by Jodi Picoult
“Funny you should mention that, since your property isn’t going to be developed.” He handed Pike a copy of the injunction that had been given to Rod van Vleet.
“This is . . . this is ridiculous,” Pike sputtered. “My land’s no Indian burial ground.”
“Actually, it is.” Eli came a step closer. “Tell me, Spencer, did she fight you? Did she beg you to stop while you were putting that rope around her neck?”
“She was my wife.”
“And she was half-Abenaki,” Eli countered. “Which wasn’t going to reflect well on a card-carrying member of the American Eugenics Society, was it?”
He watched Pike’s face, the shock that unraveled across it. “You said that the last time you were here.”
“Because it’s true,” Eli said.
The old man shook his head, as if that might keep the fact from sinking in. “Cissy wasn’t . . . her hair, it was blond, and her skin was like milk . . .”
“And her father was not Harry Beaumont, but an Abenaki man named Gray Wolf.”
“Her father . . . ?”
“She had the bad luck to not be what you needed her to be, and you took care of that problem the way you took care of everything else that didn’t agree with you—by simply getting rid of it.” By now, Eli was leaning down over the old man. “Tell me the truth, Spencer. Tell me what you did.”
Pike closed his eyes, silent for so long Eli wondered if he’d suffered a stroke. “I thought she loved him,” he whispered. “I thought the child was his.”
“What did you do with the baby?”
The old man’s throat knotted, and his mouth worked soundlessly before the words burst free. “I killed it. I smothered it. Hid the body in the icehouse and told Cissy it had just died. I thought maybe, this way, we could start over. But I didn’t touch Cissy. I swear it, I loved her. I loved her.”
Eli thought of the apple crate in the ground, the one that had not held an infant. “What did you do with the baby’s body?”
“Buried it,” Spencer said. “The next morning, I found Cissy . . . and I buried the crate before I called the police. I had to, or they would have found out what I did.” He grabbed for Eli’s sleeve. “I did it because I loved her. All I wanted was—”
“A second chance?” Eli interrupted, unsympathetic. “The question is, did you make the same mistake again?”
The hardest part for Meredith was trying to keep from breaking down as she listened to the cardiologist who’d treated her grandmother after the heart attack. They stood in front of the hospital bed, where Ruby lay lit like a Christmas tree and strung with all manners of tubes and intravenous equipment. “She’s not out of the woods yet by any means,” the doctor said. “Reduced cerebral blood flow secondary to a myocardial infarction leads to ischemia . . . and delirium. I think it’s best to keep her here for a few days, just for monitoring.”
Meredith mumbled something—praise? thanks?—and sat down on the chair she’d pulled up to the bed. Outside this cardiac care room, a saint of a nurse had Lucy drawing Magic Marker faces on ballooned latex glove-puppets. Meredith rested her forehead on the synthetic blanket and held Ruby’s hand, which glowed at the forefinger with a pulse-oxygen monitor. “Don’t leave me,” she begged.
She felt the paper-thin skin of Ruby’s fingers twitch in her own. Meredith sat up, hopeful, to find her grandmother’s eyes wide open. “I’ll be fine in time for that dinner party,” Ruby said, her voice sliding into a French Canadian dialect.
Dinner party? Meredith frowned, and then remembered what the doctor had said about delirium.
“You take care of that baby.”
Lucy. “She wants you to get better too.”
Ruby’s eyes drifted shut. “I will,” she murmured. “I promise, Miz Pike.”
Shelby’s face bloomed the moment she realized it was Eli ringing the doorbell. “I’m glad you came by,” she said, stepping aside to let him in.
“I am too.”
“I had a wonderful time the other night.” Shelby thought of the way they had ended their date in Eli’s truck; how he had leaned over and asked if he could kiss her before Watson beat him to it; how incredible it felt to be held by someone, instead of doing the holding.
“Good. Since I came by to propose, and all.”
“To . . . what?”
Eli grinned. “I figured after your aversion to first dates, you might not be crazy about second ones either. So I thought maybe we’d just skip ahead.”
