Mercy Read Free

MacDonald II, having been handed down from his great-grandfather to his grandfather to his father, passing al ong the same line of succession as the honorary title of clan chief. He'd be the ffrst to tell you that things had changed. Obviously, although he was c onsidered the chief of a clan and duly noted in the Scottish records, he was no longer directly responsible for the welfare of the townspeople. At least three-quarters of the town had never even seen the lands in Scotland that t echnically belonged to them. Hardly anyone spoke with a burr; fewer still kn ew more than a smattering of Gaelic.
    On the other hand, old habits died hard. There was no tarnished silver bowl or royal edict that proved that Wheelock was MacDonald land, but it was thei rs just the same, in the way that their ancestors had laid claim to that nar row pass in the Scottish Highlands. It was land, quite simply, they'd lived on forever.
    At age thirty-five, Cameron MacDonald knew he would stay in Wheelock for the rest of his life; that he would be the police chief until he died and passe d the office to his firstborn son. He knew these were things he did not have a choice about, no more than he had a choice about tossing off the choking obligation of being the current laird. Sometimes, in the very still parts of the night, he
    would tell himself that an honorary title did not mean today what it meant t wo hundred and fifty years ago. He'd reason that if he picked up his wife an d moved to Phoenix for the climate, everyone would take it in stride. Then he would remember how Darcy MacDonald, his third cousin's daughter, ha d tripped right on Main Street when Cam was no more than three feet away, t alking to the town barber. She'd had seventeen stitches in her knee because he hadn't moved quite fast enough, or been in the right place at the right time. In fact, some days he felt that every arrest, every conviction, was a reflection of something he'd done wrong as a leader.
    He'd press up against the soft, snoring curl of his wife, Allie, because she w as as solid as any truth he could spin. And he'd try to push himself back into sleep, but his dreams were always of chains, link after link after link, whic h stretched across the vast Atlantic.
    "I TT/'hen Allie Gordon was in high school, she was not the most W popula r girl in her class. She was nowhere even close. That honor belonged to V
    erona MacBean, with her cotton-candy puff of hair and her Cover Girl masc ara and her pink mohair sweater molded like skin to what the boys referre d to as the Hoosac Ridge.
    And today, fifteen years out of nowhere, Verona MacBean herself stepped int o Glory in the Flower and ordered three large centerpieces for a library lu ncheon to be given in her name.
    "Verona!" Allie had immediately recalled the name. There was something disc oncerting about seeing her classmate dressed in a severe beige suit, her ha ir scraped into a knot at the back of her head, her cheeks flat beneath a s heer layer of foundation. "What brings you to town?" Verona had made a little clicking noise with the back of her teeth. "Allie," sh e said, her voice just as thin and breathy as it had been in high school, "don'
    t tell me you're still here!"
    It was not meant as an insult, it never was, so Allie simply shrugged. "Well
    ," she said, drawing out her words and savoring them like a fine French deli cacy, "since Cam's here to stay ..." She let her voice trail off at the end, peeking up at Verona from the order form she was filling out. Then she star ed her in the face. "You did hear about Cam and me, didn't you?" Jodi Picoult
    Verona had walked over to the refrigerated case, as if inspecting the qualit y of the flowers she had already commissioned. "Yes," she said. "I seem to r ecall something about that."
    A few minutes later Verona had left, specifying the exact time for the cent erpieces to arrive (it was an author's luncheon; it wouldn't do to have wil ted roses for an author who, as she put