The Pact

by Jodi Picoult

  Chris's hands tensed on the edge of the blanket. He looked up at the detective. "Do you know what happened to Emily?"

  It took a moment for Anne-Marie to decide if the boy was asking her for information, or offering his confession. "Emily," she said, "was taken to the hospital, just like you." She flicked the ballpoint of her pen. "What were you doing at the carousel tonight, Chris?"

  "We went to ... uh, fool around." He picked at the edge of his blanket. "We took some Canadian Club with us."

  Gus's mouth dropped open. Chris, who had done volunteer work with her for MADD, had been drinking and driving?

  "Was that all you had with you?"

  "No," Chris whispered. "I sort of took my father's gun."

  "His what?" Gus exclaimed, stepping forward at the same time James began to object.

  "Chris," Detective Marrone said, not batting an eye. "I just want to know what happened tonight." She stared at him. "I need to know your story."

  "Because Em can't give you hers, can she?" Chris said, curling forward. "She's dead?"

  Before Gus could approach the bed and put her arms around her son, Detective Marrone did it for her. "Yes," she said, as Chris broke into loud sobs. His back, the only part of him Gus could see in the policewoman's embrace, spasmed with coughs.

  "Did the two of you have a fight?" she asked quietly, releasing Chris.

  Gus recognized the exact moment that Chris realized what the detective was suggesting. Get out, she wanted to say, that feral defense spilling out of her, but she discovered that she could not speak at all. She found herself, like James, waiting for her son to object.

  Wondering, for a flicker of a moment, if he would.

  Chris shook his head forcefully, as if now that Marrone had planted the seed in his thoughts he needed to physically dislodge it. "Jesus Christ, no. I love her. I love Em." He brought his knees up beneath the blanket and buried his face against them. "We were going to do it together," he mumbled.

  "Do what?"

  Although Gus had not been the one to ask the question, Chris glanced up at his mother, fear stamped on his face. "Kill ourselves," he said softly. "Em was going to go first," he explained, still speaking to Gus. "She ... she shot herself. And before I got a chance to do it, too, the police came."

  Don't think about it, Gus ordered herself silently. Just act. She ran to the bed and held Chris, her mind numbed by disbelief--Emily and Chris? Committing suicide? It simply was not possible--but that only left another, more sinister alternative. The one that Detective Marrone had posed. As unthinkable as it was that Emily would kill herself, it was even more ludicrous to believe that Chris could have killed her.

  Gus raised her face above Chris's broad shoulder to see the detective. "Leave," she said. "Now."

  Anne-Marie Marrone nodded. "I'll be in touch," she said. "I'm sorry."

  Gus continued to rock Chris as the detective left, wondering whether she had been apologizing for what had taken place, or for what would happen when she returned.

  MICHAEL PUT MELANIE INTO BED, drifting on the Valium a sensitive ER physician had prescribed. He sat on the opposite side, waiting until he heard her breathing level off into sleep, unwilling to leave until he knew for certain that she, too, would not be taken from him unawares.

  Then he walked down the hall to Emily's room. The door was closed for privacy; when he opened it a rush of memories tumbled out, as if the essence of his daughter had simply been bottled up inside. Dizzy with the gift of it, Michael leaned against the doorjamb and breathed in the sweet nutty fragrance of Emily's Body Shop perfume, the waxy, ethylene odor of the drying canvas where a recent oil painting stood. He reached for a towel slung over the footboard, still damp.

  She was coming back; she had to be coming back; there was too much left unfinished here.

  At the hospital, he had spoken to the detective assigned to the case. Michael had assumed a masked assailant, a mugging, a drive-by shooting. He had been fantasizing about wrapping his hands around the throat of the stranger who'd taken his daughter's life.

  He hadn't realized that person was Emily.

  But Detective Marrone had spoken to Chris. She said that although any case like this--one survivor, one dead--would be treated as a homicide, Chris Harte had talked of a suicide pact.

  Michael had tried to remember details, conversations, events. The last discussion he'd had with Emily had been over breakfast. "Dad," she had said, "have you seen my backpack? I can't find it anywhere."

  Was that some kind of code?

