by Jodi Picoult
THE COURTROOM ERUPTED, reporters running for their cell phones and Melanie Gold shouting and pointing a finger as her husband, pale and silent, dragged her away. "I need a recess, Your Honor," Jordan said tightly, and physically hauled Chris off the witness stand and out of the courtroom. Barrie Delaney laughed out loud. Gus sat very still, tears running unchecked down her cheeks. Beside her, James was rocking slightly back and forth, whispering, "Oh, God. Oh, my God." After a minute, he turned to Gus and reached for her hand, but what he saw in her face stopped him. "You knew," he whispered.
Gus bowed her head, unable to admit it, equally unable to deny.
She expected to feel a slight rush of the air beside her as James vacated his seat to pace, to think, to just get the hell away. But instead, she felt his hand, warm and firm, steal around hers. And she held on for dear life.
BACK IN THE TINY VESTIBULE, Jordan sat with his head in his hands. He did not move, or speak, for a full sixty seconds. When he began to talk, his head was still lowered. "Is this about getting an appeal?" he said evenly. "Or do you just have a death wish?"
"Neither," Chris said.
"You want to tell me, then, what's going on?"
Jordan's voice was soft, too soft for the roiling emotions in his head. He wanted to throttle Christopher Harte for making him look like an idiot, not once, but twice. He wanted to kick himself for being such a smartass and not asking Chris ten minutes ago what he was going to say on the stand. And he wanted to slap the grin off the prosecutor's face, because she knew and he knew who was going to win.
"I wanted to tell you before," Chris said. "You just didn't want to listen."
"Well, since you've fucked everything up royally, you might as well tell me everything." At the very outrageousness of that, Jordan laughed. For the first time in ten years, maybe longer, he was going to be forced to salvage a case with the truth. Because it was absolutely all he had left.
He had learned long ago that the truth did not belong in a courtroom. No one--not the prosecutor, and more often, not the defendant--wanted it there. Trials were about evidence, counter-evidence, and theories. Not what had actually occurred. But the evidence and counter-evidence and theories had all just gone down the toilet. And the only thing Jordan had to fly with was this kid, this stupid kid, who felt honor bound to tell the world what had really happened.
Fifteen minutes later, Jordan and Chris left the small room, shoulder to shoulder. Neither one of them was smiling. Neither one of them spoke. They walked quickly, their strides parting the crowds who had heard the rumors and who stared after them with their mouths gaping. At the door of the courtroom, Jordan turned to Chris. "Whatever I do, go along with it. Whatever I say, just play along." He saw Chris hesitate. "You owe me this," he hissed.
Chris nodded, and together they pushed open the door.
IT WAS SO QUIET IN THE COURTROOM that Chris could hear his own pulse. He was back on the witness stand, his hands sweating and shaking so badly he had to tuck them beneath his thighs. He had looked at his parents only once; his mother had been smiling weakly and nodding at him. His father--well, his father was still there.
He did not let himself look at Emily's parents, although he could feel their fury, poker-hot, all the way from the gallery.
He was very, very tired. The weave of the sportsjacket was scratchy through the thin oxford cloth shirt, and his new shoes had rubbed a blister on his heel. His head felt like it was going to burst.
And then, suddenly, he heard Emily's voice. Clear, calm, familiar. She was telling him everything would be all right, saying that she wouldn't leave him. Chris glanced around wildly, trying to gauge if everyone else could hear this, too, hoping to see her, even as he felt a stillness stroke over his heart.
"Chris," Jordan said again, "what happened the night of November seventh?"
Chris took a deep breath and began to speak.
THEN
November 7, 1997
He kept his eyes on it, the gun, on the small dent it made on the white skin at her temple. Her hands were shaking as badly as his, and he kept thinking, It's going to go off. And on the heels of that, But it's what she wants.
Her eyes were squeezed shut; her teeth bit into her lower lip. She was holding her breath. She was expecting, he realized, great pain.
He had seen her like this before.
