The Jodi Picoult Collection #3

by Jodi Picoult

  Peter glanced at him sideways. “Well, are you registering as a Droid or a Regal?”

  Who the hell knew? He hadn’t taken the CD out of its box. “A Droid.”

  “That’s your first mistake. See, you can’t enlist in the Pyrhphorus Legion—you need to get appointed to serve. The way to do that is by starting off in the Educationary instead of the Mines. Understand?”

  Jordan glanced down at the article, still spread on the table. His case had just grown immeasurably more difficult, but maybe that was offset by the fact that his relationship with his client had gotten easier. “Yeah,” Jordan said. “I’m starting to.”

  * * *

  “You’re not going to like this,” Eleanor said, handing a document to Alex.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a motion to recuse yourself from the Houghton case. The prosecution strongly requests a hearing.”

  A hearing meant that press would be present, the victims would be present, the families would be present. It meant that Alex would be under public scrutiny before this case could go any further. “Well, she’s not getting one,” Alex said dismissively.

  The clerk hesitated. “I’d think twice about that.”

  Alex met her eyes. “You can leave now.”

  She waited for Eleanor to close the door behind herself, and then she closed her eyes. She didn’t know what to do. It was true that she’d been more rattled during the arraignment than she’d anticipated. It was true, too, that the distance between herself and Josie could be measured by the very parameters of her role as judge. Yet because Alex had steadfastly assumed that she was infallible—because she’d been so sure that she could be a fair justice on this case—she’d gotten herself into a catch-22. It was one thing to recuse yourself before the proceedings started. But if she backed out now, it would make her seem flighty (at best) or inept (at worst). Neither one of those was an adjective she wanted associated with her judicial career.

  If she didn’t give Diana Leven the hearing she was requesting, it would look like Alex was hiding. Better to let them voice their positions and be a big girl. Alex pushed a button on her phone. “Eleanor,” she said, “schedule it.”

  She speared her fingers through her hair and then smoothed it down again. What she needed was a cigarette. She rummaged in her desk drawers but turned up only an empty pack of Merits. “Shoot,” she muttered, and then remembered her emergency pack, hidden in the trunk of her car. Grabbing her keys, Alex stood up and left chambers, hurrying down the back staircase to the parking lot.

  She threw open the fire door and heard the sickening crunch as it hit flesh. “Oh my gosh,” she cried, reaching for the man who’d doubled over in pain. “Are you all right?”

  Patrick Ducharme straightened, wincing. “Your Honor,” he said. “I’ve got to stop running into you. Literally.”

  She frowned. “You shouldn’t have been standing next to a fire door.”

  “You shouldn’t have been flinging it open. So where is it today?” Patrick asked.

  “Where’s what?”

  “The fire?” He nodded at another cop, walking to a cruiser parked in the lot.

  Alex took a step backward and folded her arms. “I believe we already had a conversation about, well, conversation.”

  “First of all, we’re not talking about the case, unless there’s some metaphorical thing going on that I don’t know about. Second of all, your position on this case seems to be in doubt, at least if you believe the editorial in the Sterling News today.”

  “There’s an editorial about me today?” Alex said, stunned. “What does it say?”

  “Well, I’d tell you, but that would be talking about the case, wouldn’t it?” He grinned and started to walk off.

  “Hang on,” Alex said, calling after the detective. When he turned, she glanced around to make sure that they were alone in the parking lot. “Can I ask you something? Off the record?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Did Josie seem . . . I don’t know . . . all right to you, when you talked to her the other day?”

  The detective leaned against the brick wall of the court building. “You certainly know her better than I do.”

  “Well . . . sure,” Alex said. “I just thought she might say something to you—as a stranger—that she wasn’t willing to say to me.” She looked down at the ground between them. “Sometimes it’s easier that way.”

  She could feel Patrick’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t quite muster the courage to meet them. “Can I tell you something? Off the record?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Before I took this job, I used to work in Maine. And I had a case that wasn’t just a case, if you know what I mean.”