  Michael walked over to the mirror hanging over Emily's dresser and saw, in the reflection, a face that looked too much like his daughter's had. He flattened his hands on the dresser, knocking over a small tub of Blistex. Inside, pressed into the translucent yellow paraffin, was the imprint of a finger. Was it her pinky? Was it one of the ones Michael had kissed when she'd been tiny and had fallen off her bike or gotten it caught in a drawer?

  He rushed out of the room, quietly left the house, and drove north.

  The Simpsons, whose prize Thoroughbred had almost died giving birth to a pair of fillies last week, were surprised to see him in the barn at dawn when they went to feed the horses. They hadn't called him, they said, and everything really had been fine for the past few days. But Michael waved them away, assuring them that a free follow-up visit was always included for difficult labors. He stood in the stall with his back to Joe Simpson until the man shrugged and left, and then he stroked the slender flanks of the mare, touched the spiked, downy manes of her offspring, and tried to remind himself that he'd once had the power to heal.

  WHEN CHRIS WOKE UP he felt like a lemon had wedged itself right in the middle of his throat, and his eyes were so dry the lids might as well have been closing over splintered glass. He had a hell of a headache, too, but he knew that was from the fall, and the stitches.

  His mother was curled at the foot of the bed; his father had fallen asleep in the only chair. There was nobody else there. No nurses, no doctors. No detective.

  He tried to imagine Emily, where she was now. At some funeral home? In the morgue? Where was the morgue, anyway ... it was never listed on the elevator stops. He shifted uncomfortably, wincing at the thunder in his head, trying to remember the last thing Emily had said to him.

  His head hurt, but not nearly as much as his heart.

  "Chris?" His mother's voice curled around him like smoke. She had sat up at the bottom of the bed; the blanket had etched a waffle print onto her cheek. "Honey? Are you all right?"

  He felt his mother's hand on his cheek, cool as a river. "Does your head hurt?" she asked.

  His father, at some point, had awakened. Now both his parents were flanking the bed, a pair of matched bookends, with pity and pain scribbled over their faces. Chris turned onto his side and pulled the pillow over his face. "When you get home," his mother said, "you'll feel better."

  "I was going to rent a wood splitter this weekend," his father added. "If the doctors say you're up to it, there's no reason you can't lend a hand."

  A wood splitter? A frigging wood splitter?

  "Honey." His mother's hands fretted over his shoulders. "It's all right to cry," she said, repeating one of the zillion platitudes the ER psychiatrist had preached the night before.

  Chris showed no sign of removing the pillow. His mother grabbed the edge of it, tugging gently. The pillow tumbled off the hospital bed to reveal Chris's face, scarlet, dry-eyed, furious. "Go away," he said, spitting each word carefully.

  It was not until he heard the bell of the elevator at the end of the hall that he raised his shaking hands to his face, touching the span of his brows and the slope of his nose and the empty windows of his eyes, trying to discover who he had become.

  JAMES CRUMPLED HIS PAPER NAPKIN into a ball and stuffed it into the bottom of his coffee cup. "Well," he said, glancing at his watch. "I ought to go."

  Gus looked up at him through the steam of her forgotten tea. "You what?" she asked. "Where?"
<
br />   "I have an RK at nine this morning. And it's already eight-thirty."

  Gus's throat worked, choking on disbelief. "You're going to operate today?"

  James nodded. "I can't very well cancel now." He started to stack cups and paper plates on the cafeteria tray. "If I had thought of it last night, that would have been one thing. But I didn't."

  The way he said it, Gus thought, made it sound like it was all her fault. "For God's sake," she hissed. "Your son is suicidal, his girlfriend is dead, and the police still have possession of your gun, but you're going to pretend last night didn't happen? You can just go back to life-as-usual?"

  James stood up, took the first step away. "If I don't," he said, "how can we expect Chris to?"

  MELANIE SAT IN A ROOM at the funeral home, waiting for one of the Saltzman sons to walk them through the practicalities of grief. Beside her, Michael fidgeted with a tie--one of the three he owned and insisted on wearing here. Melanie herself had refused to change the clothes she had worn from last night.