He remembered with great clarity a memory he had forgotten to tell Dr. Feinstein, surely his earliest one, since he was barely walking. He'd been running on the sidewalk and had fallen down. Bawling, he'd been lifted into his mother's arms, and had sat on the porch while she kissed his seemingly unscraped left knee and spread a Band-Aid across it for good measure. It was after he'd been soothed that he realized Emily was screaming, too, and getting the same treatment from her own mother. She'd been right next to him on the sidewalk, although she hadn't fallen. But on her left knee was a brand-new mottled bruise. "He cuts himself," his mother had laughed. "And she bleeds."
It had happened other times when they were children--Chris would get hurt and find Emily wincing, or vice versa--she'd tumble off her bike and he'd cry out. The pediatrician called it sympathy pain, said it was something they'd outgrow.
They hadn't.
The gun slipped on Emily's temple, and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart.
He reached up with his hand and grabbed Emily's right wrist firmly. He was bigger than she was; he could draw the gun away from her head. With his free hand he pried Emily's fingers from the butt of the Colt and carefully uncocked the hammer. "I'm sorry," he said. "But you can't."
It took a moment for Emily's eyes to focus on his, and when they did they darkened with confusion, shock, and then rage. "Yes I can," Emily said, grabbing for the gun, which Chris held out of her reach.
"Chris," she said, after a minute. "If you love me, give it back."
"I do love you!" Chris shouted, his face contorted.
"If you can't stay with me, I understand," she said, looking down at the pistol. "Go, then. But let me do it."
Chris's mouth tightened, and he waited, but she would not meet his eye. Look at me, he silently begged. Neither of us is going to win. And although he was not feeling the lead of a bullet, now that he'd opened himself up to it, he could clearly feel Emily's sorrow, which made it hard to breathe and impossible to think. He had to get out of there. He had to get far away from Emily, so that he would not feel anything at all.
HE STUMBLED TO HIS FEET and crashed through the shrubbery that circled the carousel, his tears making the night curve crazy. Swiping the backs of his hands across his eyes, he started to run, until he reached the Jeep.
He didn't get into the car, and realized he was waiting to hear the shot.
A half hour passed, slow and viscous, and before Chris realized what he was doing he'd walked halfway back to the carousel. He saw Emily just where he'd left her, cross-legged on the floorboards with the gun cradled between her palms. She was stroking the length of it as she might have caressed a kitten, and she was crying so hard she could not catch her breath.
Emily glanced up when she noticed his feet at the edge of the carousel. Her eyes were red; her nose was streaming. "I can't do it," she said, choking on her own words. "I can tell you to get the hell out of here, and I can yell and scream and say I want to, but I can't."
Heart pounding, Chris pulled Emily to her feet. This is a sign, he thought. Tell her what it means. But as soon as she was standing, she pressed the gun into his palm. The pistol was slick with Emily's sweat, and as warm as her own skin. "I'm too much of a coward to kill myself," she whispered. "And too much of a coward to live." She lifted her eyes. "Where do I go from here?"
Anything Chris was going to say dried in his throat. He knew that if he wanted to, he could wrench the gun away from Emily and throw it so far that she'd never be able to find it. He w
as stronger than she was ... and that was the problem. He could suffer; he always had been able to. It was why he could swim such a brutal butterfly; why he could wait in a duck blind in zero degree weather for hours; why he could talk himself into letting Emily kill herself. But even when they were tiny, when he saw the sympathy bruises rise beneath Emily's skin, it had hurt Chris more than when he'd actually fallen. He could stand pain, himself. He just couldn't stand hers.
Chris was transfixed by the agony he saw on Emily's face. Whatever this thing was that she could not tell him, it was killing her. Slowly, and far more painfully than the Colt would.
Chris's mind cleared with a great buzz and burst of light, the way it sometimes did when he broke the surface of the water on a winning final stroke. Just like that, it made sense. Emily was not afraid of dying. She was afraid of not dying.