“Maybe we should jump to our silver anniversary,” Shelby said. “Play it safe.”
“All right by me,” Eli replied, and amazingly, Shelby thought he was only half-joking. She imagined sitting next to him, doing absolutely nothing, because they had spent years together doing it all and now could fill the spaces simply with each other’s company. She thought of what a bed would feel like when it was not empty on the other side.
“Can I get you something?” Shelby asked. “A cold drink?”
“Ross.”
Her face fell. “Oh. You came to talk to him.”
The uncomfortable moment was interrupted by the boisterous arrival of Watson, who pounced through the open door and between them. “I told you to stay in the truck,” Eli said, trying in vain to grab the dog’s collar.
“It’s okay.” Shelby watched the bloodhound begin to case her parlor and move into the living room. Watson stopped, turned toward Shelby, and gave an enthusiastic swipe of his tail—which managed to send a candy dish, a television remote, and several books off of the coffee table. Eli and Shelby both ran forward to pick up the mess. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be—”
“—He’s a pain in the ass, sometimes—”
“—No worse than a nine-year-old boy, believe me.”
As Shelby examined the crystal candy bowl for hairline fractures, Eli collected the books, which had splayed open on the carpet. One was a coffee table pictorial of Vermont. The other was a scrapbook. Curious, Eli flipped through the pages. “What’s this?”
Shelby read over his shoulder, her cheeks pink with embarrassment as Eli skimmed the stories she went back to time and time again. On the page he’d opened, there was an article about a six-year-old boy bitten by a shark off the coast of Florida. His leg had been severed and successfully reattached, but the blood loss had put him into a coma. After weeks of assuming the boy was brain-dead, he’d awakened just as good as new.
The most recent article involved a Canadian toddler who’d wandered out of his house and had fallen asleep in a six-foot drift of snow. “I remember this one,” Eli said. “He was pronounced dead, and brought to the hospital—”
“And the doctors gradually warmed him up and he came back to life.” Shelby took the scrapbook from him. “It’s stupid, I know, but I keep track. I clip stories where death turns out to not be . . . well, so final. Maybe one day someone will clip a story about Ethan for the same reason.”
Suddenly Ross came pounding down the stairs, his hair still wet from a shower. “I thought I heard your voice,” he said to Eli, as Watson did his best to leap into his arms. “How’d it go with Pike?”
But Eli was still riveted by the story of the Canadian toddler. “The doctor’s from McGill,” he said. “That’s right over the border in Montreal. The family must be nearby. Shelby, come with me?”
She did not consider Ethan, or her job, or her brother. She didn’t consider the logistics of staying overnight with a man she’d gone out with only once. And she didn’t wonder why, spontaneously, Eli seemed as interested in near-death experiences as she was. All Shelby knew was that when you are given the chance to meet a miracle, you do not think twice.
From the Burlington Free Press:
Burlington, VT — Dr. Thomas Smalley, president of the University of Vermont, announced plans to rename the Beaumont Biology Library and the Pike Museum of Anthropological History. “The University of Vermont wants to make clear that the ideas espoused by these professors during Vermont’s eugenics studies
were theirs alone, and did not represent the views of the university community as a whole,” said Smalley, in a written statement. Potential new names for these buildings are under review by the Alumni Committee.
When Eli was a boy, he had been certain that state boundaries and the equator were lines drawn on the ground, just like on a map. “The first time my mother took me to Canada, I asked her to pull over so I could see it,” he told Shelby.
“You must have been disappointed.”
“Nope.” He grinned, thinking back. “She took a piece of chalk out of the glove compartment, and started drawing. Said that all the car tires on the highway must have rubbed it right off.”
“And you believed her?”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I think people believe what they need to, don’t you?”
“I suppose you can’t be a cop unless you’re cynical.”
“Not true. We continue to be amazed every day.”
He pulled the truck into a highway motel, one just over the city line of Montreal, according to the map. Avec HBO, promised a billboard.
