Salem Falls

by Jodie Picoult

  Barbara didn’t bat an eyelash. “For a corduroy skirt?”

  He looked at the hanger clutched in his hands. “For a shirt. One Meg borrowed.”

  “Oh,” Barbara said. “Try the dresser. Third drawer down.”

  She left, and Charlie rested his head against the closet door. He didn’t want Barbara to know what he was searching for. Didn’t want to admit he was doubting his daughter.

  He fingered a worn friendship bracelet tied around the knob of the door-striped red and blue and green, it was one Meg had made her first summer at sleep-away camp. She’d called home crying every hour of the first two days, insisting that keeping her there was a form of child abuse. But by the time Charlie and Barbara had driven up to Maine to get her, Meggie had settled in, and she sheepishly told them to go on home.

  Kneeling, Charlie rummaged through nearly untouched sports paraphernalia-it’d taken him nearly a decade to learn that his little girl was never going to be a willing athlete-and shoes several sizes too small. There was a teddy bear with an eye missing and a poster Meg had made for a school project about the New Hampshire state bird, the purple finch. There was an old pink ballet bag and an assortment of dolls she had outgrown but couldn’t bear to give away. Charlie smiled and reached for one, a naked baby with yellow hair and one stuck glass eye. A girl who sentimentally saved things like this wouldn’t hide drugs from her father, would she?

  He had seen enough teen drug cases in Salem Falls to know they followed a pattern: Either the child and the parents had a complete lack of communication between them or the child was resentful of the parents or the parents were too self-absorbed to really see what their child had turned into. None of that fit the bill for himself and Meg-they’d always been closer than most parents and kids. This was something McAfee had misunderstood. Maybe his kid had heard wrong. Maybe Chelsea, for whatever reason, had been lying.

  Satisfied, Charlie went to stuff Meg’s mess back into the closet in as disorganized a fashion as possible, lest she realize someone had been snooping through her things. In went the teddy bear, the hockey stick, the Rollerblades. He lifted the ballet bag and felt his hand close around something cylindrical and firm.

  Ballet clothes, ballet shoes, ballet tights-everything in that bag ought to be soft.

  Charlie unzipped the pink bag. Reaching inside, he pulled out a length of silver ribbon, long and silky. He removed a small stack of plastic cups and a thermos.

  The cups and the thermos were empty, except for what looked like a residue of white powder. Cocaine? Charlie sniffed it, then touched his pinky finger to the powder and lifted it up to his tongue to taste.

  It was probably nothing.

  Weary, he ran a hand down his face and rubbed his tired eyes. He would get it tested anyway, just to put his mind at ease. He had a buddy at the state lab who could run a tox screen-and who owed him a favor.

  That was what Charlie was thinking moments later when his pupils became so dilated he could not see.

  As the wiper blades on Addie’s car whispered rumors to each other, she drove aimlessly through the streets of Salem Falls. She needed to go home and unpack; she needed to get back to the diner as quickly as possible. But she found herself standing instead in the narrow plastic coffin of a phone booth, scanning the tattered white pages of the phone book for the street address of Jordan McAfee.

  A few minutes later, a black woman opened the door of the house at the address she’d found. “I-I’m sorry . . .” Addie stammered. “I think I have the wrong address.” She headed into the driving rain, only to be called back.

  “Addie Peabody, isn’t it?” When Addie nodded, the woman smiled. “My name’s Selena, and no, I’m not the maid. Come on in and wait out the storm.”

  It wasn’t until she stepped inside that Addie remembered where she’d seen her before. “You came to the diner,” she said out loud. “You ordered hot water with lemon.”

  “Damn, that’s impressive!” Selena said, taking Addie’s slicker. “Jordan’s due back soon. I know he’d like to talk to you. If you want, you’re welcome to wait here with me.”

  Addie sat down on an overstuffed couch in the living room. “I’m here because of Jack St. Bride.”

  “I see.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Addie said.

  Selena sat down on the edge of the coffee table. “Do you have an alibi for him?”

