CHAPTER ONE
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
—MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
MEETING HOUSE CREAMERY, VERMONT
The bleating began long before dawn. Bodhi St. George heard the mournful maah of the goats and wondered what was wrong. He shifted his weight on the futon where’d he fallen asleep reading Lion’s Roar and cursed as his shin banged the wooden frame. He rubbed his leg. He really needed to get a decent couch.
Three o’clock in the morning, according to his G-Shock watch, one of the few remaining remnants of his old life. Early, even for the Alpine goats, who were clearly agitated. He’d lived in the cottage here on the creamery long enough now to distinguish cries of hunger from those of happiness. This was the does’ shriek of distress.
He waited for the slamming slide of the barn door. That slam roused him every morning—his landlady, Annie, going out to feed and milk the herd.
No slam. More bleating. She must surely hear that racket.
Bodhi inhaled deeply and exhaled deeply as he lay there, just as he taught others to do to reduce stress, to dissipate anxiety, to dispel fear. It wasn’t working. He tried again. Trying to breathe through the tension that electrified his every pore. Imminent threat or PTSD, he didn’t know. But his body knew. Threat.
He listened, hard, for the sounds beyond the obstreperous blatting. A faint rustling rolled him off the futon onto his knees on the hardwood floor. Away from the south-facing windows, which looked out upon the barn and the main house and the pastures beyond.
It was probably nothing, but he couldn’t be sure. He was never sure. Paranoia or prescience? That was the question he asked himself every time. So far, he’d erred on the side of paranoia, but he knew that could change. Part of him believed that they were coming for him. That they were always coming for him.
He reached under the futon for the lockbox. In the box was the other remnant of his old life, the Glock he kept holstered on a belt with an ammo pouch holding two magazines, along with a couple of extra cartridges. Without looking he punched in the four-digit code on the digital keypad by rote and retrieved his weapon with his right hand, while he pulled his boots out from under the coffee table with his left hand.
Buckling the gun belt around his waist over his sweats, he tugged his boots onto his stockinged feet. Slapping the box shut, he kicked it back under the futon. He grabbed his backpack from the table, yanking it over his shoulders and slipping his cell and keys into the side pocket of his sweats. He crawled on his belly across the floor to the relative safety of the hallway.
There he rose to his feet, sprinting for the laundry room, where he could escape through the back door to the forest. Where he could reconnoiter until he figured out what the hell, if anything, was going on.
The woods encroached on the north side of the property, a couple hundred yards from where he stood at the edge of the door, surveilling the ground he had to traverse. The summer night sky was lit only by starlight and a slim crescent moon. The main house was dark; nothing had triggered the outside lights. He could barely make out the woven-wire fencing that surrounded the pastures. No sign of life, no sound except the continuous bleating.
A crumbling, dry stone wall ran from the driveway where his Jeep sat parked by the cottage right into the forest. His only cover. He hoped it was enough.
Bodhi bolted out of the house to the wall, hunkering down behind the stacked stones. The barn rocked with the wicked yodeling of the goats. He called 911, worried about Annie and her Alpines, and then tossed his cell over the woven-wire fencing and in the direction of the farm. The phone landed silently on the soft high grass of the pasture. He wondered who would find it first: the goats or the cops. He just hoped it wasn’t the guys gunning for him.
He waited just long enough to ensure that he was the only human out there in the dark, and then ran, crouched, alongside the old granite barrier that led right into the murky gloom of the woods. The summer canopy of fully leafed maples and sycamores and oaks blocked what little moonlight there was, and the ferns that crowded the forest floor made navigating the overgrown trail tricky in the dark. He huffed along for a few minutes, then turned to see if he could still make out the farm beyond the woods.
Nothing but the looming shadows of the trees.
If I can’t see them, they can’t see me, he thought, unzipping his backpack and retrieving his flashlight.
Bodhi switched it on and shone the light deeper into the forest. He started to run, the bleating of Annie’s goats ringing in his ears.
CHAPTER TWO
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you … I could walk through my garden forever.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
“Houston, we have a problem.” Mercy Carr scratched the sweet spot between Elvis’s ears as she watched the shiny blue Volvo tear up her driveway. Split-spoke alloy-rimmed tires screeched, signaling the squalling to come. Hell hath no fury like her mother on a mission.
Mercy and the Malinois had been having a lovely time together on the porch. Her housemates Amy and baby Helena were still asleep, both having been up half the night, thanks to the indignities of teething.
