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Another attempt at levity landed like lead. Ellen began shivering. Even from the far side of the table, I could see goose bumps forming on her arms. “Bound or no,” she said, pulling her arms around herself, “I feel really uncomfortable having him around.” Her eyes made a circle of us there at the table. “After Tillandsia . . .” Her voice failed her.
“Oh, honey.” Iris leaned over and wrapped her arm around Ellen’s shoulders. She pulled Ellen’s head to her bosom and rocked her gently. Iris took her big-sister duties to heart.
“It’s either laugh or murder him,” Oliver said. He reached over and took Ellen’s hand. “We know what he did to you, sis.”
Ellen’s eyes widened for a moment; then her lips quivered. “I vote we kill him.”
Oliver released her hand, then pushed back from the table. He stomped across the room and grabbed hold of the sink. His shoulders rose and fell a few times before he turned back to us with a stern look on his face. “I think I second that.”
Iris bounded from the table, her movement lost between a leap and actual flight. She landed before her younger brother and delivered him a slap that reverberated in the air. Oliver stumbled back from the force. “I will have no more talk of murder. Do you all hear me? No more talk of beating.”
“No.” Oliver recovered himself and stood seething before his sister. “Just actual beating and on me rather than on the bastard who’s earned it.”
Iris’s temper cooled. “I’m sorry.” She reached out for him, but he pulled away. “But you were raised better than that.” She stopped and looked at her own hand. “So was I. I am truly sorry I struck you, Oli.”
“Well, damn, did you have to hit so hard?” Oliver bobbed out of her reach as he made his way back to the table. My eyes traced a path past the red mark on his cheek to his temple. I blinked, convinced it was just a trick of the light, but no, there were gray hairs growing in there. Even though they were aging gracefully, my aunts looked like they should be my aunts. Uncle Oliver, on the other hand, could easily pass for my brother. My entire life Oliver seemed to have been suspended around the age of twenty-five. Had his long stretch of seemingly eternal youth drawn to a close?
“I am so sorry,” Iris said, pulling my focus back to her. Iris closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. She sighed it out then looked at us. “We are not vigilantes, and we are certainly not murderers. I am well aware of the harm this young man has done to this family. We live in a society of laws. We
will obey those laws. Right, Adam?”
He ran his hand over his face, then reached out to take Oliver’s hand. “Yes, Iris,” he agreed with much less conviction than I would have expected from one of Chatham County’s finest. “You are right about how we should handle this situation.”
“Should handle?” Iris too picked up on his reticence.
Adam held his free hand out. “We, and by we, I mean the police, cannot handle him. Sure, if he were a regular man, but as soon as Gudrun’s temporary binding gives way, Josef would kill every last officer in the county. You know it’s true.”
“He will kill again,” I said, not having meant to speak out loud. I felt all eyes on me. “I’m just thinking that Georgia is a death penalty state. If it were possible to turn him over to the police, the result would probably be the same.”
Ellen pounced on my words. “Yes.” She turned to Iris. “You see, even Mercy realizes we have to do something to end this sociopath.”
Iris looked at me. Disappointment was written all over her face. “Are you proposing we skip any kind of judicial review and simply execute the boy?”
“Well,” I began to stammer, “I didn’t say that, not really. I mean, we have to deprive him of his ability to harm people, but . . .” Honestly, I didn’t know how I felt about any of this. Until this moment, I’d never given capital punishment a second thought. He’d tortured both Ellen and Adam, and he killed Colin and Claire. By doing that he had set my own life to unraveling. He’d as good as killed Peter, for my husband was as gone from this world as if he had died. Did I want Josef punished? Absolutely. Did I want him dead? Probably. But did I have it in me to endorse his killing? Did I have it in me to kill him myself?
“We all know the best way to do that.” Ellen’s voice grew raspy. “Iris, even you know some people just need killing.”
“Ellen, this is not you speaking, not really.” Iris pleaded with her eyes. “You are speaking from a place of dark pain.”
“Why?” Ellen shrieked as every cupboard began to open and slam shut again and again. “Erik had two sons. Why would Josef be the one to live instead of Paul?”
And there we had it. Worse than Josef’s being another living monument to Erik’s colossal infidelities, a truth to which Ellen had long ago become accustomed, worse than the torture Josef had practiced on her during our night of horrors at Tillandsia, was the hard, cold stone of pain Ellen had been polishing since her son had died.
I felt my own fear for Colin, and for the first time ever, I thought I could begin to understand Ellen’s agony. God, all the times I resented her for giving in to another messy drunken bender. She needs to pull herself together. Move past it. What an insensitive little bitch I had been. I thanked God I’d always kept these ignorant thoughts to myself, rather than proving myself a fool by sharing them with her. Now, I could feel the gravity of her pain, how nearly impossible it had been for her to get out of bed some mornings. Still, she had, she’d gone on, and dang it, if she found herself too weak from time to time to go on without a crutch, I had no right to judge her. Help her, encourage her, remind her she could do better, but judge her, no.
“Please, Aunt Ellen,” I said, hoping to quiet the noise, “you’re scaring me.”
Ellen trembled, but the shaking around us stopped. Iris watched her sister, hesitating to speak, but finally said what the rest of us all were thinking. “You’re right, Ellie, it doesn’t make one damned bit of sense.” Iris fell silent, and the distant look in her eyes told me she was doing a bit of soul-searching. “Honestly, if putting Josef down would bring you back your boy, I think I might just do it myself. Single-handedly.” Ellen and Iris locked eyes. “But killing Josef is not going to bring Paul back to us. You know that.”
Ellen closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes, I do. I know you are right. My head tells me you are right. We have to handle him humanely. Oh, but Iris, my heart. The dark things it calls me to do.”
Iris joined the rest of us at the table. She sat between me and Adam, and took each of our hands. I, in turn, reached out for Ellen, she for Oliver, then my uncle completed the circle by tightening his grasp on Adam’s hand. We remained there for a minute or so, still, silent, connected. I felt my little one kick and gasped. The combined will of my magical family had woven a protective net around my son. It was working. My boy was a fighter. He wouldn’t simply fade away. I believed it in my soul. The faces around the table lit up as they realized what had happened. I tightened my grip on my family, and wished Maisie were there with us to enjoy this rare and glowing instant.
Then that moment ended. Iris released her grasp on those next to her. “Maisie,” she said, and I turned to find my sister standing behind me. “How did you get out of your room?”
“A bit of advice, Mercy.” Maisie wrapped an arm around my neck and gave me a gentle squeeze. “Be careful of what you wish for.” She released me. “Don’t blame me, blame little sister here. She sprung me from the pen.”
“Mercy,” Iris began, exasperation sounding in her voice, “we had agreed—”
