Mercy

“Allie had trouble convincing herself that the reason they had gotten married years later did not have to do with the fact that after college, they were two of the few who had come back to Wheelock. Cam had returned because it was expected of him, Allie because there was nowhere else she really wanted to be.”

From the outset, it is clear that Allie is the one who is more invested in her marriage. She has a sense that she does not entirely deserve Cam; she believes their relationship is born more out of mere circumstance rather than her inherent desirability to Cam. This dynamic changes later in the book, after she discovers his affair with Mia. Allie’s reflection here also demonstrates how she and Cam have always wanted and been motivated by different things in life.

“He certainly wasn’t about to let a murderer off the hook because the man was his cousin. And bending the laws would be unethical. If there was any principle Cameron MacDonald lived by, it was doing things the way they were supposed to be done. After all, as both police chief and clan chief, it had been the pattern of his entire life.”

Cam reflects on how he cannot let Jamie off the hook just because Jamie is his cousin, as that would be breaking the law. Cam lives his life guided by the way things ought to be, dictated by norms and traditions, as he suggests here. Jamie, in some sense, represents a conflict of interest: As police chief, he ought to arrest Jamie; as clan chief, he ought to show Jamie mercy. Cam’s conflicting feelings toward Jamie are yet another representation of the conflict between justice and mercy.

“Allie did at least a hundred things each day simply because of their effect on Cam. […] It never occurred to Allie that this was very similar to behaviorally drugging Cam. Or that every selfless errand she ran for her husband was another silken strand that wrapped him tight, like a spider trapping her prey with guilt. Or that Cam was strong enough, and sure enough, to break out of any hold or system Allie could ever create.”

Allie reflects on how she does numerous things every day purely with Cam in mind. In one sense, this reflects how deeply in love with him she is and how the power dynamic between them is an unequal one—she is constantly looking to please and appease him. On the other hand, this very inequality is what becomes burdensome and suffocating for Cam. He cannot return these acts, as he does not love or need Allie as much; thus, her affection becomes an obligation that ties him down further.

“It didn’t bother him that she knew about the magazines, not nearly as much as it had bothered him yesterday to think of Allie knowing this. Maybe it was because he knew that Allie would not even begin to understand. You simply could not define freedom to someone who did not realize they were caged.”

Mia finds the travel magazines Cam occasionally flips through when she is looking through his things in the bedroom. However, Cam is not bothered by this discovery, though he was unable to even talk to Allie about his daydreams the previous day. This vastly different response to Mia highlights how Cam feels stifled not only in his current life but also in his marriage, as he is tied to a partner who cannot understand his dreams and motivations. It also explains Cam’s attraction to Mia, who he sees as a kindred soul.

“Jamie crumpled before Cam’s eyes. Tearing free of Allie’s and Ellen’s arms, he slipped to his knees in the soft earth, covering his face as the casket sank by inches. Behind Cam, the townspeople began to shift, uncomfortable and itchy. Father Gillivray looked up from his Bible. ‘My son,’ he said softly.”

Jamie’s grief at Maggie’s funeral is a clear indication of how deeply he loved her. Although Jamie’s case was viewed with suspicion when he first arrived in Wheelock, and he does receive some negative and even dangerous reactions, by and large, he is allowed to live peacefully in town. This is because, although he did technically kill Maggie, the fact that it was love and grief that motivated his act, coupled with Maggie’s conditions and her explicit wishes that she be killed, elicits sympathy for Jamie. Thus, he is able to be present for his wife’s funeral, an event also attended by numerous other townspeople, and the local priest himself has nothing but compassion for Jamie.

“Dear Cameron, she wrote on a scrap of paper from the desk, Better late than never. Mia. She addressed a matching envelope to the police station and marked it personal and confidential. Then she picked up the cocktail napkin she’d taken out of her knapsack. It was from The Devil’s Hand.”

Mia sends a note to Cam after discovering that they could have potentially crossed paths years ago in Italy, when he was traveling there and she was waitressing at a cafe. The potential meetings that Mia and Cam could have had when they were younger reinforce Cam and Mia’s sense that their coupling is fate giving them a second chance and that their relationship is something that is meant to be. However, there is also a sense of guilt and immorality that the two carry into the relationship; there are multiple references to hell and sin surrounding their actions, beginning with the name of the café, the napkin of which Mia sends to Cam.

“Jamie stared at Maggie’s body on the screen, young and firm and healthy no matter how many times the program was switched on, no matter how old they all got in real life. ‘Perfect,’ he said.”

Before Maggie falls ill, Jamie scans her body to use as a prototype for an avatar within a virtual reality program he designs. The fact that Maggie’s body is captured by virtual reality is symbolic of how Maggie hoped to live the rest of her life—young and healthy. The actual reality is vastly different: She falls ill with cancer, has to have body-altering surgery, and suffers so much that she begs her husband to prematurely end her life.

