Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Two (The Real Deal)

 

               “Ava,” Ghost said, voice taking on a new tension, a foreign strain she’d never heard before. Slow, biting off each word: “Call him off.”

 

I handled the Chapter Twenty-Two post a little differently. Since I wasn't feeling hot, I opened up the floor for discussion first, and you guys delivered, so thank you! Now it's time for the real post on my part.

Sidenote: this DID get me wondering if I ought to put together discussion questions for each chapter ahead of time? That way I could focus on what you guys find most interesting about a chapter. Let me know if that's something you'd like me to add. 

Onward.

I said in my initial post that this chapter contains one of the scenes I was most excited to include in the novel. Fearless is a book that doesn't stop to ask if anyone's comfortable with what's happening. I always hope that readers will love my work, connect with it, and it's been wonderful to hear, over the years, that readers have found comfort and reassurance in a book. But I'm also not a moralizing preacher, nor a hand-holder when it comes to storytelling. The narrative tells you that Mercy would do anything for Ava. But it's easy to root for that notion when Mercy's, for lack of a better phrase, picking on people his own size. His own age. On fellow criminals and outlaws. In Chapter Twenty-Two, Mercy would have absolutely killed Mason if Maggie, Carter, and Ghost hadn't burst in...and Ava would have let him. The idea of anything gets less palatable when anything means killing a high school student. (I recycled the same theme with Beware of Dog.)

Fiction is fun when it pushes boundaries and forces us to examine our own moral codes. Most of us have hard boundaries, and Mercy and Ava are the sorts of characters who push up against those boundaries. Does Mason's age negate the wickedness of what he's done? Should Mercy have a code that prohibits him from stabbing a minor simply because he's a minor? 

My job is to inspire those questions for readers, but not to answer them. My job is simply to keep true to Mercy and Ava as characters, and for them, when it comes to each other, there are no hard boundaries. This is the first scene in the novel in which that becomes glaringly apparent. Anything means ANYTHING, and even their fictional loved ones will have to wrestle with that knowledge. 

From Diana on Facebook: "I later wondered if Ghost not being able to stop Mercy contributed to his decision to banish him."

Absolutely it did. Ghost knows Mercy's history in New Orleans, so he knows exactly what kind of mean, man-eating dog he's got on his hands. But Ghost thought he was the one holding the leash. When he realizes Ava's the one with the chain in her hands, that rattles him badly. How can he preside over a killer who answers to his teenage daughter instead of him? Like Darlene said on FB: "Ava realizing the Mercy would do absolutely anything for her. And Ghost realizing that she held the power with Mercy, not him."

Re: Ava and Mercy's relationship from Tammy: "That “new tension” - probably his first realization that this relationship was much more than he imagined."

Ghost is nothing if not a master of denial. He's an expert at throwing up a mental wall when he doesn't want to believe something. He can obviously see that Ava and Mercy mean much more to one another than he ever suspected, but Ms. Scarlett O'Teague here is going to "think about that another day." 

From Kathy: "In “the present” scenes I don’t think Ava ever realizes the power she has over Mercy. But Mercy does!" Agreed. Ava has a little over her dad's power of rationalization. She's so hurt by his abandonment that it becomes easy to tell herself that he doesn't care about her when they first reunite in the present day. Ava, girl, a man doesn't do that for a woman he only ever saw as a sex object! 

From Darlene: "This was a hard chapter to read given what was happening to Ava 😩. But when she saw Mercy behind Mason you could feel the relief that the torture would end and not like Mason thought it would."

 

             Her eyes slitted open and she saw Mason standing above her…

               And someone standing behind him. Someone much taller than him. Someone dark and furious and so painfully familiar.

               She was hallucinating.

               “Mercy,” she whispered.

               Mason’s eyes widened.

 

That visual of Mercy appearing behind Mason was such fun for the horror fan in me. The monster rearing up behind a character who has no idea they're about to get chomped. It's the sort of moment that I can imagine, if viewed in a movie or TV show, would make the viewer sit up and shout at the screen.

And from Tammy: "And finally…sweet Carter. It’s my belief that this is when he really became a Lean Dog." 

Yes! In Carter's mind, he's doing the "right thing." But this is his unwitting baptism in the notion that "right" and "legal" aren't always the same thing. I don't think he knew he was brave in this way, but when thrown head-first in the deep end, he most certainly ducked his head and started swimming. Ghost and Aidan are too caught up in the moment to properly appreciate the way he just passed an unasked-for test, but they certainly consider it going forward. 

With regard to Beau and Ainsley: I personally see Mason as irredeemable. He's cruel, he's dangerous. Truly a little psychopath. Just as in real life, those sorts of psychopaths attract followers who tell themselves that their friend "isn't that bad," but are inevitably forced to realize that they in fact are. 

Thank you, guys, for helping me out with this latest post! And do let me know about the discussion questions idea. We could do something like post the questions on Sunday, and then talk about the chapter on Monday. 

Tomorrow, it's the fallout in Chapter Twenty-Three. The next few are so painful, but in a way that's fun to read.