Heather nodded, and Alma patted her hand. Alma pointed at the last gift beneath the tree.
“For you, Heather,” she said in accented English.
“That one is from me and Gia, Heather,” Noah said, and Mercedes heard the nerves in his voice.
Heather pulled the wrapping off a large canvas painting and stared, transfixed. Cora was captured in swirls of color—vivid reds and bold blues, blushing pinks and shades of gold and bits of shadow glowing from the page. It was magnificent.
“I thought you should have it,” Noah said, his eyes on his mother-in-law. Her red hair was faded and her eyes worn, but the resemblance was unmistakable between mother and daughter, and when she covered her mouth on a sob, they all cried with her.
“Gia should have it,” she choked.
“I had a color copy made for Gia, to hang in her room. That’s the original, and it’s yours. Someday, if you want Gia to have it, then you can give it to her.”
“Who did this?” Heather cried.
“There’s a patient at Montlake. An artist. I asked him—commissioned him—to paint her.”
“He captured her—all the best parts—how did he do that?” Heather marveled, tears running down her cheeks.
“He has an amazing gift,” Noah said, and Mercedes knew there was more, but didn’t press.
Later, when breakfast was cleaned up, Heather was napping, and Alma had left for Christmas Mass, Mercedes handed Noah a cup of coffee, sank down beside him on the sofa, and urged the full story behind the painting.
“Tell me about the picture, Noah. Tell me about the artist.”
“The police brought him in a month ago. He found his grandmother dead in the kitchen. Instead of going for help, he had a psychotic break of sorts. They found him covered with paint, drawing murals on her living room walls. Brilliant kid. He’s a genius. A . . . savant. His art is unbelievably realistic and . . . beautiful . . . and terrifying. He got hold of a can of pencil nubs and covered the walls of his room in the oddest things,” Noah said.
“Like what?” Mercedes asked.
“He claims that . . . dead people . . . show him things. And if he paints what they show him, they leave him alone.”
“He’s delusional?”
“No. I don’t think he is. He knows things that nobody could possibly know. Dr. June’s twin sister died when she was just a little kid. Moses brought it up in a counseling session. None of the staff even knew about it; I didn’t know. We have an orderly—great big guy named Chaz—Moses told him his grandfather wanted him to find something. Gave him instructions. It all checked out.”
Mercedes was silent, considering. Abuela had always believed in things she couldn’t see, in gifts and special abilities. Maybe it was her influence, but Mercedes had no trouble believing there was a whole host of things she didn’t understand about life and death. She’d always had good instincts and she trusted them. Noah was no pushover either. If he said the artist saw dead people, the artist saw dead people. End of subject.
“He saw Cora. He said sometimes . . . she follows me around. He told me . . . he told me she’s fine. She’s good. But she worries about me,” Noah murmured.
“He said she follows you around?” Mercedes didn’t like the sound of that.
“He listed all her favorite things. Umbrellas. Harry Connick, stuff like that. No one would know that, Mer. He drew her face without ever seeing a picture of her.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Yeah. Unbelievable. But . . . I do believe him. I think Moses sees the dead.”
“And he said she was all right? She’s . . . okay?”
“Yeah.” Noah smiled, the grin quivering on his lips for a moment before he ducked his head and took a deep breath.
“Do you think . . . he would talk to me?” Mercedes whispered.
“Why?”
“He made you feel better.” It was obvious. Noah had a peace about him he hadn’t had even a month before.
“He did.”
“I want to feel better too.”
Noah took her hand. “I’ll ask him, Mer. I can’t start running a side operation from Montlake, but I’ll ask him if he wouldn’t mind talking to you.”
Gia, playing at their feet, toddled toward the tree and placed her red ball on a branch as though she wanted it to hang there with the rest of the ornaments. The ball rolled off and she growled.
“No, bah,” she ordered, and placed the ball back on the branch. It rolled off again.
“No, bah!” Gia was getting frustrated with the uncooperative ball.
