Fortunate Son: The Ava Debrief

 This debrief post contains spoilers, so I've split it under a cut. Proceed with caution if you haven't read Part Two yet, or, better yet, go grab a copy! 

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Ava greeted him with genuine kindness, though she seemed distracted, her dark eyes large and darting, searching the dining room, snapping toward her kids every few minutes as if checking that they were alright. She was tense – but not in a familiar way. She didn’t seem frightened or on the verge of an anxiety attack.

By the time she and Emmie stood to clear the plates and shoo the kids into the den to watch a movie, he realized what she reminded him of, and was alarmed to realize it wasn’t a human being. He’d caught part of a nature documentary on Discovery late one night when he couldn’t sleep: a pride of lionesses stalking wildebeest in the long grass. The lions tucked low along the ground, shoulders and haunches coiled, golden eyes unblinking and fixed. They’d been tense, ready for the kill.

That was Ava tonight. Her all the time, really, but he’d glimpsed a bit of softness by the time he left Knoxville back in February. Now, she was in stalking mode. 

As I've said from the first, this series quite simply could not exist had Ava been an innocent civilian. She is and always has been the Cathy to Mercy's Heathcliff, and the narrative has never sought to justify or moralize their love. Their love simply is. It's something they've always understood, and which their friends and family finally understand now, after all they've been through since Fearless. 

As I say all this, I can acknowledge that the Ava of Fearless, in the Then and Now chapters, was much more naive in many ways than the Ava we follow in Lord Have Mercy. She's a mom now, and so her priorities have necessarily shifted somewhat. She's dealing with professional disappointment, and all that that entails. In fact, at the beginning of The Good Son, Ava's chief concerns are all domestic. Getting to school, handling laundry, squeezing in some adult time when possible. But by Fortunate Son, the heat's turned back on, and we're seeing her slow slide back into Animal Mode. 

It was fun in this book to step back and write her from a fresh outside POV. There's a noble part of Alex that wanted to think that his big, bad brother's wife was blissfully ignorant to Mercy's dark side. But he quickly realizes - somewhere between entering her living room the first time and getting held at gunpoint - that she's got her very own brand of violence. It was important that he meet Ava first without Mercy, so he could see her all on her own. In FS, he sees them together, and as the shock of Part One becomes acceptance, he's able to categorize her a little better. Hers is not a rabid, senseless violence. She isn't feral in the way we so often mean it in fiction - she's wild. She's a predator, every bit as much of one as Mercy. Just like Carter during Fearless, Alex is learning that there is no "saving" her from any of this: in this scenario, he's merely a safari photographer watching safely from his Jeep, and she's the thing slinking through the grass, not senselessly violent, but ready to kill if the need arises. 

That's the juxtaposition that troubles and confounds outsiders. But in Ava's own mind, there is no dichotomy. She's not half-Mom, half-monster. It's all part and parcel. Just like Mercy, she has a great capacity for vengeance, and for tenderness, and the two urges are never in conflict. She loves her babies and her man, and she'll do literally anything to protect them, without question. 

Fortunate Son sees her crippled by circumstance, and it's why she has her breakdown at the house after they put the kids to bed. She's mature enough to understand that she can't keep her family together if she walks up to the feds in the precinct parking lot and opens fire on them, but she feels so helpless just waiting. 

In Parts Three and Four, she'll finally get the chance to go off-leash. 

Boyle's written her off, such is his fixation on Mercy, and he's going to regret that. 

“We talked at church this afternoon, all the members, and we’ve spitballed some ideas, but there’s one thing we know for certain: Mercy’s not willing to go away for this. Ava…” His head tilted and his expression went rueful. “She’s made it very clear she won’t tolerate that, and Mercy says – we all know – that she’ll do something rash if it comes to that. There’s children in the equation who don’t deserve that.”

Alex’s mouth went dry, and he took a slug of his drink. “Are you saying Ava’s mentally unstable? That she can’t put her children first?”

Calmly, Walsh said, “I’m saying we’re prepared to make Mercy – to make all five of them – disappear if it’s a choice between MC wit-pro and arrest.”