The God's honest truth about the Mercer family was that from almost every legal and religious standpoint they weren't really a family, but none of that mattered. Evelyn had taken those four boys in and made them a home in a way nobody else had or wanted to. None of them had escaped their childhoods unscathed, some came to her more damaged than the others, but she found ways to piece together those shattered fragments.
Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, the point was that she tried and she did it with her whole heart and nothing but it.
There was little Jackie, the baby of the group, the poor damaged soul from a string of abusive families in all kinds of ways – ways that children should never experience, not at the hands of people they trusted. Then there was Angel, dragged up from the day he was born to the moment he took to the streets. Jerry was something else altogether, shoved right into foster care the moment his mother was conscious enough to realise what had happened. It was a miracle that the boy could even read what with the amount of schools he had been in and out of. Then there was Bobby – the infamous Bobby – Mercer, a hardened youth with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He didn't talk, didn't share, she'd had to read his file to find out everything. The only thing he did share was that his mother had killed herself, but that was it.
Any other woman would have thrust them right back into the system, but not Evelyn. She had seen the damage the system had done and how it was all part of the problem, and she'd made a decision, taking those boys on in a determined attempt to make life better for them. She was a wonderful woman, an angel. Maybe it was over the top, but it was as close to describing Evelyn as her boys were ever going to get, she'd saved their lives in more than one way, if that wasn't angelic then what the fuck was?
That was why her death had hit them hard; the idea that she was gone for good and there would be no more reassuring words and everlasting faith in them as people. She had been the best thing they had ever had and now she was gone. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair. From the moment Bobby had come back to town they'd been a force of retribution, out their mother's killers to bring them to a particular brand of justice that Bobby knew better than anyone else: Vigilante.
Of course none of them had stopped long enough to consider the consequences of their actions, the effect it might have and the repercussions that might be brought down upon their heads. Jack wasn't supposed to be a victim of this war Bobby had started, he was never meant to be the one to fall, not when Bobby was the one who had begun this. He'd always meant to be the one to finish it, not Jack, never Jack. He should have stayed away, stuck to what he knew, festered in prison and fought his battles on foreign ground where it couldn't come back to the people he cared the most about. Sweet was the next to go, taken down by the Mercer brothers and his own men, but it didn't bring Evelyn or Jack back. Nothing ever could, they would have to live with their loss for the rest of their lives, however long that happened to be.
Bobby didn't imagine his would be that much longer, not with the way he lived his life.
There was nothing to stop him now, no reason to slow down and no reason to be a better man. He was good at surviving, he'd learned when he was younger, but surviving wasn't living and with the loss of Evelyn and Jack it didn't feel like there was much left to live for. He had Angel and Jerry, but they'd always been closer to one another than they were to him, a clear divide in which Angel and Jerry had stood on their side and Bobby had stood with Jack on the other. It had never been intentional, it had just sort of happened that way.
Even if Angel took Bobby's side in arguments with Jerry when Jerry tried to pretend he was somehow better than them just because he'd knocked some chick up and gotten married.
Hypocrite.
The house was still a mangled mess of tattered remains, a hail of bullets had ripped through it and left vivid trace memories in the foundations that had for many years kept them the safest they'd ever been. They were working to fix it up, to try and repair the damage and heal the wounds left open by the altercations with Sweet. It wouldn't be easy; nothing was easy when it came to grief. The recovery was slow and it felt like you were trudging through quicksand, sinking deeper and further into the pit that threatened to swallow you whole, wanting to drown your belief that things could get better with enough time.
Not enough alcohol in this world could nurse away the pain, but some people would vouch for trying it: drink your way to the bottom of every bottle in the hopes that you'd find salvation at the end of it and you'd be miraculously fixed. Bobby had been there and he'd done that, he'd nearly drank himself into a coma once many years ago when he'd been running too hard and flying too high.
He knew better than that now.
All he could do was find a way to keep going, figure out what to do next and maybe skip town if the ghosts haunting his footsteps got to be too much and he couldn't. Being around Angel and Jerry would help, but it wouldn't be the same. Evelyn wasn't there and Jack wasn't around to tease, it wasn't the same teasing Angel and Jerry. God, he missed them, he really did. He'd shed his tears – for both Evelyn and Jack – but it hadn't felt like enough, Bobby just didn't know what would be enough. He doubted anything ever would be enough to show his absent family members the depth of his love and respect for them, they'd both had such an impact on his life even if they hadn't realised it at the time.
In all respects the Mercer family wasn't really a family, they were too diverse in colour and attitude, but they were a family in every other sense of the word. They loved, cried, mourned and held one another up when they weren't strong enough to stand on their own. Family wasn't about blood: it was about the people who were there with you through the good and the bad, the people you knew you could turn to unconditionally and the people who would love you and all your flaws.
That was what Evelyn had taught them.