  Alex did. She found herself listening in his voice for a note she hadn’t heard before—a low one that resonated with anguish, like a tuning fork that never stopped its vibration. “There was a woman there who meant everything to me, and she had a little boy who meant everything to her. And when he was hurt, in a way a kid never should be, I moved heaven and earth to work that case, because I thought no one could possibly do a better job than I could. No one could possibly care more about the outcome.” He looked directly at Alex. “I was so sure I could separate how I felt about what had happened from how I had to do my job.”

  Alex swallowed, dry as dust. “And did you?”

  “No. Because when you love someone, no matter what you tell yourself, it stops being a job.”

  “What does it become?”

  Patrick thought for a moment. “Revenge.”

  * * *

  One morning, when Lewis had told Lacy he was headed to visit Peter at the jail, she got in her car and followed him. In the days since Peter had confessed that his father didn’t come to see him, through the arraignment and afterward, Lacy had kept this secret hidden. She spoke less and less to Lewis, because she feared that once she opened her mouth, it would escape like a hurricane.

  Lacy was careful to keep one car between hers and Lewis’s. It made her think of a lifetime ago, when they had been dating, and she would follow Lewis to his apartment or he would follow her. They’d play games with each other, waving the rear windshield wiper like a dog wags its tail, flashing headlights in Morse code.

  He drove north, as if he was going to the jail, and for a moment Lacy had a crisis of doubt: would Peter have lied to her, for some reason? She didn’t think so. But then again, she hadn’t thought Lewis would, either.

  It started to rain just as they reached the green in Lyme Center. Lewis signaled and turned into a small parking lot with a bank, an artist’s studio, a flower shop. She couldn’t pull in behind him—he’d recognize her car right away—so instead she drove into the lot of the hardware store next door and parked behind the building.

  Maybe he needs the ATM, Lacy thought, but she got out of her car and hid behind the oil tanks to watch Lewis enter a floral shop, and leave five minutes later with a bouquet of pink roses.

  All the breath left her body. Was he having an affair? She had never considered the possibility that things could get even worse, that their small family unit could fracture further.

  Lacy stumbled into her car and managed to follow Lewis. It was true, she had been obsessed with Peter’s trial. And maybe she had been guilty of not listening to Lewis when he needed to talk, because nothing he had to say about economics seminars or publications or current events really seemed to matter anymore, not when her son was sitting in jail. But Lewis? She’d always imagined herself as the free spirit in their union; she’d seen him as the anchor. Security was a mirage; being tied down hardly counted when the other end of the rope had unraveled.

  She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Lewis would tell her, of course, that it was only sex, not love. That it didn’t mean anything. He would say that there were all sorts of ways that people dealt with grief, with a hole in the heart.

  Lewis put on his blinker again and turned right—this time, into a cemetery.

  A slow b
urn started inside Lacy’s chest. Well, this was just sick. Was this where he met her?

  Lewis got out of the car, carrying his roses but no umbrella. The rain was coming down harder now, but Lacy was intent on seeing this through to the end. She stayed just far enough behind, following him to a newer section of the cemetery, the one with the freshest graves. There weren’t even headstones yet; the plots looked like a patchwork: brown earth against the green of the clipped lawn.

  At the first grave, Lewis knelt and placed a rose on the soil. Then he moved to another one, doing the same. And another, and another, until his hair was dripping into his face; until his shirt was soaked through; until he’d left behind ten flowers.

  Lacy came up behind him as he was placing the last rose. “I know you’re there,” he said, although he didn’t turn around.

  She could barely speak: the understanding that Lewis was not, in fact, cheating on her had been tempered by the knowledge of what he was actually spending his time doing these days. She couldn’t tell if she was crying anymore, or if the sky was doing it for her. “How dare you come here,” she accused, “and not visit your own son?”

