“Can you… can you describe her?”
Mercy said, “She was just a little slip of a doll of a thing. Cute as a button—but then they’re all pretty darn cute at that age, aren’t they?”
When Joe opened his eyes, Barbara was staring at him, and her eyes brimmed with pity for him. She said, “Careful, Joe. It can’t lead where you hope.”
Mercy placed the hot baking sheet full of finished cookies on a second wire rack.
Joe said, “What color was her hair?”
“She was a little blonde.”
He was moving around the table before he realized that he had risen from his chair.
Having picked up a spatula, Mercy was scooping the cookies off the cooler of the two baking sheets, transferring them to a large platter.
Joe went to her side. “Mercy, what colour were this little girl’s eyes?”
“Can’t say I remember.”
“Try.”
“Blue, I guess,” she said, sliding the spatula under another cookie.
“You guess?”
“Well, she was blond.”
He surprised her by taking the spatula from her and putting it aside on the counter. “Look at me, Mercy. This is important.”
From the table, Barbara warned him again. “Easy, Joe. Easy.”
He knew that he should heed her warning. Indifference was his only defence. Indifference was his friend and his consolation. Hope is a bird that always flies, the light that always dies, a stone that crushes when it can’t be carried any farther. Yet with a recklessness that frightened him, he felt himself shouldering that stone, stepping into the light, reaching toward those white wings.
“Mercy,” he said, “not all blondes have blue eyes, do they?” Face to face with him, captured by his intensity, Mercy Ealing said, “Well… I guess they don’t.”
“Some have green eyes, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“If you think about it, I’m sure you’ve even seen blondes with brown eyes.”
“Not many.”
“But some,” he said.
Premonition swelled in him again. His heart was a Bucking horse now, iron-shod hooves kicking the stall boards of his ribs.
“This little girl,” he said, “are you sure she had blue eyes?”
“No. Not sure at all.”
“Could her eyes have been grey?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think. Try to remember.”
Mercy’s eyes swam out of focus as memory pulled her vision to the past, but after a moment, she shook her head. “I can’t say they were grey, either.”
“Look at my eyes, Mercy.” She was looking. He said, “They’re grey.”
“Yes.”
“An unusual shade of grey.”
“Yes.”
“With just the faintest touch of violet to them.”
“I see it,” she said.
“Could this girl… Mercy, could this child have had eyes like mine?”
She appeared to know what answer he needed to hear, even if she could not guess why. Being a good-hearted woman, she wanted to please him. At last, however, she said, “I don’t really know. I can’t say for sure.”
A sinking sensation overcame Joe, but his heart continued to knock hard enough to shake him.
Keeping his voice calm, he said, “Picture the girl’s face.” He put his hands on Mercy’s shoulders. “Close your eyes and try to see her again.”
She closed her eyes.
“On her left cheek,” Joe said. “Beside her earlobe. Only an inch in from her earlobe. A small mole.”
Mercy’s eyes twitched behind her smooth lids as she struggled to burnish her memory.
“It’s more of a beauty mark than a mole,” Joe said. “Not raised but flat. Roughly the shape of a crescent moon.”
After a long hesitation, she said, “She might have had a mark like that, but I can’t remember.”
“Her smile. A little lopsided, a little crooked, turned up at the left corner of her mouth.”
“She didn’t smile that I remember. She was so sleepy… and a little dazed. Sweet but withdrawn.”
Joe could not think of another distinguishing feature that might jar Mercy Ealing’s memory. He could have regaled her for hours with stories about his daughter’s grace, about her charm, about her humour and the musical quality of her laughter. He could have spoken at length of her beauty: the smooth sweep of her forehead, the coppery gold of her eyebrows and lashes, the pertness of her nose, her shell-like ears, the combination of fragility and stubborn strength in her face that sometimes made his heart ache when he watched her sleeping, the inquisitiveness and unmistakable intelligence that informed her every expression. Those were subjective impressions, however, and no matter how detailed such descriptions were, they could not lead Mercy to the answers that he had hoped to get from her.