Free Just Mercy: A Novel by Dorothy Van Soest

Marty said as Fin lowered the paper. “But it doesn’t say what Raelynn Blackwell’s last words were.”
    “Maybe that’s what Mom is so mad about. I’ve never seen her like this.”
    “She’s not making any sense.”
    “Tell me about it. She wouldn’t even talk to me most of the way home.” Fin took a sip of coffee. “Ewww, did you make this stuff?”
    “She’s not herself.” Marty shook his head. He’d never known Bernie to get mad at Fin for anything, much less stop talking to him.
    “I think I know how she feels, though,” Fin said. “I’d feel deceived, too, if I believed Raelynn Blackwell knew this was going to happen.”
    “Delusional thinking,” Marty said.
    Fin didn’t say anything. He seemed deep in thought. “Remember Timmy Lee Brown?” he finally asked.
    Marty nodded. He remembered Bernie telling the story about the two things Timmy Lee, a mentally retarded man on death row, loved most: bird coloring books and a parakeet named Tipper that some sympathetic guards had given him. The poor guy was so deficient in mental capacity that when they escorted him to the death chamber, he asked if he could color in his book after the execution was over.
    “Remember,” Fin went on, “how no one seemed to care about Timmy Lee dying, but people were so worried about Tipper that offers to take the parakeet poured in from all over Texas?”
    “What are you getting at, Fin?”
    “Well, I keep thinking maybe we’re worrying about Mom like people worried about the parakeet instead of worrying about Timmy Lee. It’s not that I don’t feel for her. I do. But it’s just that, well, she’s not the one they’re trying to kill, is she?”
    Just then, the phone rang. “Good thing I thought to turn it off in the bedroom,” Marty said as he picked up the receiver.
    “Can you believe she pulled it off again , Dad? Give me Mom.”
    He held the receiver a few inches away to protect his eardrum from Annamaria’s piercing voice. “She’s asleep,” he said. “She had a rough night.”
    “Well, of course she did. She’s upset. How did that bitch manage this, anyway?
    He sighed, promised Annamaria he’d have Bernie call her back, and hung up.
    “So we now have consensus that Raelynn Blackwell is in control of the world,” Fin said with a sarcastic snort.
    “Since with your mom someone has to be responsible for everything that happens, she apparently thinks that this time it’s Raelynn Blackwell.”
    “At least for once maybe she doesn’t feel that she’s responsible.”
    “It’s the way she was raised,” Marty said with a sigh. He knew only too well how Bernie had struggled with her overdeveloped sense of responsibility, rooted deep as it was in her mother’s addiction and early death and her father’s unrealistic expectations of her as the oldest of six kids. Dealing with it hadn’t been easy on her or on their relationship over the years.
    “Maybe that’s what makes Mom so good at everything,” Fin said, just as the doorbell rang. “That’s Chuck to give me a ride home. Show Mom the article. Maybe it’ll help.”
    Good idea. Fin left, and Marty looked at his watch. Maybe Bernie would be awake by now. He poured her a cup of coffee, tucked the newspaper under his arm, and went upstairs. He opened the bedroom door and saw a pile of rumpled covers on the bed but no Bernie, so he knocked on the bathroom door.
    “Bernie? Hon?”
    No answer. “Bernie?”
    He pushed the door open and found her lying in the tub with her eyes closed, her arms at her sides, an inflatable pillow under her head. He fell to his knees and put his fingers on her neck to feel for a pulse. It was steady. Thank God. She started shivering then. No wonder. The water was cold, meaning she’d been in here a long time. He should have checked on her earlier. He touched her cheek, and her eyes opened.
    “It’s never going to end,” she whispered, staring up at the ceiling.
    He pulled her from the tub. She didn’t