  “No. It’s just . . . I know he’s innocent.” She sat forward, her hands twisted in her lap. “I went to find out about his previous conviction, up in Loyal. And that girl . . . the one he supposedly seduced . . . she was lying. She never had a relationship with Jack.”

  “Is she willing to testify to that?”

  “No,” Addie whispered.

  Selena’s eyes softened. Addie’s feelings were written all over her, clear as permanent marker on her pale skin. “This may seem like I’m prying, Ms.-”

  “Addie, please.”

  “Addie. Why didn’t you come to us two weeks ago?”

  For a long time, Addie didn’t answer. Then, she quietly explained, “I needed to see for myself first if Jack was the man I made him out to be.”

  Selena thought of the morning she’d told Jordan that she would not marry him. And of every single morning since then, when she’d second-guessed herself. “I know you’d like to help, but without an alibi, there’s not too much you can add to his case.”

  “That’s not why I came,” Addie said. “I was hoping that you could help me.”

  * * *

  “Saxton here.”

  “Hey, Charlie, it’s me.”

  Charlie froze. There was only one reason Albert Ozmander would have been calling, and it directly involved the thermos Charlie had seized from his daughter’s room. Not that Oz knew where the thermos came from. As far as the toxicologist was concerned, this was just a routine workup on some evidence in an unnamed case.

  He felt his foot tapping so nervously beneath his desk that he had to physically restrain himself with his own hand. “Got a match for you,” Oz said, “but it’s a weird one. Don’t ask me why the kids in your town aren’t smoking pot or doing coke like the rest of the free world, Charlie, but this stuff tested positive for atropine sulfate.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Yeah, you have. It’s a drug used to control digestive tract problems, among other things. You ever taken Lomotil?”

  Once, God, yes, when he and Barbara had visited Mexico and got sick as dogs. Charlie squirmed just remembering it. “Why would kids try to get off on an antidiarrheal?”

  “Because if you take enough of it, it’ll make you high. I’m sending the results right now.” The fax beeped on in the corner of Charlie’s office; he watched the paper curl its way out and somersault into the wire bin beneath.

  “Thanks, Oz,” Charlie said, and hung up the phone. He sat at his desk, hands covering his face. Meg, who had never lied to her father in her life; Meg, for whom he would tilt the world on its axis . . . Meg had somehow come to be in possession of this drug.

  His heart sank so low that it changed his center of gravity, and Charlie had to fight his way upright so that he could reach the buttons of his phone. “Matt,” he said, when the prosecutor answered, “we have to talk.”

  Jack dragged himself through the gray halls, trailing the officer who led him to the conference room where Jordan was waiting. The trial was only days away; no doubt his attorney had come with the prosecution’s plea. Not that Jack was going to accept. He would stand up and hear a guilty verdict read twenty times by the jury, but he wasn’t giving up his own freedom like an extra piece of gum he’d never miss. If they wanted him, they’d get him . . . kicking and screaming all the way to the appellate court.

  “Save your breath,” he said to Jordan, as the CO opened the door. “I’m not-” He stopped abruptly as he realized that Jordan was not the only one there. Sitting beside him, looking fragile and tired and so beautiful it made his stomach ache, was Addie.

&n
bsp; Jordan stood up, sending ripples through Jack’s shock. “How did you-”

  “Happy birthday,” Jordan said.

  “It’s not my birthday.”

  “I know,” Jordan admitted, and he left the conference room.

  Jack didn’t know what to do. The last time he had seen Addie was during his arrest. He took a step toward her, his heart racing.

  He had shamelessly used Addie during these weeks in jail, in solitary. She was the image his mind turned to for comfort. She was the reason he could survive in a cell-because presumably, one day, he would be able to get out and explain.

  What if she had come to tell him she never wanted to speak to him again?

  Addie turned away, and that stopped Jack in his tracks as effectively as any gate. “Don’t.” She closed her eyes and began to speak. “I’m so sorry, Jack. That morning when Charlie showed up and started saying things, I shouldn’t have heard him. I shouldn’t have heard him, because I was supposed to be too busy listening to you.”

