Mercy

s hand on my stomach, caressing it. He’d known all along.

“You’ll find something to do with your life besides dance. I’m sure you will. It will just take some time, some courage.” He tilted my head up to his and brushed away the lingering tears.

“You’re a brave girl. You know that you are. You always have been. And you’ll be a mother now. You’ll be great at it. And you’ll be happy with Matthew, won’t you?”

“Matthew? No.” I buried my head in my hands. “I can’t...I won’t...G, why did you let me stay with him so long? I can’t go back to him. I shouldn’t. Should I?” He was quiet for a long time.

“I don’t know, Lucy. I don’t know. I don’t know that whole story, but I can tell he loves you very much.”

“I sent him away, G,” I whispered in dread. “I told him he was awful and a liar and a hypocrite and that I hated him and never wanted to see him again.” I burst into a fresh torrent of tears. I realized only now how painful it had been to speak to him that way, the man to whom I’d been trained to show respect. How could we ever get past the things we’d done to each other, the words we’d said?

“I can’t go back to him, G. Don’t let me. Please. Let me come back and stay with you and Georges, please, until I’m back on my feet.” I didn’t stop to wonder why I was begging so hard.

“Of course you can. You can stay as long as you need to. Maybe you both just need some time.”

I laughed humorlessly. That was exactly what Matthew had said. It seemed even now the two of them were working in tandem. “You’re so much like him,” I said. “I don’t understand how you two can be so much alike.”

“I don’t think I’m much like him, Lu. I think we both just care about you.”

“If he cared about me, he would never have done what you suggested.”

“But I suggested it, so I’m to blame also. Not that I’m arguing his side. I’m just saying...”

“Do you think I should go back to him?”

He looked away, considering. “Just give it time, Lucy. You’ll figure out what to do.

Sometimes I think maybe, with this, you really do belong together,” he said, pointing to my middle again. “But did he...what you did together...did he abuse you?” I snorted softly. If I was to detail half of what Matthew did to me, Grégoire would have the police down on his head, but I had reveled in all of it, all of it but what had happened at the end.

Even the misstep with Frank and Byron, while I hadn’t enjoyed it, had brought us closer, helped us find love.

“He never abused me, no, not in any way I didn’t want. We had a...safe word,” I said, my voice trembling at the end.

“A safe word?” Grégoire echoed softly.

For a minute we just sat in silence, the only sound the beep of the monitor and the steady click, click, sigh of the IV.

“Yes, a safe word,” I finally whispered. “For when he hurt me too bad.” Chapter Fifteen: Truth

I left that afternoon in a wheelchair to return to Grégoire and Georges’s house. Georges assured me I was welcome to stay as long as I liked, and while I had every intention of landing on my feet and finding something to do to make money and get my own place as soon as possible, it soon became apparent that it was going to take a while. Rehabilitation went slowly, and I hobbled about on crutches, and had terrible nausea and morning sickness and spent many miserable days in bed.

Sometimes, vowing to pull myself together, I showered and dressed and went with Grégoire to the theater to watch the show from the wings, but it was so painful to be there and not dance, and to endure the sympathetic stares and empty encouragements of the dancers, that I soon swore it off.

I still saw Dr. Rob every other week for appointments. He came by the apartment personally so I wouldn’t have to limp all the way to his office downtown. The rehabilitation was painful as he manipulated and coaxed my ankle, but even more painful was knowing that Dr. Rob was a direct link to Matthew.

I knew Matthew paid him for my care, because money never changed hands between us, and I knew also that he reported to Matthew on my progress, however slow. He must have certainly learned through Rob that I was still pregnant, that I hadn’t had an abortion after all. Rob asked me question after question every week, questions that grew more involved and personal, questions I knew came straight from Matthew’s mouth. I answered them, how could I not, grateful as I was for the fading pain and his patient, capable therapy.

Then one week he said flat out to me, “Matthew misses you.” The words landed on me like a punch in the gut. I’m sure I flinched, but he pretended not to notice. His fingers just kept working, manipulating, stretching my healing tendon just past the point of pain. I stayed silent, partly to pretend he hadn’t just said what he said, and partly because I knew if I spoke I would burst into tears.