Mercedes set her coffee aside and crawled to Gia, taking the ball from her hands.
“Here. I’ll help.” She wedged it near the trunk, so the branches embraced it, keeping it from falling.
“There,” Mercedes said.
“Meh,” Gia said happily, pointing at the ball and clapping. She then tried to reach the ball, but the branches poked at her, and she pointed again, imperious, looking from the ball to Mercedes like Mercedes had tricked her by pushing the ball back so far.
“Meh!” Gia repeated.
“What is she saying? She kept saying that last Monday—meh, meh, meh. She sounds like a little goat, and I don’t know what she wants.”
“Meh,” Gia bleated again and pointed a small finger toward Mercedes, clearly irritated by her lack of understanding.
Noah started to laugh. “She’s saying Mer.”
“Meh,” Gia said, nodding.
“Oh,” Mercedes cried.
“She just can’t say her r’s,” Noah said.
“Meh? Doesn’t it just figure. She calls me Meh, the word everyone uses when they feel ambivalent about something. Meh.” Mercedes laughed.
“I’ve never heard that,” Noah said.
“Yeah, you know. How was that movie?” She shrugged her shoulders. “It was just . . . meh. Do you like this shirt? Meh.”
“Gia doesn’t feel ambivalent about you.”
“No. She doesn’t. And I love it.” Mercedes grabbed Gia and nuzzled her, kissing her fat cheeks and nibbling on her neck.
“Meh.” Gia giggled.
“Gia,” Mercedes crooned. “Can you say Gia? Say Gia.”
Gia scrunched up her entire face and said, “DEE-UH.” All vowels, wrong consonant.
“Gee-uh,” Mercedes repeated.
Gia clapped for her, and Mercedes and Noah both laughed.
“Meh.” Gia patted Mer’s cheek.
“Yep. That’s me. Meh,” Mercedes agreed.
“Noah,” Gia called, turning toward her father. Mercedes hooted. Noah had forgotten to mention Gia’s new word.
“She’s not even two years old, and she’s already calling me by my first name. I want to be Daddy,” Noah grumbled.
“Well . . . she’s calling you Noah because everyone else does. Maybe I’ll start calling you Big Papa,” she quipped, enjoying the flirtation.
“Yeah . . . I’m thinking you better not.”
* * *
Noah and Mercedes agreed to accompany each other to their obligatory New Year’s Eve work parties, first to Noah’s, then Mercedes’s, with plans to be home shortly after midnight. Heather had taken Gia home for the evening and would keep her through the next day, but New Year’s fell on a Saturday, which was Noah’s longest shift, and he had no desire to party late into the night and work all the next day. He had no desire to party at all, but pulled on a pair of grey slacks and a black dress shirt, trimmed his beard and slicked back his hair, and did his best to put on a happy face for a few hours.
Mercedes wore a red dress with little capped sleeves, a sweetheart neckline, and a full skirt, and she fixed her hair in Veronica Lake waves. With glossy, red lips and high, red heels, the whole look screamed, “Look at me,” but Mercedes had always considered herself a walking advertisement of her profession. If she looked good, people would come to her to make them look good. She had business cards in her clutch.
Noah just smiled and shook his head when he pic
ked her up. “How will I explain you, Mer?”
“No one will think we’re together, Noah.” She patted his cheek. “Don’t worry.”
“Why won’t they think we’re together if we arrive together?”
She shrugged. “No one ever has. How long have we been friends? Everyone knows we aren’t a couple. From the very beginning, I’ve always been the sidekick.”
Noah didn’t argue with her, and when they arrived, he introduced her as his oldest friend, just like he always had. Everyone nodded and smiled kindly—if a little curiously—and made stilted small talk until Noah whisked her away to someone new. He kept her hand in his and moved through the clustered couples and hospital administrators with purpose, stopping, greeting, and engaging in one minute of conversation before moving along and repeating the same steps.
“You can drink, Mer. Don’t abstain on my behalf,” he said, when he noticed she hadn’t eaten or sipped a single thing.