  “Addie-”

  “Let me finish. Please.” She looked down at her hands. “I went to Loyal. I met Catherine. She . . . she’s a very pretty girl.” Jack remained absolutely still. “I’m ashamed that I even had to go there. I wish I could have just looked up at Charlie that morning and told him he had the wrong man. I wish I could turn back time and do it all over again . . . differently . . . except for one thing.” She looked up, smiling through her tears. “A very wise man once told me that you can’t look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.”

  And then he was in her arms, burying his face in the sweet fall of her hair and holding tight to the only anchor he had. His lips moved over her skin, her sorrow tightening his own throat. He swallowed, then whispered, “Do you think I did it?”

  Addie cupped his cheek. “How can you know so much and not know the answer to that?”

  Jack had been a hero in so many walks of life-academically, physically, socially. He knew what it was like to be the one other heads turned to follow, and he understood how far a fall it was from such a pedestal. But until this moment, when Addie handed over her trust like the keys to a golden city, Jack had never felt such honor.

  “I wish you didn’t have to see me here. Like this.”

  “I’m not. I’m seeing you stretched out on a picnic blanket in my backyard with an entire feast you’ve cooked just for me.” Addie smiled at him. “And I’m seeing me wearing . . . nope, I don’t think I’m going to tell you.”

  “That’s cruel.”

  “Guess you’ll have to get out of here and see for yourself.”

  He pulled Addie close again and held her until their hearts tuned together in perfect pitch. Then Jack spoke softly, so that his words were nothing more than a thought set on the shell of Addie’s ear. “About the past,” he whispered. “I would do it all over. The conviction, the jail, the arrest-all of it-if that was the only way I’d get to meet you.”

  Shadows chased across Addie’s face in the spectral shapes of her rape, her daughter, her mother. “Oh, Jack,” she said, her voice shaking. “I love you, too.”

  The last week of June 2000

  Salem Falls,

  New Hampshire

  You could fall asleep with your eyes open.

  Meg knew this because sometimes, in school, she would be staring at a bug on the wall and suddenly class would be over. She didn’t sleep well at night anymore, because of the Memory. If her mind chose to zone out in broad daylight, it was all right with her.

  Meg tried to make sure there was always something to focus on, other than That Night. But she couldn’t keep her father from talking about what he’d done for Matt Houlihan and who the witnesses were going to be at trial. She couldn’t stop her friends from whispering about it. All of it was pulling at Meg, ripping her apart at the seams.

  She ran into the house and past her mother. This was her obsession, a Lady Macbeth spot check she did every afternoon when she came home. She flung open her bedroom door, gasping for breath, and stuck her head inside the closet.

  “Margaret Anne Saxton,” her mother said from the doorway.

  Meg startled, smashing her head on the wooden frame of the closet.

  “Honey, are you all right?” Meg’s mother walked over and touched her forehead lightly, feeling for fever, or maybe insanity. “You look like you’re being chased by the hounds of hell.”

  “No hounds,” Meg managed, with a weak smile. “Only a heap of homework.”

  “I’m worried about you. You don’t look right.” She glanced at Meg’s clothing. “You’re losing weight.”

  “Jesus, Mom, you’ve been suggesting I go on a diet for years.”

  “I never said that. I only felt that with a face as lovely as yours, you might want not to draw attention away from it.”

  Meg rolled her eyes. “I love you too, Ma,” she said dryly. “Now can I please have some privacy? For once?”

  The moment her mother closed the door, Meg dove into the closet. On her hands and knees, she tossed aside her dolls and shoes . . . but the ballet bag that had been there just yesterday afternoon was missing. “Oh, shit,” she whispered, and then felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

  Her father had quietly opened the door of her bedroom and now leaned against it, holding the pink sack. “Looking for this?”

  Meg hung her head. Just shoot me, she thought.

  He came into the room, closed the door, and sat down on the floor across from her. “You want to talk first, or should I?”