  He lifted his face to hers. “Do you know what chaos theory is?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about chaos theory, Lewis. I care about Peter. Which is more than I can say for—”

  “There’s this belief,” he interrupted, “that you can explain only the last moment in time, linearly . . . but that everything leading up to it might have come from any series of events. So, you know, a kid skips a stone at the beach, and somewhere across the planet, a tsunami happens.” Lewis stood up, his hands in his pockets. “I took him hunting, Lacy. I told him to stick with the sport, even if he didn’t like it. I said a thousand things. What if one of them was what made Peter do this?”

  He doubled over, sobbing. As Lacy reached for him, the rain drummed over her shoulders and back.

  “We did the best we could,” Lacy said.

  “It wasn’t good enough.” Lewis jerked his head in the direction of the graves. “Look at this. Look at this.”

  Lacy did. Through the driving downpour, with her hair and clothes plastered to her, she took stock of the graveyard and saw the faces of the children who would still be alive, if her own son had never been born.

  Lacy put her hand over her abdomen. The pain cut her in half, like a magician’s trick, except she knew she would never really be put back together.

  One of her sons had been doing drugs. The other was a murderer. Had she and Lewis been the wrong parents for the boys they’d had? Or should they never have been parents at all?

  Children didn’t make their own mistakes. They plunged into the pits they’d been led to by their parents. She and Lewis had truly believed they were headed the right way, but maybe they should have stopped to ask for directions. Maybe then they would never have had to watch Joey—and then Peter—take that one tragic step and free-fall.

  Lacy remembered holding Joey’s grades up against Peter’s; telling Peter that maybe he should try out for soccer, because Joey had enjoyed it so much. Acceptance started at home, but so did intolerance. By the time Peter had been excluded at school, Lacy realized, he was used to feeling like an outcast in his own family.

  Lacy squeezed her eyes shut. For the rest of her life, she’d be known as Peter Houghton’s mother. At one point, that would have thrilled her—but you had to be careful what you wished for. Taking credit for what a child did well also meant accepting responsibility for what they did wrong. And to Lacy, that meant that instead of making reparations to these victims, she and Lewis needed to start closer to home—with Peter.

  “He needs us,” Lacy said. “More than ever.”

  Lewis shook his head. “I can’t go to see Peter.”

  She drew away. “Why?”

  “Because I still think, every day, of the drunk who crashed into Joey’s car. I think of how much I wished he’d died instead of Joey; how he deserved to die. The parents of every one of these kids is thinking the same thing about Peter,” Lewis said. “And Lacy . . . I don’t blame a single one of them.”

  Lacy stepped back, shivering. Lewis wadded up the paper cone that had held the flowers and stuffed it into his pocket. The rain fell between them like a curtain, making it impossible for them to see each other clearly.

  * * *

  Jordan waited at a pizza place near the jail for King Wah to arrive after his psychiatric interview with Peter. He was ten minutes late, and Jordan wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  King blew through the door on a gust of wind, his raincoat billowing out behind him. He slid into the booth where Jordan was sitting and picked up a slice of pizza on Jordan’s plate. “You can do this,” he pronounced, and he took a bite. “Psychologically, there isn’t a significant difference between the treatment of a victim of bullying over time and the treatment of an adult female in battered woman syndrome. The bottom line for both is post-traumatic stress disorder.” He put the crust back on Jordan’s plate. “You know what Peter told me?”

  Jordan thought about his client for a moment. “That it sucks being in jail?”

  “Well, they all say that. He told me that he would rather have died than spend another day thinking about what could happen to him at school. Who does that sound like?”

  “Katie Riccobono,” Jordan said. “After she decided to give her husband a triple bypass with a steak knife.”

  “Katie Riccobono,” King corrected, “poster child for battered woman syndrome.”

  “So Peter becomes the first example of bullied victim syndrome,” Jordan said. “Be honest with me, King. You think a jury is going to identify with a syndrome that doesn’t even really exist?”

  “A jury’s not made up of battered women, but they’ve been known to acquit them before. On the other hand, every single member of that jury will have been through high school.” He reached for Jordan’s Coke and took a sip. “Did you know that a single incident of bullying in childhood can be as traumatic to a person, over time, as a single incident of sexual abuse?”