So she and Elvis had this glorious morning all to themselves. Gazing out at the garden, breathing in the extraordinary scent of lilacs and lilies, irises and peonies, sage and salvia. A brief shower had washed the blooms at dawn, and their dewy petals glistened in the sun as she listened to silly love songs on her phone, luxuriating in the giddiness she felt whenever she allowed herself to think of a certain game warden. She indulged herself like this only when she was alone. The dog didn’t count. Elvis knew how to keep a secret.
Vermont in June. That was part of the problem. Between the weather and the weddings everyone went a little love crazy this time of year. Romance was in the air here now—and even those who were not romantic by nature could get swept up in the insane sentimentality of it all. Even her grandmother, who was getting married at midsummer and had in her engagement euphoria named Mercy’s mother Grace as matron of honor.
“It has to be Grace,” Patience told her. “You know she loves hosting events. And she is my eldest daughter.”
Mercy knew her grandmother was right. Certainly she had no gift for party planning, and her exacting mother was bound to take over one way or another, so why not let her handle the arrangements from the beginning.
This was why not. In her zeal to create the perfect wedding, her mother was driving the bride crazy. In desperation, Patience asked Mercy to help rein in Grace’s over-the-top plans. Mercy found herself caught in the middle of a wedding war where the opposing parties were willing to draw blood over such issues as church or resort, afternoon or evening, red velvet or chocolate.
Grace parked the car and got out, slamming the door. She stormed up the garden path, a wedding-planning warrior in a pink linen Chanel shift.
Looked like another minidrama was about to unfold. Mercy was not dressed for it. Her ultrachic mother had high fashion standards that her only daughter rarely managed to meet. At least her green tank and camo cargo pants were clean, but her curly red hair was its usual mess. She pulled a scrunchie from her pocket and tucked the tangle into a ponytail. That would have to do.
“Here comes Bridezilla,” she told Elvis. “And she’s not even the bride.”
Mercy stood up, and the shepherd followed suit. She wondered what the issue was this time, feeling sorry for whichever vendor had displeased her mother now. “What’s up?”
“Must something be up?” Grace stepped forward to air-kiss her on both cheeks. “Can’t I drop by to see my baby girl just to say hello?”
“Not with the wedding in four days.” Patience’s wedding was to be a wildly expensive three-day extravaganza taking place over a long weekend at the Lady’s Slipper Inn, a three-hundred-acre estate in the Upper Valley, a region known for its natural beauty, outdoor activities, and arts and cultural events. Mercy’s friend and occasional boss Daniel Feinberg had bought the run-down two-hundred-year-old Colonial, transforming it into a luxury getaway for the Town & Country crowd. The billionaire had hired her grandmother’s younger sister Prudence to run the place. Aunt Pru was the most sophisticated one in the family; she’d lived in Europe for decades, managing a château in the South of France, and everyone in the family was surprised that she’d ever leave Europe, even for Feinberg.
Grace frowned, abandoning all pretense of a casual visit. “I need you to go up there. Now.”
“I don’t understand.” Mercy sat back down again, Elvis still close to her side. “We’re all going up on Friday.”
“The director of spa and well-being is gone,” said Grace.
“The guy with the man bun?” Mercy had seen his picture on the brochure. Good-looking guy in great shape who was a big hit with the ladies, according to Aunt Pru.
“He’s a real draw for the resort.”
“What? Like the rest of the place isn’t enough?” Mercy knew that Feinberg never did anything halfway. The estate had its own private mountain and lake, putting greens and tennis courts, potager plots, farm-to-table cuisine, and twenty-thousand-bottle wine cellar.
Grace ignored her. “His name is Bodhi St. George. Massage therapist, yoga instructor, physical therapist, meditation teacher.”
“Life coach? Rolfer? Past lives regressor?” Mercy couldn’t help teasing her mother, as she always responded so badly.
“It’s a disaster. Peak season now, so there’s no one to take his place.”
“Do you really need him? It’s not like he’s the chef or anything.”
“Of course we need him. We’ve arranged a spa package for our guests.” Her mother paced up and down the porch in her matching Chanel slingbacks.
Mercy shrugged. “There are plenty of other things they can do.”
Her mother stopped in her tracks, thinking. “As in?”
“Swim, golf, badminton.”
At the word “badminton,” Grace blanched.
“Okay, okay, no badminton.” Mercy laughed. “What does Aunt Pru say?”
“She says everything will be fine. That at least one thing always goes wrong at every event and that she’ll take care of it.”
“And you don’t believe her.”
“You know how she is. All poise and self-possession. Who knows what she’s really thinking?”
Mercy nearly smiled. The same could be said for her mother, who took after her aunt Prudence far more than she did after her mother, Patience.
