by Jodi Picoult
He advanced on Jamie, who shrank back against his stool and paled. In the background, Elizabeth Fraser's baby had started to cry. "James MacDonald," the man hissed, "no one but God has the right to take a life." He released the safety on the gun.
Cam stood up and pulled his own gun from his holster in a swift motion. "Police," he said, in case the nut couldn't see for himself the badge and uniform that were as plain as day. "Drop your weapon."
The man's eyes didn't waver from Jamie. "No. I've been called to do this."
Cam glanced over his shoulder, motioning for the other patrons of the restaurant to file out slowly through the door. "Do what? Take Jamie's life? I thought that was only up to God."
"I'm an agent of God."
"Of course." Cam cleared his throat. "You can shoot him," he said, ignoring the shock on Jamie's face, "but then I'd have to shoot you."
If the man weighed that as a consequence, he didn't show it. He started running toward Jamie, screaming biblical proverbs and interjecting these with cries of "Murderer!" In the split second that lengthens with danger, Cam realized Jamie was doing nothing to defend himself. Jamie was looking at the man, waiting, really, for the lunatic to shoot at close range.
Cam leaped on the man, grabbing his wrist and yanking it up so that the gun fired into the ceiling, raining plaster down on Jamie. He wrestled the man down to the floor, pulling his wrists behind his back so that he could snap on the handcuffs and spit Miranda into his ear.
The short-order cook came out of the kitchen, visibly shaken, and pointed to his damaged ceiling. "What do I do about that?" he asked.
"Take it up with the mayor," Cam suggested, hauling his prisoner to his feet. "Come on."
Jamie stood up from his stool. The man pursed his cheeks and spat at Jamie, a glob of saliva landing on the left side of his neck. "I may have taken a life," Jamie said softly to the man. "But it wasn't much of one." Then he looked up at Cam. "Thank you."
Any compassion he'd felt for Jamie MacDonald five minutes ago had vanished, and Cam did not even remember trying to make polite conversation with him over the morning paper. He did not remember the moment when he realized that, amazingly, Jamie seemed to welcome an unprovoked attack. All he could see was the milling crowd outside the restaurant and the bent head of the sobbing psycho in front of him. All he could feel was his heart pumping out adrenaline in a rush that reminded him of making love to Mia. Cam glared at Jamie, redirecting the anger and the blame. "If this happens again in my town," he said heatedly, "I'll let him shoot."
Cam sat in his boxers on the couch in the flower shop, reading a paper from three days ago that had been wrapped around a root ball. Mia had stepped out to get them some food--even Romeo and Juliet, she'd said, had stopped for dinner. The front page was missing, so he scanned the World Briefs, the tiny snippets of stories that always left you wondering what hadn't been said.
An oil tanker had sunk near Alaska; the IRA had confessed to setting a bomb at a Devonshire post office; and on a German army base in Fulda, a GI had beheaded the man who was having an affair with his wife.
Cam pulled the paper closer. The U.S. soldier had suspected his wife of adultery, had chopped off the head of his rival, and had placed it in a plastic bag beside his wife's hospital bed. His wife was being treated for complications in pregnancy.
The soldier had submitted quietly to the arrest. The headless body of the other man was found in a phone booth at an army airfield.
Cam stood up and walked away from the couch, stepping on the wrinkled paper that had fallen beneath his feet. "Fuck," he muttered. "Fuck."
He walked into the storeroom and stood in the bathroom in front of the tiny mirror. It was chipped in the corner and there was very little direct light, but Cam had no trouble making out the stark lines of his face.
He did not see a police chief, or a clan chief, or a husband. He did not see a family man, or a good cirizen, or anyone else he could respect.
He recognized the anger in his eyes, the dare-me altitude that mocked anyone for criticizing his right to do something he wanted for once in his whole damn life. He saw a flush on his cheeks and a
Watchell Spitlick and his wife, Marie, had owned The Pickle Barrel, a mom-and-pop store in the center of Cummington.
burn in his eyes that he remembered as signs of falling in love.