  "Mr. Gold," a man said, hurrying into the room. "Mrs. Gold." He clasped their hands in turn, holding them a moment longer than necessary. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

  Michael murmured thanks; Melanie blinked at him. How could she trust this man, so imprecise with his words, to take care of the burial? To say there had been a loss was ludicrous; one lost a shoe or a set of keys. You did not suffer the death of a child and say there was a loss. There was a catastrophe. A devastation. A hell.

  Jacob Saltzman slipped behind his wide desk. "I assure you that we will do everything we can to make this transition a little more peaceful for you."

  Transition, Melanie thought. Butterfly from cocoon. Not--

  "Can you tell me where Emily is now?" Saltzman asked.

  "No," Michael said, then cleared his throat. Melanie was embarrassed for him. He sounded so nervous, so sure of making a mistake in front of this man. But what did he have to prove to Jacob Saltzman? "She was at Bainbridge Memorial, but the ... circumstances of the death led to an autopsy."

  "Then she's been taken down to Concord," Saltzman said smoothly, jotting down notes on a pad. "I assume that you'll want the burial as quickly as possible, which would put us at ... Monday."

  Melanie knew he was counting a day for the autopsy, a day to get the body back to Bainbridge. She made a small sound in the back of her throat before she could stop herself.

  "There are some items that we're going to have to discuss," Jacob Saltzman said. "First, of course, is the coffin." He stood up, gesturing to a connecting door in his office. "Would you step inside for a moment, so that you can consider some of the options?"

  "The best," Michael said firmly. "The top of the line."

  Melanie looked at Jacob Saltzman, nodding easily. She thought of how this would be something to laugh at with Gus--the funeral business, a natural moneymaker. What grieving relative would haggle over the price of a coffin, or ask for the bargain-basement model?

  "And is there already a plot?" the funeral director asked.

  Michael shook his head. "Do you take care of that?"

  "We take care of everything," Saltzman said.

  Melanie sat stone-faced through a discussion of announcements in the paper, of refrigeration, of acknowledgment cards, of headstones. Coming here was like being admitted to an inner sanctum that one silently questioned but did not really want the answers to. She had never realized, in fact, that there were so many details to death: if a casket would be open or closed, whether the funeral home's guest register would be leatherbound or paperback, how many roses to put in the breakaway spray.

  Melanie watched the tally grow to a staggering amount: $2,000 for the casket, $2,000 for the cement case that would only postpone the inevitable, $300 for the rabbi, $500 to list the death in The Times, $1,500 to prepare the gravesite, $1,500 to use the chapel at the mortuary. Where would they get this money? And then it came to her: from Emily's college fund. Jacob Saltzman handed the total to Michael, who did not even blink. "That's fine," he said again, "I want the best."

  Melanie turned to Saltzman very slowly. "The roses," she said. "The mahogany casket. The cement around it. The New York Times." She began to shake. "The best," she said flatly, "is not going to make Emily any less dead."

  Michael blanched. He handed a grocery bag to the funeral director. "I think we ought to get going," he said quietly. "Here are the clothes."

  Melanie, half out of her chair, stopped. "The clothes?"

  "To be buried in," Jacob Saltzman said gently.

  Melanie grabbed for the paper sack and unrolled the top. She pulled out a rainbow print summer dress far too thin for November; sandals that hadn't fit Em in two summers. She fished for a pair of panties that still smelled of fabric softener and a barrette that had a broken clasp. Michael hadn't brought a bra or slip. Were they even remembering the same daughter?

  "Why these things?" she whispered. "Where did you find them?" They were forgotten trends and fashions that Emily would not have wanted, clothes that she could not stand to be in for eternity. They had this one last chance to prove that they had known Emily, that they had listened. What if they got it all wrong?

  She ran out of the room, trying hard not to see the real problem. It was not that Michael was making all the wrong choices; it was that he was making choices at all.

  ANNE-MARIE MARRONE WAS WAITING in the driveway when they got home.

  Michael had met the detective briefly last night, but he hadn't been in much of a mood to listen. She had delivered the unwelcome news about Emily and Chris trying to kill themselves. Michael could not imagine what else she could possibly have to tell them, since Em was already gone.

