As I watched them haul her down the stairs, out the door, and down the walkway to Detective Meltzer’s waiting black sedan, I realized that she wore her darkness so well that all I saw was light.
Epilogue
Harper
Today was a hopeful day, stuck in the middle of two less important days. It wasn’t the beginning or the end, but a happy middle. It was the day Lane got custody of Mercy Kira Flynn.
The newborn baby was swaddled in a pink hospital blanket, resting in the crook of my arm while I sat by the fire in my new house. When Candace announced her name – Mercy Kira – I wept. A tribute to the daughter I lost, a remembrance that she was alive within us. I liked to think that Kira was smiling down from heaven, approving of the name. I would live in a way that would make my daughter happy as she watched on from her heavenly perch, and help raise Mercy to live up to Kira’s name. Holding her against my chest, I gave the baby the sum of all my parts – my life, my soul, my word to always protect her as best as I could.
Maybe Candace wasn’t so evil after all. Candace had vowed to give Lane the family he deserved. And for once she hadn’t been lying.
‘How do you like the new place?’ Lane asked me between sips of hot cocoa.
I glanced around the living room, where the Christmas tree lit up one corner in silver and blue sparkle. Garland wrapped around the banister leading upstairs to the kids’ rooms. Three bedrooms, one for me, one for Elise and Jackson to share – which they insisted on, to my surprise – and a nursery for Mercy when she was here. I figured that while Lane worked I could take care of her. My niece-stepdaughter. Well, I’d need to work on what to call her. For now, I just called her Mercy.
‘It’s starting to feel like home. Especially now that the kids have scattered their toys all over the place. And it’s affordable.’ My mother had found me the perfect deal.
Jackson ran – not shuffled, not skulked, but ran! – into the room squealing. My son was loud again! Laughing again! The noise was a song. His rambunctious destruction was a melody. Therapy helped taper his irrational fears of possessed dolls and haunted homes, grounding him in a sense of reality and hope. And I learned what patience and understanding should look like. He abruptly stopped at my knees, kissed the baby on her forehead, hugged me, then took off for the kitchen. We were hugging now, daily, sometimes hourly. A little love went a long way.
‘Did you close on the sale of your other house yet?’
‘Yep, Mom finally sold the Murder House.’ I raised my glass of white zinfandel – the only wine I could afford on my salary working at the botanical gardens while I was taking horticulture classes at community college – and I clicked it against Lane’s, saluting good riddance to the house and its awful nickname. ‘Not exactly Mom’s dream house sale, but it’s done and she got a nice fat commission out of it. And I ended up turning a small profit, so I can’t complain. At least Mom’s happy.’
In the modest kitchen, which was about two people wide, Elise baked cookies. Though judging by the smell, she was more likely burning them.
‘Check the oven!’ I called to Elise. ‘And don’t set the house on fire.’
We could chuckle now over the fire alarm scare way back when. Jackson swore never to play with matches again, and I swore never to stop loving him even if he did.
Mercy cooed, her blue-black eyes wide and expectant. She looked so much like Ben, with the same little dimple, like God had pressed His thumbprint in her chin. Her chimple, I called it. And the same thick dark hair. Every minute I loved her a little more. With a mother in jail, a dead father, and no other family to speak of, Lane was the best – and only – option as a parent. I would help him, because if Lane could somehow look past the betrayal and damage Candace caused him and still love Mercy with every fiber of his being, then I could support him in raising this little girl. When Mercy smiled, well, it was an easy yes.
Mercy, the perfect name for a child that was born out of suffering but destined for something better. Life had a way of doing that, stripping you naked and vulnerable, then leaving it up to time to heal you.
On the table beside me was the letter Candace had mailed me from jail. I had been nervous when I pulled it out of the mailbox, wondering what she could possibly want to say that hadn’t been addressed in court already. I read it, breath held and hands trembling:
Dear Harper:
Do you remember that time we were at the mall and I threw the penny in the fountain and made a wish? Well, my wish was that somehow you and I would be able to forgive each other, to become sisters for real, not only for me, but for my baby’s sake.
I know the damage I caused devastated you. But let’s be honest and admit that you were devastated long before I came into your life. My point is this: Don’t let life devastate you. You are the strongest woman I know, and you’ve lost more than any person should suffer. But you have a bigger faith than anything life throws at you. You know there’s hope ahead. Live in