He knew that he would no more walk through the adjoining curtain and ask Mia to leave his life than he would relish cutting off his left arm. He told himself he could not change what had already been done.
Then Cam left the bathroom and glanced at the desk, where Allie had a framed photo of the two of them, kneeling in the sand dunes on Nantucket. He picked up the picture, rubbing his thumb over the glass, choosing not to look at Allie but instead at his own image. He frowned at the photo. Was it just his imagination, or did his smile seem forced?
He had not thought of Allie during these past three days; he had not allowed himself to do so. But she was coming home and he had never wanted to hurt her and he loved Mia and he could not have it all.
He did not want to put Mia through the inevitable confrontation that would come. He thought of the two of them as he had once before, on a catamaran in the hot sun, and knew that although he was chained to his town and his circumstances, Mia was free to fly.
It was what made her so attractive.
If you loved someone, really loved them, would you let them go?
Out of nowhere, Cam thought of Jamie MacDonald.
Feeling the room close in around him, Cam tossed the photograph back on Allies desk, cracking the glass of its frame. He pulled his pants from the couch and stepped into them; he buttoned up his shirt. He was just tucking it in when Mia opened the door of the flower shop.
She brought winter with her, wrapped in loose, flighty threads around her thin parka. "I got ham and cheese and a meatball sub."
"I can't do this," Cam said.
Mia dropped the paper bag and took a step toward him.
He held up his hands. "I can't," he said, his voice breaking. He did not let himself touch her as he passed, but she followed him just a fraction of movement behind, like a shadow he could not shake.
When they retired last year, the Spitlicks had taken the trappings of their trade and resurrected the place they'd run for forty-five years in their own house.
Allie sat beside a huge white freezer that was not functional but still urged her in bold print to drink Moxie. She held a sweating glass of iced tea in her left hand; her right hand stroked a blind tabby cat that made its way from place to place by bumping into the furniture. Watchell was smiling at her from a cracked leather chair; Marie perched lightly on a stack of fabric bolts.
"This is quite a collection," Allie said politely.
"Well"--Watchell nodded--"you never know what people are going to need." He beamed at her.
Marie tapped his knee. "Now, Bud, Mrs. MacDonald didn't come to talk business." She frowned at Allie. "What did bring you here, dear?" Before Allie could answer, Marie smacked herself lightly on the forehead. "How stupid of me. You must be a relative of Jamie's, and he's nor at home." She darted to a bookshelf stacked with Farina and health tonics and an assortment of pipe cleaners, and began to rummage behind the clutter "I know Maggie left me a key, it's here somewhere . . . Remember, Bud, when we watered the plants for them last summer--"
"Mrs. Spitlick," Allie interrupted, "I have a key to the house." She set her tea down on a tremendous barrel that served as a coffee table. "I need to speak to you about Jamie and Maggie."
"Terrific kids," Watchell boomed.
"We love them like our own," Marie added.
Allie opened her mouth to break the unfortunate news, but then knotted her hands in her lap. "I wonder . . ." she said carefully. "I'm a distant cousin of Jamie's, and I haven't seen him in years." She offered her most ingenuous smile. "What's he like, now?"
"Oh," Marie said, fluttering back to her fabric seat. "You've never known the like. Ja
mie's got a good solid head on his shoulders. Works with computers or something or other, you know that fancy stuff I can't get into my head. Shovels our driveway out all winter because he doesn't want Watchell to exert himself."
Allie was smiling so hard her face was beginning to hurt. "And has he been married long?"
Marie and Watchell exchanged a look. "You haven't met Maggie, then?" Marie said.
Allie shook her head. "I-- No. This is a surprise visit."
Marie pursed her lips. "There isn't another pair like those two. Joined at the hip, you'd think. Why, I remember when Maggie first moved into the house--Jamie had been a bachelor for a few years--they holed up in there for days at a time. Watchell and I would see the pizza delivery trucks coming and going, and every now and again I'd notice a flash across the upstairs windows, one of them chasing the other." She smiled, her eyes crinkling in the corners. "Don't think anyone ever told Jamie the honeymoon was supposed to end after a couple of weeks."