  "Dr. Gold," Detective Marrone called, stepping out of her Taurus. She walked up the gravel path to their car. If she noticed that Melanie was still sitting in the front seat, staring at nothing, she didn't comment. "I didn't realize you were a doctor," she said amiably. She pointed to his truck, parked to the left, stenciled with the name of his practice.

  "Animals," he said tersely. "Not the same." Then he sighed. However awful his own day was already going, Anne-Marie Marrone was not the cause of it. She was only doing her job. "Look, Detective Marrone. We've had a difficult morning. I don't really have time to talk."

  "I understand," Anne-Marie said quickly. "This will only take a minute."

  Michael nodded and gestured toward the house. "It's open," he said. He watched the detective open her mouth to give him flak for that transgression, then think better of it. He walked to the passenger side of the car, unlatched the door, and pulled Melanie to her feet. "Come on inside," he said, gentling his voice to a sweet, slow croon, the same way he'd soothe a skittish horse. He led his wife up the stone steps and into the kitchen, where she sat down on a chair and made no motion to remove her coat.

  Detective Marrone stood with her back to the counter. "We spoke last night about the Harte boy's confession of a double suicide," she said, cutting cleanly to the point. "Your daughter might have killed herself. But you need to know that until proven otherwise, her death is being treated as a homicide."

  "Homicide," Michael breathed. With that one awful, seductive word, he felt a sinkhole of vindication open up in his mind--a chance to blame someone, other than himself, for Emily's death. "You're saying Chris killed her?"

  The detective shook her head. "I'm not saying anything," she said. "I'm explaining a point of law enforcement. It's standard procedure to closely consider the person found next to a smoking gun. The one who's still conveniently alive," she added.

  Michael shook his head. "If you come back in a few days, when ... things are more calm, I'd be happy to show you old photo albums, or Emily's school notebooks, or letters Chris wrote to her from camp. He didn't murder my daughter, Detective Marrone. If he says he didn't, believe him. I can vouch for Chris; I know him well."

  "As well as you knew your daughter, Dr. Gold? So well that you didn't realize she was suicidal?" Detective Marrone cr
ossed her arms. "Because if Christopher Harte's story is true, it means that your daughter wanted to kill herself--that she did kill herself--without exhibiting any outward symptoms of depression."

  Detective Marrone rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Look. I hope for your sake--for Emily's and Chris's sake--that this is a double suicide that got botched. Suicide isn't a crime in New Hampshire. But if there isn't evidence of suicide, the state attorney general will determine whether there's probable cause to charge the boy with murder."

  Michael didn't need it spelled out; he realized that the probable cause would come from what Emily told them postmortem, by means of an autopsy. "Do we get a copy of the medical examiner's report?" he asked.

  Anne-Marie nodded. "If you'd like, I can show you one."

  "Yes," Michael said. "Please." It would be the last statement, the note she hadn't left. "But I'm sure it won't come to that."

  Anne-Marie nodded and started out the door. At the threshold, she turned. "Have you spoken to Chris yet?"

  Michael shook his head. "I ... it didn't seem like the right time."

  "Of course not," the detective said. "I was just wondering." She offered her condolences once again and headed outside.

  Michael walked to the basement door and opened it, releasing the two setters in a scramble of paws and frenzied movement. He shepherded the dogs to the driveway and stood in the open doorway for a moment. He did not notice Melanie, who pulled her coat closer in the sudden draft, her mouth rounded with the word homicide, her teeth sinking into it, unforgiving.

  JAMES WAS WITH CHRIS at the hospital, waiting for the attending physician to sign him out from the patient ward into the locked adolescent psychiatric unit. Gus had been relieved at the doctor's recommendation--she did not trust herself to see in Chris the signs of depression she'd apparently already missed. A trained hospital, an experienced staff, would keep him safe.

  James had had a fit. Would it show up on his permanent medical record? Would he have the ability, as a seventeen-year-old, to sign himself out at any time? Would his school, his future employers, the government, ever have to know he'd spent three days in a psychiatric ward?