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Think about it. The common denominator is being humiliated. What’s the strongest memory you have from high school?”

  Jordan had to think for a moment before any memory of high school even clouded its way into his mind, much less a salient one. Then he started to grin. “I was in Phys. Ed., and doing a fitness test. Part of it involved climbing a rope that was hung from the ceiling. In high school, I didn’t have quite the massive physique I have now—”

  King snorted. “Naturally.”

  “—so I was already worried about not making it to the top. As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem. It was coming back down, because climbing up with the rope between my legs, I got a massive boner.”

  “There you go,” King said. “Ask ten people, and half of them won’t even be able to remember something concrete from high school—they’ve blocked it out. The other half will recall an incredibly painful or embarrassing moment. They stick like glue.”

  “That is incredibly depressing,” Jordan pointed out.

  “Well, most of us grow up and realize that in the grand scheme of life, these incidents are a tiny part of the puzzle.”

  “And the ones who don’t?”

  King glanced at Jordan. “They turn out like Peter.”

  * * *

  The reason Alex was in Josie’s closet in the first place was because Josie had borrowed her black skirt and never returned it, and Alex needed it tonight. She was meeting someone for dinner—Whit Hobart—her former boss, who’d retired from the public defender’s office. After today’s hearing, where the prosecution had made its motion to have her recused, she needed some advice.

  She’d found the skirt, but she’d also found a trove of treasures. Alex sat on the floor with a box open in her lap. The fringe of Josie’s old jazz costume, from lessons she’d taken when she was six or seven, fell into her palm like a
whisper. The silk was cool to the touch. It was puddled on top of a faux fur tiger costume that Josie had worn one Halloween and kept for dress-up—Alex’s first and last foray into sewing. Halfway through, she’d given up and soldered the fabric together with a hot glue gun. Alex had planned to take Josie trick-or-treating that year, but she’d been a public defender at the time, and one of her clients had been arrested again. Josie had gone out with the neighbor and her children; and that night, when Alex finally got home, Josie had spilled her pillowcase of candy on the bed. You can take half, Josie told her, because you missed all the fun.

  She thumbed through the atlas Josie had made in first grade, coloring every continent and then laminating the pages; she read her report cards. She found a hair elastic and looped it around her wrist. At the bottom of the box was a note, written in the loopy script of a little girl: Deer Mom I love you a lot XOXO.

  Alex let her fingers trace the letters. She wondered why Josie still had this in her possession; why it had never been given to its addressee. Had Josie been waiting, and forgotten? Had she been angry at Alex for something and decided not to give it at all?

  Alex stood, then carefully put the box back where she’d found it. She folded the black skirt over her arm and headed toward her own bedroom. Most parents, she knew, went through their child’s things in search of condoms and baggies of pot, to try to catch them in the act. For Alex, it was different. For Alex, going through Josie’s possessions was a way of holding on to everything she’d missed.

  * * *

  The sad truth about being single was that Patrick couldn’t justify going to all the bother to cook for himself. He ate most of his meals standing over the sink, so what was the point of making a mess with dozens of pots and pans and fresh ingredients? It wasn’t as if he was going to turn to himself and say, Patrick, great recipe, where’d you find it?

  He had it down to a science, really. Monday was pizza night. Tuesday, Subway. Wednesday was Chinese; Thursday, soup; and Friday, he got a burger at the bar where he usually grabbed a beer before heading home. Weekends were for leftovers, and there were always plenty. Sometimes, it got downright lonely ordering (was there any sadder phrase in the English language than Pupu platter for one?), but for the most part, his routine had netted him a collection of friends. Sal at the pizza place gave him garlic knots for free, because he was a regular. The Subway guy, whose name Patrick didn’t know, would point at him and grin. “Hearty-Italian-turkey-cheese-mayo-olives-extra-pickles-salt-and-pepper,” he’d call out, the verbal equivalent of their secret handshake.