“Pansies meant, I’m thinking of you. And apples, since the days of Eve, had always meant temptation.”

Mia sends Cam a bouquet of flowers chosen for their specific messages. Throughout the book, flowers are a recurring symbol; they represent Allie and her relationship to Cam, as well as specific messages that individual flowers communicate in different instances in the book. Here, the use of apple blossoms is significant: Once again, this is a reference to immorality and sin, as apple blossoms signaling temptation is a Biblical reference to Eve’s transgression that led to the Christian doctrine of original sin.

“Mia was free to fly. It was what made her so attractive. If you loved someone, really loved them, would you let them go? Out of nowhere, Cam thought of Jamie MacDonald.”

Cam contemplates how he is tied down with responsibilities and duties to family, while Mia is a free bird. This is what attracts him to her, as it is something he desires but cannot have. However, the following reflection is significant, as he thinks about how his love for Mia is akin to the love Jamie has for Maggie. For the first time, he is able empathize with Jamie’s feelings, even if he might not yet agree with his actions.

“It’s impossible to tell you what Maggie was like unless you figure Jamie into the situation. They were inseparable, I swear. But not through any doing of Maggie’s. I used to tell her I’d swap lives with her in a second […] and Maggie said it wasn’t the bliss that I thought it was. I think she felt bad because Jamie couldn’t let go and she couldn’t hold on as tight as he did.”

Pauline describes Jamie and Maggie’s relationship to Allie. Her assertion that Jamie and Maggie were inseparable, through no doing of Maggie’s, is reminiscent of Allie’s own relationship with Cam, where she is the one putting all the effort into their marriage. Maggie’s thoughts also reflect Cam’s own unconscious feelings within his marriage—the sense of obligation Maggie possibly felt and the weariness that came with not being able to return her partner’s affection in kind.

“It was the last jigsaw piece in a stunning pane of stained-glass that depicted three graceful daffodils against a sapphire background. Their thin stems were a light gem green, their centers as red as fire. The daffodils themselves were the shade of the silver maple leaves that Cam would always associate with Allie. And the blue background was the color of Mia’s eyes.”

The stained-glass panel is an important symbol in the book, and the very image on the panel represents the situation with Cam, Allie, and Mia. The three daffodils are a reference to the three of them caught in a triangle. The red centers indicate passion—what Allie feels for Cam and what Cam and Mia feel for each other—and there are colors on the panel that remind Cam of both his wife and his lover.

“Maggie’s hand, in the specialized glove, hovered just centimeters from her own skin, yet he knew she was feeling the heat and resilience of a real body. Her hand skimmed over her ribs, toward her collarbone, cupping the air above her mastectomy scar. On the screen, in the mirror, she was holding her healthy breast. Beneath the goggles of the HMD, Maggie was smiling.”

The night that Maggie asks Jamie to kill her, she dons the virtual reality helmet and glove so that she can see and experience her once-healthy body again in the avatar prototype Jamie created for one of his programs. Maggie is able to get a realistic sense of how her body used to feel, indicated by how she smiles while touching herself. However, this is probably what heightens her dissatisfaction with and suffering in her current life: She can, on occasion, still see and feel the body she had; it serves as a sharper reminder of the gap between that and her current situation.

“‘It willna matter, after a time, that Maggie and Fee have gone,’ Angus said softly. ‘What matters now and for always, Jamie, is that they went the way they wished.’”

Angus discusses his own wife, Fiona, who longed to pass away peacefully and before Angus and eventually did so. Angus’s reassurance brings up an important aspect that the book explores in the context of euthanasia: dignity of death. To Angus, how Maggie died is less important than the fact that she died the way she wished. This is how he judges Jamie and Maggie, and not by the letter of the law.

“[H]e had come all the way back to Pittsfield in front of Judge Roarke, fighting a motion that Audra had handed down to him, which requested that the words ‘mercy killing’ not be used in the trial at all. Jamie would be referred to as the defendant, or as Mr MacDonald; the soft edges of the deed he had performed would be rendered in the prosecution’s colors of black and white.”

Audra successfully files a pre-trial motion banning the words “mercy” and “mercy killing” during the trial. On the one hand, such an argument would have still been indefensible in court in 1995, when the book takes place, because of the way laws were written then. On the other hand, Graham and Audra both know that, despite the law being watertight, judgment derived from it is based on the jury’s values, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Graham is worried that by banning the term “mercy,” Jamie will be deprived of the actual experience, too.

“I’m sick of hearing about Jamie MacDonald from you and from my mother and from the newspapers. I don’t want to know that we used to play together in Scotland. I don’t want us to have any history whatsoever.”

Cam is furious when he discovers that Allie has found and plans on gifting a photograph of Cam and Jamie together as children to the latter. Cam rejects any shared history with Jamie because it reminds him of his duty to the family, the very thing that is tying him down to Wheelock and Allie and what he feels guilty of flouting by being with Mia.

