," Cam said, stepping away, and Allie awkwardly found herself standing alone. She lifted the fly rod, trying to listen to Cam's senseless comments about lifting at ten o'clock, lifting at one o'clock, keeping her wrist straight and presenting the line. She tried to keep up the rhythm by humming music, but she could only focus on the fact that Cam was watching the twist and furl of her body as she had watched his. Her cheeks flushed, and she wished that he'd hold her close again.

  It was afternoon before Cam pronounced Allie proficient enough to hold his sacred fly rod on Wee Loch, the lake for which the town had been settled. Cam tied the Old Town canoe onto the roof of Allies car and drove to the boat launch. Then he settled Allie in the front of it and paddled to the far shore of the lake, where they were likely to find bass.

  "Okay," Cam said finally. "This is the magic place." Allie glanced around at the lily pads and stumps that dotted the little cove Cam had rowed into. Then Cam reached across the boat. The canoe tipped gently from side to side to balance itself, and Allie clutched at the gunwale, her face whitening. "Cam," she choked out, "please don't."

  Cam was casually tying a fly onto the leader of the fishing rod when she felt composed enough to turn around. "Don't what? Use the dry fly?" He frowned down at his hands. "Maybe you're right. Maybe a nymp
h ..."

  "Cam," Allie began again, "I hate boats."

  That was an understatement. She truly disliked the sensation of having the world move beneath her feet, but she wasn't fond of anything outdoors. While Cam had spent the pleasant journey across the lake pointing out the different kinds of birds and trees in passing, Allie had been counting the mosquito bites on her arms. She did not much like the wilds of nature, but she knew that it was the only setting that did not dwarf Cam or seem to leash his energy, and she never missed the opportunity to watch him in his element.

  "Allie." Cam tugged on the leader to test it. "You're in six feet of water. There's nothing to worry about." He smiled at her, and handed her the fly rod. "Go ahead," he said.

  He knew that Allie did not like to spend time outside. Hell, her chosen profession involved cutting down the most beautiful ornaments nature had made and arranging them to look good on a dining room table.

  It was gorgeous out; the sun was high and bright and dancing on the loch, the greenheads were gone, the mountains in the distance looked too lovely to be real. Cam glanced at Allie, who was carefully tangling the line around her forefinger like he'd shown her. If she spent more time doing things like this, she'd fall in love with it too. It was simply a matter of exposure.

  He absently watched Allie begin to cast again, coming uncomfortably close to a tangle of branches, and fantasized about taking her with him when he went duck hunting, ice-fishing, hiking over the Wheelock Pass. He pictured her legs getting strong and suntanned, her features lit by the jumping glare of a campfire. He wondered how long it would take from that point to get her to want to see Madagascar, or Crete, or the Rockies. He considered why he didn't just plan a trip--Allie would go if he asked her, he knew that--but he realized he did not want to see her staring out a tiny fogged airplane window and wishing she were somewhere else.

  He wondered if it bothered her to see him look like that, every day of his life.

  "I've got something," Allie said, her voice leaping with the gentle sway of the canoe. "I think I saw it."

  Cam watched the splash of the surface as the bass moved away with her line. He coached Allie in a low, firm voice, telling her when to let the fish run and when to pull gently in on the reel. As the bass became visible through the dull brown layers of the water, Cam sat forward and pulled the net from his belt.

  "Now.lean back," he told Allie, pushing her away and holding her wrist up high to bring the fish closer. He leaned in the opposite direction, over the gunwale of the boat. He scooped the net halfway in the water, watching the fish's tail beat frenetically against the nylon ropes. "What a beautiful fish," he said, hoping to excite Allie. "This is one of the biggest bass I've seen come out of this lake."

  "Really?" Allie crowed. She relaxed her hold on the fishing rod and scooted to the same side of the canoe as Cam, peeking into the net to see her prize. "Look at its eyes," she said, reaching to brush its scaly head, and that was when the canoe flipped.

  Allie popped up instantly, gasping and treading water and thinking of all the slimy things that lived on the bottom of a choked lake like this one. To her surprise, everything was black, and she wondered for a moment if she'd hit her head and lost her vision, when suddenly she realized chat she'd come up beneath the overturned canoe.

  She was about to duck beneath and resurface to find Cam, when she heard him laughing. Nor just a chuckle, a how could this have happened to us? kind of laugh, but a gut-busting guffaw that

  Allie knew could only be at her own expense. He was laughing at her eagerness and stupidity, which had tipped the canoe. Raising one eyebrow, she gripped the gunwale of the canoe and floated. She took calm, deep breaths. Let him stew, she thought.

  Cam did think it was hilarious. Oh, she'd be pissed; hissing and shaking like a wet cat, he imagined. But if she'd only seen her own face seconds before she realized she was going to hit the water . . . He wiped his eyes and tried to swallow his laughter and realized that Allie had not surfaced.

  "Allie," he called, spinning around 360 degrees to see if he'd missed her. "Allie!" His eyes took in the several stumps lying to the side of the boat, the side that Allie had fallen on, as well as the tangle of lily pads whose roots, he knew, could catch your leg and drag you down.

