“I always wanted a room like this,” I say, monotone. It’s a dig at Kath, reminding her of the childhood I never had, but I don’t think she picks up on it. She’s flighty and oblivious, like a hummingbird. I wonder if my father made her that way.
Mercy laughs. “This will do fine for now. This okay with you, Jensen?”
I offer a tightlipped nod, favoring the side of me that doesn’t currently have a row of bruised ribs.
The second we leave Dinosaurland, Kath points me toward a hall bathroom and shows me how the light switch is on the outside of the door, and then she mentions the linen closet is at the end of the hall. When we’re all downstairs again, Kath and Mercy linger at the door, talking like old friends. I’ve known Mercy a whopping twenty-four hours, but I’ve seen how she’s good with people like that. She has a way of making anyone comfortable, and I suppose that’s why she does what she does.
Mercy, with her cotton-candy voice, chubby mom hands, and warm smile, reminds me not everyone is filled with darkness.
“I better get going,” she says before sighing, as if she regrets having to leave. The smallest sliver of me doesn’t want her to go because now shit’s about to get real.
Real awkward.
“Feelings make you weak, boy.” My father’s words echo in my head. He raised me on toughened quotes mixed with scripture, which he conveniently twisted and turned to suit his lectures.
Kath shows Mercy out and shuts the door. She turns and our eyes meet. The two kids have disappeared upstairs. It’s just us. No social worker. No bullshit niceties required. I expect her to let her guard down and morph into someone else entirely, but she doesn’t. She stands there, shifting from one foot to the other, her fingers intertwined like she’s knitting a goddamned sweater with her hands.
“I remind you of him, don’t I?” I place a hand on my hip and cock my head, studying a face that hardly resembles mine. Her features are soft and bland, not hard and angled like Josiah’s and mine. Josiah’s hair is as dark as his heart, and I take after him in that regard as well. We’re built of muscle and brute, though I’m bigger than him. We wear our strength like a second skin.
She brushes past me, heading toward the kitchen where she fills a teakettle with water and nestles it on the stove.
“Tea?” she asks. She must want to talk. I’m not in the mood to hear her bullshit excuses as to why she abandoned me and walked away from her own flesh and blood. I’m not interested in hearing how sorry she is.
“I’m kind of tired. Been a long day.” I point toward the stairs and paint a regretful half-smile on my lips.
“Please.” She’s not asking. Her eyes snap toward the kitchen table. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this conversation. There are things you need to know, Jensen. About the past. About the present, too.”
The tea kettle whistles. She grabs two mugs and two bags of tea and I take a seat at the table amongst one of the twelve chairs.
“I’m sure you have questions,” she says, setting a white coffee mug in front of me.
Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. None of which matter at all anymore. Maybe at eight or twelve or even fifteen, I’d have wanted a chance to ask them. I lost my ability to give two shits years ago.
“Your father,” she says, blowing on the steamy liquid in her mug, “is a very powerful man.”
You’re tellin’ me, lady.
There’s a reason he beat the living shit out of me and walked away with a slap on the wrist. He’s got the whole town of Charter Springs, Arizona wrapped around his pinky finger. He drives around in the church’s Lincoln Town Car like he owns the city, and he sort of does. The man’s never met a traffic ticket he couldn’t get out of, and he’s never met a local he couldn’t convince to come to one of his sermons. The man could sell ice to an Eskimo, just like the way he sells his version of God to a congregation of over two-thousand people. Back in Charter Springs, Josiah Mackey is a hand-picked-by-God, modern-day saint.
“I ran off with him at eighteen,” she says, averting her gaze. “We never married. You came along quickly, and then something in your father changed. He became controlling, physically abusive—manipulative. I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t please him.”
Her hands tremble as she wraps them around her mug. Josiah Mackey put the fear of God into his congregation each Sunday, but he put the fear of himself into his women twenty-four-seven.
“I tried to leave him several times. I took you with me each time, and each time he’d find me. And so I stopped fighting. I made him think I was happy. I had to get him off my case for a while. But right after your seventh birthday, I announced I was leaving him for good. He told me if I took you, he’d kill us both.”
“I don’t doubt that.” I stare at my tea. I haven’t touched it yet. Not much of a tea-drinker, and it stinks like mulch and barley.
Kath blinks away tears and wipes the ones that fall anyway. “I wanted to come back for you, Jensen. I did. He made it impossible.”
If she wants me to feel sorry for her, it’s almost working.
Almost.
“I tried to go to the police in Charter Springs. No one would listen. No one believed me. And by then, he’d trashed my name all over town. Told everyone I ran off and had an affair. Said I had mental illnesses and I was a danger to you.” She sniffs and turns away. “The threats didn’t stop until he knew I was good and scared. I was afraid if I tried anything else, he’d hurt you.”