"You know them well, then."
"Oh, yes," Marie said.
"And Jamie's devoted to Maggie?"
"Like nothing I've ever seen."
Allie stood up. "I think I'll wait back at the house," she said, mentally checking the Spitlicks off as viable character witnesses.
Watchell peered out the window toward Jamie's house. "You been waiting long? Seems I don't recall seeing a car there for a couple of days."
"That's why I came to check with you," Allie improvised. "Jamie must have forgotten I was coming." She could feel the blush of her lies staining the collar of her turtleneck.
"Oh, I hope that's all it is." Marie looked at her husband. "You don't think anything's happened to Maggie?"
The words stopped Allie in the middle of shrugging into her coat. "What do you mean?"
"She's been ill," Marie said. "Cancer." She whispered the word as if it might creep over the threshold of her own house. She began to walk Allie to the front door. "It's a good thing you're here, if that's the case. Family's a blessing." She turned toward the living room. "Bud, you walk Mrs. MacDonald back."
"Oh, I'm fine," Allie protested.
"It's dark and I won't hear of anything else," Marie said.
Allie waited for Watchell Spitlick to zip up his jacket, then offer her his arm down the concrete front steps. Allie was several steps across the lawn when she realized that her escort had stopped moving. Watchell was staring at the bare curb in front of Jamie's house as if there was something there.
"Few months ago," he said, his words coming out in round puffs of cold breath, "Maggie took a bad turn in the middle of the night. Some kind of reaction to the medicine she was on, screwed up her lungs so's she couldn't breathe on her own. Ambulance came, must've been two in the morning, and when they brought Maggie out on this fold-up stretcher, Jamie was standing right next to her. He wasn't wearing a stitch, and he didn't seem to even notice. I can't look at that house anymore without seeing those flashing red lights all over the street, and Jamie, bare-ass naked, kissing Maggie as if he could breathe his own life into her."
Allie opened her mouth to speak, but could not find any words. Watchell ushered her across Jamie's front lawn. "There you go," he said, waiting until Allie had unlocked the door. "You make sure to call when Jamie gets home." He smiled. "We want to know everything's all right."
On Sunday, Cam had every intention of going to Mass. He put on his nicest suit and his red tartan tie and he parked in a spot that wasn't too ridiculously far from the church. He spoke to his great-aunt Chloe and he helped his dispatcher, who was nine months pregnant, waddle up the hill in the center of town. He explained to everyone who asked that Allie was out of town on a family errand, but he didn't go into any more detail. When he saw Jamie MacDonald himself helping Angus up the steps that led to the church, he even smiled.
He wanted to be cleansed. He could remember being forced, as a kid, into sitting through Sunday Mass. He had spent most of the time thinking about his new basketball, or about the pickup game of ice hockey over at Dundee Pond that started at noon, but he had always left the church feeling a little lighter, breathing a little easier. At the time, he had not given in to the spirituality of religion, but had simply seen the church itself as a wonderful machine in a Dr. Seuss book, the kind where you walked in one end and popped out the other, a whole different color or shape or set of beliefs in your mind.
Cam had not gone to confession this past Saturday. He hadn't wanted to. He felt that if he spoke of the feelings he had for Mia, they'd lessen in intensity, their color and vibrance growing paler and paler as the words diffused in the air.
He walked through the main double doors of the church and was handed a pamphlet detailing the order of the Mass. But there was a backlog of people waiting to get into the pews, and Cam stepped out of line, hoping for a few more minutes of the cool autumn air.
He stood at the top step, which was worn down in the center from years of piety. Spread at his feet was his town. His, as it had been his father's and his grandfather's. He knew every street in Wheelock and every resident. He knew which shopkeeper on Main Street was the first to shovel the walk after a snowstorm. He knew which kids he'd find drinking beer behind the bleachers of the high school on the longest, reddest night of the summer.