“In the past five years she had learned how to fish, how to target-shoot, how to tell time by the height of the sun, how to clear her mind in the aching cold. She was rarely Allie; instead, she had become the police chief’s wife, the clan chief’s wife. She had wanted Cam so badly eight years ago that she hadn’t realized the price would be giving up herself.”

Allie is livid after Cam destroys the photograph of him and Jamie, and she retaliates in anger for the first time in her marriage. The situation with Jamie has been an eye-opening one for Allie, showing her that the balance in her own marriage has been unequal all the while. She reflects on the things it has taken from her, including a sense of her own identity. Just as Cam has slipped into a specific role because of his family and traditions, Allie has slipped into an equally limiting role because of her love.

“‘You don’t mind?’ Allie asked […] ‘Running the shop alone. […] Being your own boss. Again.’ ‘Of course not,’ [Mia] said. ‘I’d be happy to take your place.’”

Allie asks Mia to take over the store alone while she heads out of town to help with the case. Mia’s words here are particularly significant and underline how and why she actually feels the way she does about Cam. What Mia truly desires is to be married to Cam, a man seen as an upstanding member of society and a true family man. Rather than just wanting her husband, Mia truly wants Allie’s life.

“NOTE TO GRAHAM MACPHEE: I know what you’re looking for from me, but the truth is Jamie was well-spoken and calm. He seems to feel remorse—not over the fact that he committed murder, but because at the very end, the woman he’d idolized betrayed him about the ramifications to his own life. It’s not his mind that was broken. It was his heart.”

Dr. Harding completes his examination of Jamie and includes a footnote to Graham. His assessment of Jamie’s feelings about Maggie is reminiscent of how Allie eventually will feel about Cam. Just as Jamie idolized Maggie, Allie placed Cam on a pedestal. Jamie and Allie feel equally betrayed by both of their idols, and just as Jamie is heartbroken but doesn’t stop loving Maggie, Allie, too, still loves Cam, though her trust in him is irrevocably damaged.

“Allie bartered and bargained, her objective to clear the tables rather than to make any given amount of money. […] She watched the evidence that her husband existed disappear in the arms of neighbors who had simply been passing by.”

Allie sells everything related to Cam in a garage sale while he is away at work, after she discovers the affair. The garage sale is symbolic in what it represents of what Cam did to his marriage—just as Allie reflects here, Cam gave away essential parts of himself to someone who is just passing through town. Thus, a garage sale becomes a perfect retaliatory act on Allie’s part.

“‘You hurt me,’ she accused, ‘but you were the one who made the mistake. It’s not like I stopped loving you the minute I found out. I just stopped trusting you.’”

Allie stands up to Cam, telling him that she still loves him, but his mistake has cost him her trust. Uncharacteristic of how Allie has behaved in the relationship so far, she doesn’t blame Cam’s transgressions on herself not being enough and instead holds Cam entirely responsible. This is a function of the slow transformation Allie has been undergoing ever since Jamie arrived in Wheelock and she began working on his case.

“Cam stared directly at his wife. ‘I think there are extenuating circumstances you have to consider,’ he said slowly, ‘anytime you judge a man.’”

On the stand, Cam asserts that one has to consider extenuating circumstances when judging a man. This is a far cry from his initial assertion that he couldn’t understand how and why Jamie did what he did and his conviction that Jamie’s actions ought to earn him prison time. Cam’s experience with a kind of love that can topple all sense of reason finally allows him to completely empathize with Jamie.

“‘Dr Wharton, if Maggie had lived through September 19, 1995, would the quality of life she was experiencing have been equal to the quality of life she enjoyed before the onset of her cancer?’ Wharton glanced at the jury. ‘Absolutely not.’”

When Dr. Wharton is put on the stand, Audra initially insinuates that there is no way Maggie would have died on the day she did, despite her condition, if not for Jamie’s actions. Graham’s redirect brings the conversation back to the quality of her life. This is an important consideration in cases of euthanasia, and Graham manages to suggest the idea of a “mercy killing” without ever mentioning the term.

“‘Virtual reality is the willing suspension of disbelief,’ he said. ‘It can take the form of a dream, a book, a movie. The reason people associate the term with computers is because computer technology exists to actually place someone in willing suspension.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘That there are no distractions—the real world isn’t visible anymore. The artificial world becomes all you can see, or hear, or feel.’”

Jamie explains what virtual reality means, and what his work with it entailed, on the stand. The idea of an alternate reality, or a disconnect from reality, is a constant thread throughout the book, presented through the context of virtual reality, Jamie’s insanity plea, and even the supernatural occurrences that take place in the book. It prompts the reader to consider multiple perspectives throughout the story, as is important to fully comprehend Jamie and Maggie’s situation without moral, if not legal, judgment.