  Suddenly, Meg felt herself dissolve. From the inside out, like those disgusting bacteria in sci-fi movies that leave people with Jell-O instead of organs. She felt her mind go blank.

  “Meggie,” her father said, in a voice so quiet it made her ache, “did you bring drugs to the woods that night?”

  Meg shook her head, stunned. That thermos . . . the one Gillian had brought filled with iced tea . . . it had been full of drugs?

  And her father believed that Meg was responsible.

  Memories chased each other at the heels: the forest shimmying that night before her eyes; the white blanks still crowding out huge blocks of time in her mind; the four of them, hysterical and sobbing, when her father had found them. Suddenly, the dam burst. In her life, Meg had never cried like this, sobbing until she shook, until she couldn’t make any sound at all, until her mother raced into the room in a panic. “Charlie,” she heard her mother say, from a tunnel of distance. “Do something!”

  Meg cried for Gillian, for the expression on her father’s face, for what she was beginning to remember. She flung her arms wide and kicked at whoever came close to her.

  In the end, a paramedic gave her a shot of Haldol. She drifted back to earth like one of the flowers that had fallen from the dogwood that night. Her father’s strong arms were wrapped tight around her, and his coffee breath fell onto her cheek. “Meggie,” he said, his voice broken. “Who?”

  They were not speaking of the same thing, not at all, and in some small corner of her mind Meg knew this. But as her eyes drifted shut, as she fell headfirst into that night again, she murmured, “It could have been me.”

  It was the first time that Gillian had been in Matt Houlihan’s office without her father sitting beside her. Granted, he was only a hundred feet away in the waiting room, maybe even had his ear pressed to the door, but the privacy was empowering. “I hope you feel comfortable being here alone with me,” Houlihan said.

  What a sensitive guy, Gillian thought. Making sure the rape victim isn’t threatened by a Big Bad Male and a small closed room. She looked into her lap. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “The reason I asked to speak to you without your father present is because of some new evidence that I thought you might feel more comfortable discussing in private.”

  Every cell in Gillian’s body went on alert. She froze, waiting for him to speak again.

  “Detective Saxton found a thermos and
some cups in his daughter’s room, Gillian. Meg said they belonged to you.”

  Gillian was so relieved that this was the crucial evidence, she nearly laughed out loud. “That’s true.”

  “Did the residue of drugs in the thermos and cups belong to you, too?”

  Gillian blinked. “What drugs?”

  “Atropine. It’s a prescription drug . . . that can also make you high.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Well, according to Meg, you’re the one who brought the drinks that night. Atropine and all.”

  The bitch. “Meg said that?” Gilly managed, her voice so tight she thought her vocal cords might snap like the strings of a rock guitar. “I would never bring drugs. I would never do drugs.” She laughed, but it sounded forced. “Mr. Houlihan, I’ve grown up around pharmaceuticals my whole life. My first memory is of my dad telling me to say no to drugs.” She looked toward the waiting room. “Go ask him if you don’t believe me.”

  “If you didn’t bring the atropine, who did?”

  “I have no idea,” Gillian said. “Probably Meg.”

  “Meg’s father is a policeman. Presumably, she’s heard the same party line as you.”

  “That’s not my problem,” she snapped.

  Houlihan sighed. “I couldn’t care less who’s the dealer here, Gillian. That’s not in the least important to my case. What I need to know is if you drank any of the tea that night.”

  Before Gilly could answer, the telephone rang. The county attorney picked it up, spoke for a moment, and then turned, apologetic. “I have to see someone before they go off to trial,” he explained. “Will you excuse me?”

  Two seconds later, Gillian was alone in the office.

  Had she taken the drugs that night? Well, of course. But hearing that wasn’t going to make Houlihan happy. Someone who took a hallucinogen wasn’t a reliable eyewitness.

  Then again, it had been nearly six weeks. No drug stayed in your system that long, especially one ingested in such a small volume. Houlihan could draw blood this instant and never know if Gillian was lying.