He let his eyes sweep from left to right, from the coffee shop to the post office to the station, where Zandy was just letting himself in. He looked down at the bottom of the church steps and saw Mia.
He had not known she was Catholic, a thought which pounded dully in his head. He knew that she was allergic to chocolate, that her skin was very sensitive to cold, that she had a small square birthmark on her right thigh, but he did not know her religion. He did not even know where she had been born, or her middle name.
In spite of his willpower, he started to walk down the steps of the church.
She was gone before he reached the bottom. Cam stretched his hand out, aware that people were watching and starting to whisper. He touched only the thin, chilly air. And he walked back to his car, thinking that he hadn't really wanted to go to Mass at all.
Mia felt awful, so she knew she was in love. Her head swam, her shoulders ached, her skin no longer seemed to fit. She spent hours making flower arrangements without a single splash of color. At the Inn she turned on the TV and watched reruns of "The Love Connection" with Kafka curled on her belly.
She wished she'd never come to Wheelock.
She could not believe she had wasted so many years before arriving.
Yet what she loved most about Cameron MacDonald was not the way he looked in the waving light of a candle, or the image of his straight red hair mixed and tumbled with her own. It was what he represented that was so attractive: a steady mortgage, a niche, unequivocal respect. Cam had a place in the world that was unshakable. Granted, it had been carved for him by his ancestors, and it involved a life that by definition excluded Mia herself, but it was very seductive to someone who had grown up never really knowing where she fit in.
She pictured each of his conditional titles as another string tethering Cam firmly to the ground: clan chief, police chief, friend, confidant. Ask anyone in the town who Cam was, and they'd be able to give you an answer: He's my cousin. He's the laird of Carrymuir. He's my husband.
Mia moved Kafka off her lap and curled into a ball. She closed her eyes, making certain that she could picture Cam as she had last seen him, standing in the doors of the church: his hair windblown, his tie flying back over his shoulder, his hands fisted at his sides as if he could actually fight what he was feeling.
There was no use in putting it off any longer. Mia stuffed her clothes into her knapsack, wrapping her old bonsai in a button-down oxford shirt and giving it room to breathe at the top. Then she turned off the television and the lights and drew the shades, so the room was completely dark. She listened intently to the sounds that came muffled through the carpet--the innkeeper's draw of a key from the cubbyhole, the whoosh of the heavy front door as i
t opened, the squeal of the lazy wheel on the bellboy's luggage cart. She waited for these noises to fall away into a background hum, so she could hear the subtle sounds of a world gone gray. Then, sitting down at the table with a piece of Inn stationery she could barely see, Mia began to write. And when she was satisfied that she had given him all that she could, she sealed the envelope, scooped up the cat, and locked the door behind her.
Part II
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
--Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
NINE
When Allie told Pauline Cioffi that Maggie MacDonald was dead, Pauline closed her eyes tightly, as if blocking Allie out of her vision would also dispel the news. When she opened her eyes and Allie was still standing there, she sank her teeth into her bottom lip and nodded sharply before turning away. "Well," she said stoically, "that was to be expected."
Allie waited until she had been invited into the house to tell Pauline that Jamie was on trial for murdering his wife. She expected another denial, maybe even a burst of outrage, but Pauline only pulled a pair of socks out of a pristine pile of white laundry and knotted them together. "I suppose," she sighed, "that was to be expected too."
Pauline was Maggie's best friend, or so said the list that Jamie had written for Allie. They had met in an aerobics class given by the local church, the only three hours during the week that Pauline was away from her children. To prolong the holiday, she took Maggie out for coffee one morning, and it became a tradition.
She was built like an apple and her house was a tangle of toys, cloth diapers, and single shoes. She invited Allie to take a seat in the den, but did not offer her coffee. Instead, she plopped one damp, sticky toddler in a playpen, shooed the others out of the room, and listened as Allie related the circumstances of Maggie's death.
"It doesn't surprise you that Jamie's on trial for murder?" Allie said. "Did you know him very well?"
Pauline shrugged. "Well enough to know that when Maggie asked him to kill her, he would."
