Just Mercy: A Novel by Dorothy Van Soest

opened and in came the man she’d found so repulsive earlier. “It’s time,” he said. “Will the witnesses please follow me?”
    She released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in, pushing it out of her puffed-up cheeks as she followed in the wake of the man’s sweat-odor trail. Someone squeezed her shoulder. She shrugged the hand off and, out of the corner of her eye, caught a glimpse of a retreating Amy Whitehall.
    At the door to the death chamber, two somber guards nodded and stepped aside. A muscle twitched in her jaw. This was it. A crushing wave filled with doubt, fear, and panic almost knocked her to the floor. She couldn’t move. She tasted vomit in the back of her throat.
    “It’s fast.” Amy Whitehall was back, whispering in her ear. “Don’t worry, it won’t last long.”
    “Such a comfort,” Bernadette retorted.
    At least the sound of Amy’s voice had the effect of jump-starting her legs so she was able to walk on her own. Once they were inside the small viewing room, the hair on top of her down-turned head brushed against the glass window. She closed her eyes and leaned against Regis as images of impending death flashed, unbidden, through her head: a Vietnamese prisoner executed at point blank range during the 1968 Tet Offensive, a Liberian soldier looming over an unarmed man lying face up in a ditch, bodies falling from the burning Twin Towers on 9/11, a young boy herded from the Warsaw ghetto by a Nazi wielding a machine gun.
    “Take your time,” Regis said, squeezing her shoulder.
    The images went away. But she couldn’t look at what was on the other side of the window. Not yet. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. This was the right punishment, she knew that, but watching someone die might be quite another thing altogether. Her body trembled even more than it had two weeks ago at Gatesville when she confronted Raelynn Blackwell. She didn’t know which was harder, facing the murderer of her daughter then or witnessing that murderer’s execution now.
    “She looks peaceful,” Regis whispered.
    Bernadette balled her hands into fists, and the muscles in her neck tightened as she willed her eyes to open. The first thing she noticed was how Raelynn Blackwell’s ankles disappeared under the thick restraints that secured her to the massive silver gurney and how her shins, thighs, waist, and chest were dwarfed under the brown leather straps and huge metal buckles. For some reason, Bernadette hadn’t expected everything to be so white: Raelynn Blackwell’s laundered and pressed prison garb, her socks under what looked like brand-new white tennis shoes, the makeshift pillow under her head, a towel folded in thirds. Her arms were extended on boards, her hands and fingers covered with white bandages. Intravenous tubes protruded from the bandages around her wrists, snaking under the gurney and disappearing through a hole in the wall just below a one-way window.
    Raelynn Blackwell turned her head toward the viewing window. A radiant smile brightened her face, and her blue eyes twinkled under trimmed bangs; even the blonde curls tickling her flushed cheekbones glowed. Bernadette’s eyes fixed on the silver cross resting on the woman’s throat, and she gritted her teeth just as she had the first time she’d seen it.
    “Not your God!” she had screamed that day at Gatesville while Raelynn Blackwell sobbed on the other side of the Plexiglas window. “You don’t get to have the same God Veronica had. I won’t allow it!”
    A cold fist closed over Bernadette’s chest now and her legs buckled, but still she held Raelynn Blackwell’s gaze, pressing against the window to hold herself up. Just as she had been determined not to turn away from Raelynn the first time she’d laid eyes on her, she refused to turn away from her now.
    Warden Fredrick stood at the head of the gurney with the chaplain at the foot, his hand cupping Raelynn Blackwell’s right ankle. Both men stared at the