They had made it to Canada in record time. However, it was nearly 8 P.M.—which meant that Eli would not be seeing Dr. Holessandro until the following day. “Sorry it’s not the Ritz,” Eli apologized. “But the Ritz doesn’t take dogs.”
“I hope you were referring to Watson. And don’t worry on my account. I’d be just as happy camping out in the flatbed.”
The thought of Shelby pressed against him from toe to shoulder in the rear of his truck was enough to make Eli suddenly as hard as a rock. He got out of the rig, turned away, and adjusted his jeans. Shelby followed him into the office of the motel, where a boy with a green mohawk was playing Scrabble against himself. “Do you speak French?” she asked Eli.
“Nothing to worry about.” As Eli walked up to the desk, the boy made no effort to even look at him. “Hello.” He rolled his eyes. “Bonjour.”
“Bonjour,” the boy said, smirking at Eli and Shelby—and their lack of luggage. “Vous desirez une chambre?”
Shelby opened her mouth and stepped forward. “I’ll take care of this,” Eli said. “Oui, deux chambres, s’il vous plaît.”
The boy looked at Shelby, and then back at Eli. “Deux? Vous-êtes sûr?”
“Oui,” Eli said.
The boy raised a brow. “Et Madame? Elle est sûre aussi?”
“Bon, d’accord. Avez-vous des chambres ou non?”
“Oui, oui . . . ne vous fachez pas. D’abord, j’ai besoin d’une carte de crédit . . .” Eli slapped his MasterCard on the counter. “Voilà les cléfs pour les chambres 40 and 42.”
“Merci.”
“Ou, préférez-vous plus de distance entre les chambres? Deux étages différents peut-être . . . ?”
“Non, ça va comme ça.” Eli grabbed Shelby by the arm and pulled her toward the front door. “Bonne nuit, alors . . .” the clerk called after them, laughing.
Outside, Eli made a beeline for his truck. If his dick had been hard before they’d gone into the motel, by now he could be the body double for a jackhammer. “Eli—”
“I want to get the dog. You know what they say about leaving animals in cars . . .”
“Eli!” Shelby planted her hands on her hips in the middle of the parking lot. “Goddammit, listen to me!”
He turned slowly, exhaling heavily. “What.”
“The reason I asked you if you speak French in there . . . was because I do, and I could have checked us in. Would you prefer more distance between the rooms?” she translated, mocking the clerk. “Two different floors, maybe?”
Mortified, Eli swore. “Shelby, it’s not like you think . . .”
“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” she countered, then added quietly, “I was thinking that he was right. You could have gotten one room.”
Eli took a few steps forward, until he was standing just inches away from Shelby. “No, I couldn’t have,” he said.
He watched the light go out of her eyes, and realized she had misunderstood him. In that moment, he wished for her facility for words. He wished for a lot of things. “You know how sometimes when you’re reading a really great book or watching a really great video you stop, just to make it last longer? There is nothing I want more than to, uh, oscillate with you. But that’s gonna lead to more than that . . . pretty damn quick. What I feel right now—what we feel—it’s eviscerant enough. We can’t get that back, once it’s gone.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I don’t want to go slow, but I’m gonna make myself do it.”
“Evanescent?” Shelby smiled slowly. “Osculate?”
Eli winked. “You’re not the only one who can read a dictionary.” And over her shoulder what had been just a crack in the pavement, a line of trees, and a picket fence suddenly reconfigured into a city boundary line, clear as day.
The hospital was a little too clean and a little too quiet, swimming with so much false cheer that it made the tiled floor shine. As Lucy climbed on the bed, she concentrated on not making any sound—not only because her mom and great-grandma were sleeping but because the crinkly covers and plastic sheets were already covered with people who Lucy could see, even if no one else seemed to be able to.
She didn’t like touching them, didn’t like the way their arms and legs moved right through her and made her so cold inside that her bones ached. She didn’t like the way they stared at her, as if they were jealous that she was someone who could walk into a room and be noticed without even trying. So Lucy curled herself into as small a ball as possible, and watched her great-grandmother rest.
