#TeaserTuesday: Better and Deeper and Truer

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

“I think it was right sweet,” Devin said, on the porch of Walsh’s old place out by the train tracks. Night had fallen, a net of stars hanging suspended above them, and the last train had rumbled past five minutes ago, its roar now a distant, shrinking echo like far off thunder. An open cooler sat between them on the edge of the porch, where their legs dangled over into the weeds, loaded with ice and beer. “Chivalrous. Perhaps heroic…if you’re in the mind to give the boy hero credit.”

“We won’t go that far.” Mercy set his empty can aside and reached for a fresh, dripping water in fat, dark discs onto the porch boards. “But it was – a not shitty thing he did.”

Devin snorted.

“Surprising,” Mercy added.

“What? That he’d do something brave for his brother? Come on, then. You’re not surprised. My boys are at each other’s throats all the time, but they would have done the same.”

Mercy skated him a look.

“That’s right,” Devin said, grinning as he lifted his can. “I’m paternal now.”

There was a lot to be said in response to that, but the growl of approaching motorcycles snared both their attentions.

Devin hopped to his feet, more agilely than a man his age should have been capable. “Wait here,” he said, setting his beer aside and rounding the porch toward the overgrown gravel driveway, gun appearing in his hand without any visible reach for one.

“Sure thing, Papa.”

Mercy caught the grin he tossed over his shoulder before he melted out of sight.

The bikes arrived with a symphonic grumble, and then were silenced. Voices floated around the cabin, masculine, familiar, soothing, even if he couldn’t understand the words. And then he heard running footsteps crunching over the gravel, racing around the cabin, heading toward him.

Mercy set his beer down, stood, and turned, and when Ava came flying around the corner, – he’d known it was her right away, the strike of her shoes on the gravel, the speed at which her long legs carried her to him – for a moment, the past superimposed itself over the present.

She was eight and all knees and elbows, dark pigtails streaming behind her. She was ten, and shooting up again, her jeans turned to high-waters over the harness boots she insisted on wearing instead of sandals. She was thirteen, fifteen, seventeen and wondrous, and begging him to love her, which was ridiculous, because he already did, he always had, how could he not? She was twenty-two, and hating him, and that was okay, because he loved her enough for the both of them. And she was twenty-two, still, and marrying him, promising to love him forever, because of course she could, did, would, because their love had always existed, no matter its shape or its weight or the directions it took them; it was something patiently waiting for them both, star-destined and inescapable, labeled so quickly and wrongly by those outside of it.

Her smile was wide, but wobbly, and there were tears in her eyes, and she was reaching out before she got to him. She was thirty, and she’d borne three of his babies, she loved him still, they loved each other better and deeper and truer than they ever had.

They’d been apart four days and it had felt like years.

He caught her around the waist and tucked her under his chin, and the others who’d come were kind enough to hang back out of sight, until Ava had whispered, “Hi, baby,” and blotted her eyes dry on his shirtfront.

“Hi, baby,” he echoed, and rubbed her back until she stopped trembling.