With a heavy sigh, she scrambles off to the kitchen. I wait in the hallway, holding eye contact with Haley. She’s giving me a small reassuring smile, squeezing my hands in hers. It feels like it takes forever for Mercy to come back, but once she does, she thrusts a piece of paper into my hands that means my future is secure.
“Wait,” I say as I read over her handwritten note. “This says…”
“After I die? Yes, but let us be honest, Gaige, I don’t have much time left in me.”
Looking at Mercy, I notice how true her words are. She’s frail, barely hanging on. I can see how much she’s aged in the last year or so. Her gray hair is thinning to an extreme degree. Her muscles have weakened so much she’s hardly able to hold herself up on her own, having to resort to using a cane every day. I’ve seen her at meals, pushing her food around her plate, unable to find the appetite or strength to eat. I’ve seen this all, and I’ve ignored it because I’ve been so unbelievably angry at her over what happened all those years ago.
It seems I need to eat my own words and swallow them down, because I’m no better than Mercy when it comes to judging people for their pasts.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She shuffles back, startled. “What?”
“I need to let go of the past too. I’ve been holding on to it and judging you for doing the exact same thing. That’s unfair. So, I think we need to start over, look at one another in the now and not the past. Is that doable? Can we make that possible?”
Mercy regards me with a hard stare, but her brown eyes aren’t as cold as they usually are. Granted, they aren’t warm and welcoming either, but I’ll take it as a good sign.
“I believe so,” she says quietly, clasping both her hands on her cane.
I choke back a rush of tears. “Good. That’s good.”
As I lead Haley from the house and hear the click of the latch behind me, I breathe easy. We don’t move from the porch, and I swear I can feel Mercy watching us from the window, but I don’t care.
I need this moment, because after twenty-five years of near constant burden, I finally feel free.
“You okay?” Haley asks from beside me.
Smiling down at her, I say with confidence, “Yeah, I think I’m going to be just fine.”