Her mother had told her that Granny Ruby’s heart was broken, and it made Lucy think of a vase she’d knocked over once and tried to glue back together. Every time she saw it, now, she knew it wasn’t as good as it had been.
Lucy felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as a girl beside her with long black braids and a funny striped apron poked at her with one long finger. She looked to be about sixteen, and sickly, her cheeks nearly blue. “Ma poule,” the girl whispered.
Suddenly Granny Ruby blinked awake. “You’re here,” she said, reaching for Lucy.
“My mother brought me.”
At that, Ruby looked around wildly. “Mama? She’s here too?” But before Lucy could answer, her great-grandmother touched her cheek. “Simone,” she said, not Lucy at all. “You came back.”
“I’m not Simone,” Lucy whispered, but by then her great-grandmother was no longer listening. The see-through girl with the black braids reached out, and with one shove, pushed Lucy off the bed.
On January 3rd, 2002, Alexandre Proux had awakened before his mother, Genevieve. He opened the back door, whose doorknob he had only been able to reach for a week, now, and wandered onto the porch in his Spider-Man pajamas. It was snowing, and he wanted to play.
By the time his mother woke up and realized he was gone, Alexandre had been buried beneath the snow. For six hours, the police followed kidnapping leads and looked everywhere but in Alex’s own backyard.
Now, Alex was three and torturing the beagle puppy his mother had bought him last Christmas. The dog had been trussed up in a kerchief, and Alex was trying to tie reins onto its collar. “I keep thinking that the dog is going to bite him,” said Genevieve, smiling. “But he seems to have the same trouble saying no to Alex as the rest of us.”
“You are so lucky.” Alex handed his mother the cap gun and then galloped off astride his long-suffering makeshift steed.
“There is nothing like it,” Genevieve added, now that Alex was out of earshot. “Seeing your baby, not moving like that. Alex was still, and Alex is never still. I kept thinking, He will wake up now. He will open his eyes and look at me and be fine.”
Shelby understood. If you lost a child, grief wasn’t just part of the equation. It was the equation. Suddenly the beagle raced into the room, the cowboy hat clamped firmly between his jaws, Alex trailing behind. “You have a son, oui?”
“Et
han. He’s nine.”
“Then you understand.”
Alex veered left, flying into his mother’s arms. She kissed him on the soft spot behind his ear. “Yes,” Shelby said, watching them. “I do.”
Dr. Gaspar Holessandro had a bad toupee and a weakness for sardines. “I’m sorry,” he said, licking his fingers after plucking another one from a Tupperware container on his desk. “I don’t usually eat in front of guests.” Too busy to schedule a meeting, Holessandro had agreed to meet Eli during a lunch break. His office was a closet attached to the pristine research lab at McGill where, three days a week, the doctor studied SIDS by implanting probes in the brains of infant pigs. The other four days, he worked at the hospital where Alexandre Proux had been brought in stiff and blue and presumably dead.
Eli had, again, bent the truth. He explained to Holessandro that he was a detective in Vermont, that there was an open investigation into a baby’s death, one that shared characteristics with young Alex’s situation. He’d wanted to know if there was some regenerative process caused by extreme cold—one that might explain why a baby who had been smothered might suddenly come back to life after being stuck in an icehouse. He didn’t tell the doctor that all this had happened in 1932.
Holessandro bit the tail off a sardine. “Smothering,” he explained, “would cause asphyxiation . . . and make a person hypoxic. Now, if you’re an adult, that means you’d breathe more—hyperventilate. Infants, though—their bodies are physiologically quite different from ours, and for them hypoxia inhibits breathing. So if a baby was smothered, it might stop breathing for several minutes . . . and then would autoresuscitate.”
“You mean it wouldn’t stay dead?”
“When you stop the part of a baby’s brain that’s responsible for normal breathing, another part of the brain takes over . . . which makes the infant gasp a few times. The purpose is to get some oxygen in there to jump-start the heart and lungs again.” He smiled. “It’s actually very hard to kill an infant.”
“But whoever was doing the suffocating—surely he’d have noticed an infant gasping for air.”