“I don’t think I have time.”
“Why?”
“Because when you’ve given every person here exactly sixty seconds, we’re going to leave.”
“Am I that obvious?” He winced.
“Yes. Are you timing yourself every time you stop to talk?”
“There’s a ticking time bomb in my head, if that’s what you mean. Everyone is making those mournful eyes at me, wondering how I’m really doing, or speculating if I’ve already moved on. It feels . . . weird. Cora’s been gone for almost nine months, and this is the first time anyone has seen me with someone else. And for your information . . . you don’t look like a sidekick.”
She smiled and winked at him. “Always have been, always will be. So . . . are you ready for round two?” she suggested.
“Yes, please. Your coworkers don’t know me as well.”
“True. And my party is eighties themed.”
Noah groaned. “Please, no.”
But at the Maven staff and client bash, no one looked twice at Noah, except to say hello, before turning to Mercedes and talking shop. Noah relaxed as the evening wore on, his fear and discomfort falling away into the easy warmth of being with Mercedes and a group of people who hadn’t known Cora and who didn’t especially care to know him. It was nice. Mercedes even got him to dance. It was like being thirteen again, 1987, listening to the boombox while shooting hoops, Mercedes dancing while she dribbled. Every song reminded him of The Three Amigos, and for a little while he set aside the weight on his shoulders and just was.
Keegan Tate cut in once, whisking Mer away and holding her too close as Night Ranger moaned about Sister Christian, but Mer whirled back to Noah on the next song, laughing and leaving Keegan to find another partner. Noah made sure it didn’t happen twice, shooting a warning look at anyone who approached and dancing to every song, just so Mer wouldn’t leave him again.
When the countdown to midnight began, the DJ warning the crowd and pausing the music, Noah realized suddenly that he’d made it. He’d survived the worst year of his life, and considering his life, that was saying something. There were days when he hadn’t been able to do anything but exist in the moment, where the thought of the future almost shut him down. He still wasn’t whole, and life wasn’t easy. Thinking of Cora still made his heart ache and his stomach clench, but he’d made it. Gia was growing. Gia was happy. And it was going to be okay. Eventually.
“. . . Three, Two, One. Happy New Year!” the DJ blared. Balloons fell, and noisemakers blasted.
“Happy New Year, Noah!” Mercedes cried, catching a balloon and tossing it up again. Noah looked down into her laughing eyes and around at the kissing couples crowding the floor, finding himself in the same situation he’d been in months before when he was pinned by the kissing cam.
“There’s no jumbotron, Noah,” Mercedes protested, standing on her toes so she could speak into his ear, clearly wanting him to hear her amid the noise and the merriment, but he didn’t pull away. He knew Mer had no expectations of a kiss at midnight. In fact, she probably expected a hug and a high five. The knowledge freed him, and he turned his face and brushed his lips across her cheek.
“Happy New Year, Mer.” Then his lips captured hers, a gentle acknowledgement, a nod to the new year, and her hands rose to his chest in surprise. For a moment it was simply the quiet kiss of true affection, the soft exchange of warm thoughts and well wishes. But someone shoved past them, and Mercedes teetered, losing her balance. Noah’s arms tightened to steady her, bringing her body more fully against his, and suddenly their mouths weren’t pressed together in cautious greeting but in growing wonder. Their lips lingered, tasting and teasing, shifting and re-shaping, a kaleidoscope kiss that formed only to fall away and reconfigure.
It wasn’t until the lights flickered and the eighties tunes resumed—“Auld Lang Syne” becoming UB40’s “Red Red Wine”—that Noah lifted his head and Mer lowered her eyes, catching her breath and letting him go.
“I hate this song,” he said.
“I know you do.”
“It’s going to be stuck in my head for a week.”
“We better go before you start singing along then.”
“Good idea.”
It was so easy to slide back into the old banter, into the comfortable give and take of camaraderie, but when Noah turned off the car in Mer’s driveway and sat staring at the steering wheel for a heartbeat too long, Mer reached out and pinched his arm, hard.