“This is supposed to be a very exclusive event at a very exclusive venue. The spa is a critical part of that.” Grace sniffed. “You could take his place.”
“What?”
“You can run the yoga classes. And give them some of that Thai massage you do.”
“Impossible.” Mercy looked away and counted to ten in German, French, and Spanish. Her way of tamping down the urge to say something she might regret. In English.
“It’s not like you have anything else to do.”
Wrong, thought Mercy. She did, in fact, have plenty to do, but nothing her mother would approve of. When she first came home from Afghanistan, she’d struggled to make the transition from military to civilian life, unsure of her next career move. In the meantime, she helped out her grandmother at her veterinary clinic and did freelance security and investigative work for Feinberg. Part of the gig economy, like everyone else in her generation. Not that her mother even had any idea what a “gig economy” was.
“You’re just sitting here. Doing nothing.”
What her mother didn’t know was that Mercy had enrolled in a low-residency program at the University of New Hampshire to earn a degree in environmental science. She’d been taking online classes in biology and wildlife management, inspired by the too-short life of Joey Colby. Colby was a scientist studying Vermont’s imperiled moose population when he was murdered while tracking a young calf. Mercy always put herself in the other person’s shoes when working a case, and in putting herself in Colby’s she’d found herself drawn to him and his work. His mission to protect the flora and fauna of his beloved Green Mountains was one that Mercy could embrace. She only hoped she’d be half as good as Colby was. It had been years since she’d gone to school, and the entire venture could prove an epic fail, so she didn’t tell anyone about it. Well, except for Elvis.
Grace clapped her hands to get her daughter’s attention, just like she’d done when Mercy was a child. “You are a certified yoga teacher, are you not?”
“That was a long time ago.” Mercy had studied yoga when she was a teenager, happily horrifying her parents by going off to the Berkshires to do her yoga teacher training one summer instead of doing the obligatory internship at the family law firm. Her grandmother paid her tuition, a generosity her parents had yet to forgive the poor woman for, especially since Mercy abandoned higher education for the Army not long afterward. Somehow her mother had surmised that all that alone time on the mat had convinced her daughter that she did not want to be a lawyer. Ever.
“Yoga is like riding a bicycle,” her mother said imperiously. “One never forgets.”
As if she’d ever done a down dog in her life, thought Mercy. Her mother did not approve of exercise, apart from the obligatory business meeting on the golf course. And meditation, well, that was for snowflakes, not serious people.
Grace regarded her daughter with her trademark cross-examination glare. “You still do yoga all the time.”
“That’s my own practice. I haven’t taught yoga in years.”
“That doesn’t matter. You have a natural authority.” Grace smiled the smile of a self-satisfied shark. “You get that from me.”
“I don’t think so, Mom,” said Mercy, with that natural authority of which her mother was so proud. Two could play this game.
Grace’s smile faded. “I’ve spent so much time creating the ideal destination wedding for my mother.” She blinked, suddenly seemingly close to tears.
Mercy stared at her. As manipulative as her mother could be, waterworks were not part of her arsenal. Grace never cried. She considered it a mark of weakness. Mercy was done for if her mother cried. “Please don’t cry.”
“I do not cry.” With a well-manicured hand, Grace wiped away the single tear that ran down her subtly rouged cheek.
“I know.” Mercy changed the subject. “What happened to the spa guy?”
“He just took off. No warning, no explanation, no nothing. Completely unprofessional. It’s enough to make me rethink the entire event. And the venue. Not the best hotel in the world, no matter what Forbes may say. Or Aunt Pru.” Grace was angry now, having made her usual swift transition from sad to mad.
Uh-oh, thought Mercy. Her grandmother and her mother and her aunt could come to blows if Grace changed the location in a fit of pique this close to the nuptials. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. You’ll figure something out.”
“Of course the most elegant solution would be to find him.” Grace sat down next to her in the other rocking chair and crossed her long tanned legs. Ready for battle.
Mercy considered this. Finding the guy might be easier than teaching wedding guests to stand on their heads. It would certainly be less stressful. Besides, she knew her mother would not move from that rocker until she agreed to go. “I suppose I could take a look around.”
Grace glided to her feet. “That’s my girl.” She leaned over to give Mercy a kiss on the top of her head. “If you leave within the hour, you’ll be there by noon.”
“Roger that,” said Mercy, without a trace of irony.
“Be sure to pack your bridesmaid dress, and enough suitable outfits for several days. I don’t think you’ll have time to come back before the wedding.”
Copyright © 2022 by Paula Munier