In that moment, with the night shrinking around them, Chris didn't think to run, to get help, to buy time. It was just the two of them, and there was no alternative--for the first time Chris understood what Emily had been feeling. "Please," she whispered, and he realized that pleasing Emily was all he'd ever really wanted to do.
He picked up the gun in his left hand, and embraced her. "This is what you want?" he whispered, and Emily, realizing, nodded. She relaxed in his arms, and that small degree of trust unraveled him. "I can't do this to you," he said, drawing back.
Emily put her hand on his and pulled the gun to her temple. "Then do it for me," she said.
SHE COULD NOT SEE HIS FACE in that position, but she pictured it. She imagined Chris the way he had been during a moment the summer before, on the tennis courts at the school. It had been a brutal ninety-five degrees, and God only knew why they'd decided to play tennis, but there they were, Emily with her wild serves going clear over to the adjoining court, and Chris running after the balls, his laughter bouncing as high.
She remembered him standing with the sun behind his back. His racquet was in his left hand, in his right he tossed a Wilson ball. He paused to wipe it across his forehead, mopping up his sweat, and then smiled wide at Emily. His voice was husky and deep, beloved. "Ready?" he asked.
Emily felt the gun touch her skin, and drew in a breath. "Now," she said.
NOW, CHRIS, NOW.
He heard the words, heard Emily's voice vibrating against his chest, but his hands were shaking again and if he pulled the trigger he'd probably shoot himself and was that really so bad?
Now. Now.
He was crying so hard at this point that when he looked at Emily from the corner of his eye, her face wavered, and he believed that he'd already begun to forget her. But then he blinked and she was beautiful and calm and waiting, her mouth parted like it sometimes did when she fell asleep. She opened her eyes and all he could see was her conviction.
"Oh, I love you," he said, at least he thought he did, but Emily heard him either way. She brought up her right hand and settled it over his, her fingers curving over his own to urge him on.
She pressed his hand, and it squeezed on the trigger, and then he was deaf and dizzy and falling, with Emily still in his arms.
NOW
May 1998
Chris fell silent, and shock settled over the courtroom like a fisherman's net, drawing close all the questions that had been raised during the trial. Jordan moved, the first one to break the spell. Chris was bent over on the witness stand, arms crossed over his stomach, his breathing uneven.
There was just one way to save this case. He knew exactly what the State was going to say--he'd done it for years, himself. And the only chance he had to come out on top was to take the wind out of Barrie Delaney's sails: to prosecute Chris before she got the chance.
Jordan approached the stand, grimly preparing to rip into his own client.
"WHY WERE YOU THERE?" Jordan asked cynically. "Were you planning to commit suicide, or what?"
Bewildered, Chris looked up at the attorney. In spite of what had happened in the past hour, Jordan was still supposed to be on Chris's side. "I thought I could stop her."
"Really." Jordan snorted. "You thought you could stop her and you wound up shooting her instead. How come you brought two bullets?"
"I ... don't really know," Chris said. "I just did."
"In case you missed?"
"In case ... I wasn't thinking very clearly," Chris admitted. "I just took two, is all."
"You fainted," Jordan said, changing the subject. "Do you know that for a fact?"
"I woke up on the ground, bleeding from my head," he said, "that's all I remember." And out of the blue he recalled something Jordan had said to him months before: The witness stand can be a very lonely place.
"Were you unconscious when the police arrived?"
"No," Chris said. "I was sitting up, holding Emily."
"But you don't remember actually fainting. Do you remember what happened just before you supposedly fainted?"
Chris's mouth opened and closed around empty words. "We were both holding the gun," he managed.
"Where were Emily's hands?"
"On top of my hand."
"On the gun?"
"I don't know. I guess so."
"Can't you remember exactly where?"
"No," Chris said tightly, growing more agitated.
"Then how do you know for sure that her hands were on top of yours?"
"Because I can still feel her touching me, now, when I think about it."
