Mercy Read Free Page A

church steeple with her fingers. He tugged on her ponytail to get her attention. “You don’t need to be embarrassed with your daddy. You can tell me.”
    “I’m not embarrassed.”
    “Your hair’s getting red and so are your freckles.”
    She giggled. “My hair’s already red, and my freckles can’t change color.”
    “Are you gonna tell me or not?”
    “You have to promise not to laugh.”
    “I’m not gonna laugh.”
    “Remy and John Paul would maybe laugh.”
    “Your brothers are idiots. They laugh at just about anything, but you know they love you and they’ll work hard to see you get what you want.”
    “I know,” she said.
    “Are you gonna tell me or not? It sounds like you’ve already got some ideas about what you’d like to be.”
    “I do know,” she admitted. She looked him right in the eyes to make sure he wasn’t going to laugh and then whispered, “I’m going to be a doctor.”
    He hid his surprise and didn’t say a word for a long minute while he chewed the notion over in his mind.
    “Now, why do you suppose you want to be a doctor?” he asked, already warming to the idea.
    “Because then maybe I could fix . . . something. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, ever since I was little.”
    “You’re still little,” he said. “And doctors fix people, not things.”
    “I know that, Daddy,” she said with such authority in her voice she made him smile.
    “You got someone in mind you want to fix?”
    Big Daddy put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and hauled her into his side. He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say the words.
    She brushed her bangs out of her eyes and slowly nodded. “I was thinking maybe I could fix Mama’s head. Then she could come home.”

CHAPTER ONE
    PRESENT DAY, NEW ORLEANS
    T he first one was a mercy killing.
    She was dying a very, very slow death. Each day there was a new indignity, another inch of her once magnificent body destroyed by the debilitating disease. Poor, poor Catherine. Seven years ago she had been a beautiful bride with a trim, hourglass figure men lusted after and women envied, but now her body was fat and grossly bloated, and her once perfect alabaster skin was blotchy and sallow.
    There were times when her husband, John, didn’t recognize her anymore. He would remember what she used to look like and then see with startling clarity what she had become. Those wonderful sparkling green eyes that had so captivated him when he’d first met her were now glazed and milky from too many painkillers.
    The monster was taking its time killing her, and for him there wasn’t a moment’s respite.
    He dreaded going home at night. He always stopped on Royal Street to purchase a two-pound box of Godiva chocolates first. It was a ritual he had started months ago to prove to her that he still loved her in spite of her appearance. He could have had the chocolates delivered daily to the house, of course, but the errand stretched out the time before he had to face her again. The next morning the almost empty gold box would be in the porcelain trash can next to the king-size canopy bed. He would pretend not to notice she’d gorged herself on the sweets, and so would she.
    John no longer condemned her for her gluttony. The chocolates gave her pleasure, he supposed, and there was precious little of that in her bleak, tragic existence these days.
    Some nights, after purchasing the chocolates, he would return to his office and work until fatigue overcame him and he’d be forced to go home. As he maneuvered his BMW convertible up St. Charles to the Garden District of New Orleans, he’d inevitably start shaking as if he were suffering from hypothermia, but he wouldn’t actually become physically ill until he entered the black-and-white foyer of his house. Gripping the box of chocolates in his hand, he’d place his Gucci briefcase on the hall table and stand there in front of the gilded mirror for a minute or two taking