“Don’t overthink it, Boozer,” she warned.
“Huh?”
“Step away from the ledge,” she demanded, monotone.
“Mer . . .”
“Turn off the fart factory,” she droned.
“The fart factory?”
“I can hear your brain farting all the way over here, and it stinks.”
“Oh. Gotcha,” he said, a smile making the word lift at the end. “I adore you,” he confessed.
“And I adore you, Boozer.”
“Red, red wine, I love you right from the start,” Noah clipped in reggae rhythm.
“Right from the start, with all of my heart.” Mercedes answered, mimicking the cadence.
“Goodnight, Mer.”
“Goodnight, Noah.” She climbed out and shut the door, and he could hear her singing all the way up the walk, waving as she went.
“I really hate that song,” Noah sighed to himself, but he was smiling as he pulled away, the fart factory extinguished.
***
Seven
1989
“In the end, only three things matter,” Abuela said. “Who He is.” She pointed at the sky. “Who you are, and who your friends are.”
“Why does it matter who your friends are?” What Mercedes really wanted to ask was why any of it mattered, but she didn’t want to hurt her abuela’s feelings.
“Our friends shape the course of our lives. You have to choose them very carefully. But if you know who He is, then He will help you know who you are. And if you know who you are, you will know who your true friends are. One thing leads to another, you see.”
Mercedes didn’t see, but she nodded. “Noah is my true friend.”
“Yes. He is. He’s a good boy.”
“Cora is my true friend.”
Abuela nodded, but a little more slowly this time. “You are her true friend. And that is important too. But Cora doesn’t know who she is.”
“Does she know who He is?” Mercedes pointed at the sky. Abuela loved to talk in mystic riddles, and Mercedes liked to tease.
Abuela narrowed her eyes, suspecting Mercedes was trying to talk circles around her.
“Only three things matter, niña,” Abuela said, shaking her finger.
“Who He is, who I am, and who my friends are,” Mercedes supplied, trying not to smile.
“If you don’t know who you are, you won’t see the world clearly, you understand?” Abuela was getting frustrated.
“Who am I, Abuela?”
“You are a child of God.”
“And who is
Cora? Maybe I can tell her who she is, so she will know.”
“Mercedes—you are laughing at me.” Abuela sighed.
Mercedes was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry, Abuela. I do know who I am. I am your granddaughter, and I love you very much. I am also a tease, and sometimes I laugh when I should listen.”
“Sí. You should listen. But it is okay to laugh too.”
“So tell me . . . who is Cora?” Mercedes asked, contrite.
“She is a child of God too. We all are. But she doesn’t know it. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she sees you. And she sees Noah. And she sees her mother and her father, and everyone who has loved her and everyone who has let her down. But she doesn’t see Cora because she doesn’t know who Cora is.”
“I’ll tell her, Abuela.” Mercedes patted her grandmother’s hand. She didn’t feel like laughing anymore. She felt melancholy. Sad. Like she’d just learned her friend was suffering from an illness she knew nothing about.
“I know you will, Mercedes. You are a true friend. I will tell her too. Maybe we can save her.”
* * *
Moses was lean with youth but muscled like a man—eighteen going on thirty—and as tall as Noah, with chocolate milk skin and odd hazel eyes that made Mercedes want to twitch and look away. His hair was cut so close to his scalp that only a suggestion of hair remained, and he ran his hands over his head before dropping them into his lap. He stared at Mercedes quietly for a moment, and she didn’t fill the silence. Noah had excused himself with a soft reminder that he would check back soon. Other visitors sat in similar rooms, all of them lining a long hallway. Moses wore the standard attire of a Montlake inmate. Pale yellow scrubs and tan socks with little rubber circles on the bottoms to prevent slipping on the linoleum floors. He should have looked harmless in the odd clothing. He didn’t. A stack of drawing paper and several grease pencils lay on the table, and he picked one up, rotating it between his fingers like a drummer in a heavy metal band.