He started to talk, uninvited, about his past with Matthew, all the mysterious and vague details I’d never known. He spoke of the impoverished, damaged family Matthew had come from, and detailed all the chances he’d taken, all the hard work he’d done to rise out of the squalor he’d been born to. He’d truly made something from nothing, built an empire of real estate from an Indiana shack. Dr. Rob had met him in college when Matthew was a struggling freshman, and Rob, a young man of privilege, was wasting his opportunities on women and partying.

“I almost died one night. Alcohol poisoning,” he said. “He took me to the hospital, got medical care for me. He’s a good man. He takes care of people he cares about. He cares about you.”

I was really, really trying not to cry, but I was fighting a losing battle.

He pressed his point. “It’s hard for him when he cares so much about you, to not be here for you. He misses you, he wants to help you. I know he’d like another chance.” I wiped my tears. Through all this, his hands never stopped. The pain, the twinge and pang of him moving my ankle was the only thing that kept me from going totally numb.

“I know you miss him too, Lucy. You’re not happy. You belong with him, especially now.”

“Did he tell you to say that?” I scoffed through tears. “They’re the exact words he would use.”

“He asked me to tell you this, yes. But I’m not saying anything I can’t see for myself.

You’re unhappy without him, and you miss him terribly. Don’t you?” I would have answered him if I wasn’t suddenly bawling too hard to catch my breath. I did miss Matthew, I missed him like madness. I missed him so I lay in bed every night and cried for an hour. I missed him so that food had no taste and art had no beauty and life had no meaning. I missed him so that I wrapped my hands around my waist a hundred times a day to cradle the only thing of him I had left.

“What do I do?” I sobbed. “What do I do?”

“Forgive him. Let him come talk to you at the very least. He wants to see you, but only if you feel in your heart you can give him another chance. He doesn’t want to see you if it’s only to tell him goodbye.”

“But I don’t know. I don’t know if I can trust him again.”

“He made a mistake, Lucy, and he knows it. A big mistake, one with a lot of repercussions.

Lifelong, life changing repercussions, and he’s sorry for it. He’s used to fixing things with money. He’s always been able to do that. This is one situation that can’t be fixed. It’s been difficult for him. He’s as miserable as you are. I’m an outsider, I know. It’s really none of my business, but it seems to me...”

His magical hands kept massaging and moving my ankle and knee, working the stiffness away.

“It seems to me that you two being together and having to work through some issues is better than being alone and miserable for the rest of your lives. I mean, you’re both unhappy.

You’re both lonely. You both miss each other. It seems awfully pointless to me, at least from the outside looking in.”

“Ouch,” I said softly as he turned my ankle to the right.

“Nearly forty percent more range on that side. You’re getting b

etter, Lucy. You won’t grace the stage again, I’m afraid, but I promise you, you’ll be able to dance.”

“I will?”

“I’m sure of it. Not perfectly, not with the intensity and stamina you used to, but you’ll dance again.”

He patted my ankle and fixed me with his gaze.

“Even if it’s not perfect,” he said, “if you enjoy it, if it makes you happy, then it’s a good thing.”

* * *

I thought a long time about the things Dr. Rob had told me, and by morning I’d decided to call Matthew, but I didn’t do it that day or even the next. I was afraid of taking that step off the precipice, afraid of trusting him again. But I was just as afraid of living my whole life without him when I needed him so much. I was afraid to call after the things I’d said to him. I was afraid to call because of the chance, however small, that he would not take me back. And I was afraid to call because, suddenly, I was starting to show.

I know, silly vanity, but what on earth would he think when he saw me? I wasn’t even five months along, but small and slim as I was, I already had a noticeable bump. My slender, muscular body was one of the main things he liked about me, and I was no longer anywhere close to sleek, with my belly sticking out strangely and my muscles weak after months of forced inactivity. Dr. Rob said he still wanted me, that he missed me, but would he really want me like this? I couldn’t even have a few drinks to muster up my courage, so for two nights I just stared at the phone.

“Call already, Lu,” Grégoire chided me on the third night. “Enough. Pick up the phone and call.”

“What if he decides he doesn’t want me anymore?”

He laughed. “For God’s sake, believe me, that’s not going to happen. He wants you back like mad.”

I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know, G? Have you been informing on me too?”

“He might have called me a few times. Checking up on you. We’ve talked.”

“You two! You both ought to be ashamed.”

“Just pick up the damn phone. Do you want me to dial for you?” I sighed. “Yes, actually. I’m shaking too hard to do it myself.” Grégoire picked up the phone and punched in the numbers. It didn’t escape me that he knew them by heart.