  Cam's pulse began to pound in time with the throb of his head. She was a good swimmer, but that didn't count when you were knocked unconscious. "Allie!" he screamed, his voice carrying on the smooth surface of the water and sounding like nothing he'd ever heard before. "Allie!"

  He ducked beneath the water and opened his eyes to the grimy underworld but he could not see more than five inches in front of him. He began to feel around the bottom of the lake with his feet, hoping to brush something he could dive for. His teeth began to chatter and his heart had frozen in his chest.

  Allie popped up not two feet away.

  "Jesus Christ," he exploded. "Jesus fucking Christ!" He took one long swimming stroke toward her and crushed her against him, half dragging and half swimming her toward the shore where they could both stand.

  When he set her on her feet, he was still shaking. He grabbed her so tightly he could feel the ridges of her ribs against his skin. "You scared the hell out of me," he said roughly, shocked at the vehemence of his own reaction and the strength of his need. "You scared me to death."

  He held her away from him, touching her forehead, which was ringed with silt; and her hair, still tangled with wet leaves and one of his flies. He tilted her chin up to his face. "Don't ever do that," he murmured.

  She had wanted to tell him it was all a joke, that she hadn't liked him laughing at her, but Cam was holding her close and staring at her as if he had to memorize her features, as if he had just seen the yawn and chasm of a life that did not include her.

  Jamie MacDonald's words flew into her mind: Seventy-thirty.

  Cam was looking at her, she realized, the way she always looked at him. Fascinated, she touched her hand to his cheek, and felt him shiver. "I won't," she promised, and she clenched her fists tight into Cam's soaking shirt in an effort to hold on to the moment.

  SIX

  Jamie MacDonald was on the lookout for angels. He had spent yesterday wandering through a card shop, picking up the Victori-ana to stare at fat-faced cupids and ethereal silver-haired girls in pleated Corinthian dresses. He examined these closely, looking for a sign, but he did not see in them any trace of Maggie.

  He knew she was going to come to him. He knew this as surely as he knew that he would wait, if necessary, forever. Sometimes he would close his eyes and smell on the air the lily-of-the-valley smell that had threaded Maggie's clothes; the clean, honey scent of her hair. He'd picture her wearing a white turtleneck and a swingy white skirt, downy feathers brushing her shoulders and sweeping her back.

  He was waiting for Graham MacPhee to come out of his goddamned office. It wasn't like the man had any other clients, so he did not understand why he was being made to wait. He cast a glance at Allie, his unofficial chaperon in town, who was calmly reading a Good Housekeeping magazine with most of the recipes cut out.

  She seemed to feel him looking at her, and lifted her head. Giving him a nod of support, she smiled.

  Allie had taken him to the post office, the minimart, the dry cleaners. She had paved the way for him to enter the video rental establishment and the barbershop, both of which were run by men who made no effort to hide the fact that they considered Jamie a blight on decent society. She had gone out of her way to steer him toward the one teller at the bank who had gazed at Jamie with moon eyes and told him he was a saint; to the waitress at the coffee shop who kissed his cheek and said he had brought back her faith in true love.

  Twice now at noon, when Jamie went to the police station to check in with Cameron MacDonald as per the conditions of his bail, Allie had gone too, her arm firmly locked through his. Cam had yet to do more than grunt at him and wave him away, but he did not do anything worse, either. And this, Jamie knew, he owed directly t
o Cam's wife.

  He stared at her now from his perch by the faux fireplace. She was not a conventional beauty, but she was pretty enough, with her whiskey-colored eyes and shiny, straight hair. She looked about as substantial as a twig, but Jamie had learned differently. Whether Allie MacDonald chose to admit it or not, she had an overwhelming depth of strength. Twig, maybe, but made of willow--able to bend and twist and give way, rather than break.

  Maggie would have loved her.

  With that thought, Jamie swung his head to the fireplace again. For the first time, he noticed that the bas-relief carved into the mantel was a pastoral scene: Shepherds and cows and milkmaids scampered across the line of the fireplace, and overhead were clouds and angels. He stared into the white faces of each one, burning to see the curve of Maggie's eyebrow or the ordinary jut of her chin.

  Allie put her hand on his shoulder as he stood clutching the mantel. "Jamie," she murmured, "why don't you come sit down?" He spun toward her with tears in his eyes. "I can't find her," he

  said.

  "You will," she assured him, leading him to the facing chair. She sat across from him and patted his knee. As he ran his hands through his hair, Allie stood and walked over to the secretary. "Really, we've been waiting a very long time."

  As if she had summoned him, Graham MacPhee appeared from the hall. He was springy and lively and his hair was damp and combed back, although it was after one o'clock. "Jamie, Allie," he said, running their names together as if they were one. "The time got away from me."

  He waved them down the hall to the conference room, where a file stood open, its contents knocked haphazardly across the table. Allie took a seat, but Jamie remained standing just inside the door. "The paperwork's all drawn up for Techcellence," Graham said. Jamie had opted to transfer temporary control of his company to Rod and Flanders. "I still don't like the idea of not specifying how long that interim time should be," Graham added, frowning. "You can change your mind, and set a limit."