Jordan rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Chris. Cut the Hallmark Card garbage. How do you know Emily's hands were on yours?"
Chris glared at his attorney, his face reddening. "Because she was trying to make me pull the trigger!" he shouted.
Jordan turned on him. "And how do you know that?" he needled.
"Because I do!" Chris's hands clenched on the railing of the witness box. "Because that's what happened!" He took a shaky breath for control. "Because," he said, "it's the truth."
"Oh," Jordan said, falling back. "The truth. And why should we believe this truth? There have been so many."
Chris began to rock slowly on the seat of his chair. Jordan had told Chris he'd fucked up his own defense, and Chris realized that now the lawyer was making him pay. If anyone was going to leave this courthouse looking like a fool, it was going to be Chris himself.
Suddenly, Jordan was beside him again. "Your hand was on that gun?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"On the trigger."
"And where was Emily's hand?" he asked.
"On mine. On the gun."
"Well, which is it? On your hand or on the gun?"
Chris bowed his head. "Both. I don't know."
"So you don't remember fainting, but you do remember that Emily's hand was on yours and the gun. How could that be?"
"I don't know."
"Why was Emily's hand on your hand?"
"Because she was trying to get me to kill her."
"How do you know?" Jordan taunted.
"She was saying 'Now, Chris, now.' But I couldn't do it. She kept saying it and saying it and then she put her hand on mine and jerked on it."
"She was jerking your hand? Did she jerk your finger on the trigger?"
"I don't know."
The attorney leaned closer. "Did she jerk your wrist to make your whole hand move?"
"I don't know."
"Did her finger ever brush that trigger, Chris?"
"I'm not sure." He shook his head hard, trying to clear it.
"Did her hand knock into your finger on the trigger?"
"I don't know," Chris sobbed. "I don't know."
"Are you the one who made that trigger go off, Chris?" Jordan said, inches from Chris's face. Chris nodded, his nose running, his eyes raw and red. "Chris," Jordan said, "how do you know?"
"I don't know," Chris cried, covering his ears. "I don't, God, I don't know."
Jordan reached over the railing of the witness stand and gently pulled Chris's hands down to rest beneath his own on the wooden divi
der. "You don't know for sure, Chris, that you killed Emily, do you?"
Chris's breath caught in his throat. He stared wide-eyed at his attorney. You don't have to figure it out, Jordan silently implored. You just have to admit that you can't.
He was battered from the inside out, and his heart felt as if it had been trampled ... but he was at peace for the first time in months. "No," Chris whispered, accepting this gift. "I don't."
IN HER LIFE, Barrie Delaney had never prosecuted a trial quite like this. Jordan had quite effectively done her job for her, up until the end when the defendant was an emotional wreck and basically recanted his confession. But he had given a confession. And Barrie was not one to quit that easily.
"A lot happened on the night of November seventh, didn't it?"
Chris looked up at the prosecutor and warily nodded. "Yes."
"At the very end of it all," Barrie said, "was your hand holding the gun?"
"Yes."
"Was that gun pressed against Emily's head?"
"Yes."
"Was your finger on the trigger?"
Chris took a deep breath. "Yes," he said.
"Was a shot fired?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Harte," Barrie said, "was your hand still on that gun, and on that trigger when the shot was fired?"
"Yes," Chris whispered.
"Do you think you shot Emily Gold?"
Chris bit his lip. "I don't know," he said.
"REDIRECT, YOUR HONOR." Jordan walked toward the witness stand again. "Chris, did you go to the carousel thinking that you were going to kill Emily?"
"God, no."
"Did you go there that night planning to kill her?"
"No." He shook his head vigorously. "No."
"Even at the moment that you held the gun to Emily's head, Chris--did you want to kill her?"
"No," Chris said thickly. "I didn't."
Jordan turned, so that he was not facing Chris any longer, but staring at Barrie Delaney as he parroted her cross-examination questions. "At the end of the night on November seventh, Chris, was your hand on the gun?"
"Yes."
