Salem Falls

by Jodi Picoult

  "I didn't watch any soaps. I took a nap."

  "A nap? I thought you were faking."

  Gillian shrugged. "I'm not faking; I'm method-acting."

  "Well, FYI, the trig test sucked," Whitney said. The only child of one of the town selectmen, Whitney O'Neill was nothing short of a knockout. She'd opened the bag of jellybeans to help herself. "Why can't we write a spell to get A's?"

  Chelsea looked nervously at the large, lovely bedroom, then at Gillian. "Are you sure we can do magick here, with your father right downstairs?"

  Of course they could--and would--do magick. They had been students of the Craft for nearly a year now; it was why they had gathered this afternoon. "I wouldn't have invited you if I didn't think it was okay," Gillian said, withdrawing a black-and-white composition notebook from between the mattress and box spring. Written in bubble letters, with smiley-face O's, was its title: Book of Shadows. She got out of bed and padded into the large adjoining bathroom. The others could hear her turning on the faucet, and then she returned with an eight-ounce glass of water. "Here," she said, handing it to Whitney. "Drink."

  Whitney took a sip, then spat on the floor. "This is disgusting! It's salt water!"

  "So?" Gillian said. As she spoke, she walked around her friends, sprinkling more salt onto the carpet. "Would you rather waste time taking a bath? Or maybe you've got a better way to purify yourself?"

  Grimacing, Whitney drank again, and then passed it to the others. "Let's do something quick today," Meg suggested. "My mom will kill me if I'm not home by four-thirty." She scooted into position, across from Gillian on the floor, as Whitney and Chelsea made up the other corners of their square. Gillian reached for Whitney's hand, and a cold draft snaked in through a crack in the window. As Whitney's palm skimmed over Meg's, the lamp on the nightstand dimmed. The pages of the notebook fluttered as Meg reached for Chelsea. And when Chelsea clasped Gillian's hand, the air grew too thick to breathe.

  "What color is your circle?" Gillian asked Chelsea.

  "It's blue."

  "And yours?"

  Meg's eyes drifted shut. "Pink."

  "Mine's silver," Whitney murmured.

  "Pure gold," Gillian said. All of their eyes were closed now, but they had learned over the course of the past year that you did not need them open to see. The girls sat, their minds winnowed to this point of power; as one snake of color after another surrounded them, plaited into a thick ring, and sealed them inside.

  "Not again," Delilah said with a sigh, as Addie hauled Roy Peabody into the kitchen.

  "I don't need this from you now." Addie gritted her teeth as her father stumbled heavily on the arch of her foot.

  "Is that Delilah?" Roy crowed, craning his neck. "Prettiest cook in New Hampshire."

  Addie managed to push her father into a narrow stairwell that led upstairs to his apartment. "Did Chloe give you any trouble?" she called back over her shoulder.

  "No, honey," Delilah sighed. "No trouble whatsoever."

  Through sheer will, Addie and Roy made it upstairs. "Why don't you sit down, Daddy?" she said softly, guiding him to the frayed armchair that had stood in that spot all of Addie's life.

  She could smell the stew that Delilah had prepared for the lunch rush rising through the floor and the weave of the carpet--carrots, beef base, thyme. As a child, she had believed that breathing in the diner had rooted it in her system, making it as much as part of her as her blood or her bones. Her father had been like that, too, once. But it had been seven years since he'd voluntarily set foot behind the stove. She wondered if it caused him the same phantom pain that came from losing a vital limb--if he drank to dull the ache of it.

  Addie crouched down beside his chair. "Daddy," she whispered.

  Roy blinked. "My girl."

  Tears sprang to her eyes. "I need you to do me a favor. The diner, it's too busy for me to take care of. I need you--"

  "Oh, Addie. Don't."

  "Just the register. You won't ever have to go into the kitchen."

  "You don't need me to work the register. You just want to keep tabs on me."

  Addie flushed. "That's not true."

  "It's all right." He covered her hand with his own and squeezed. "Every now and then it's nice to know that someone cares where I am."

  Addie opened her mouth to say the things she should have said years ago to her father, all those months after her mother's death when she was too busy keeping the diner afloat to notice that Roy was drowning, but the telephone interrupted her. Delilah was on the other end. "Get down here," the cook said. "Your bad day? It just got worse."

  "Did you say something?" The cab driver's eyes met Jack's in the rearview mirror.

  "No."

  "This look familiar yet?"

  Jack had lied to the driver--what was one more lie in a long string of others?--confessing that he couldn't remember the name of the town he was headed toward but that Route 10 ran right through its middle. He would recognize it, he said, as soon as Main Street came into view.

  Now, forty minutes later, he glanced out the window. They were driving through a village, small but well-heeled, with a New England steepled white church and women in riding boots darting into stores to run their errands. It reminded him too much of the prep-school town of Loyal, and he shook his head. "Not this one," he said.

  What he needed was a place where he could disappear for a while--a place where he could figure out how to start all over again. Teaching--well, that was out of the question now. But it was also all he'd ever done. He'd worked at Westonbrook for four years ... an awfully big hole to omit in a job interview for any related field. And even a McDonald's manager could ask him if he'd ever been convicted of a crime.

  Lulled by the motion of the taxi, he dozed off. He dreamed of an inmate he'd worked with on farm duty. Aldo's girlfriend would commute to Haverhill and leave treasures in the cornfield for him: whiskey, pot, instant coffee. Once, she set herself up naked on a blanket, waiting for Aldo to come over on the tractor. "Drive slow," Aldo would say, when they went out to harvest. "You never know what you're going to find."

  "Salem Falls coming up," the cab driver announced, waking him.

  A hand-lettered blue placard announced the name of the town and proclaimed it home of Duncan Pharmaceuticals. The town was built outward from a central green, crowned by a memorial statue that listed badly to the left, as if it had been rammed from the side. A bank, a general store, and a town office building were dotted along the green--all neatly painted, walks shoveled clear of snow. Standing incongruously at the corner was a junked railroad car. Jack did a double take, and as the cab turned to follow the one-way road around the green, he realized it was a diner.

  In the window was a small sign.

  "Stop," Jack said. "This is the place."

  Harlan Pettigrew sat at the counter, nursing a bowl of stew. A napkin was tucked over his bow tie, to prevent staining. His eyes darted around the diner, lighting on the clock.

  Addie pushed through the swinging doors. "Mr. Pettigrew," she began.

  The man blotted his mouth with his napkin and got to his feet. "It's about time."

  "There's something I need to tell you first. You see, we've been having a little trouble with some of our appliances."

  Pettigrew's brows drew together. "I see."

  Suddenly the door opened. A man in a rumpled sports jacket walked in, looking cold and lost. His shoes were completely inappropriate for the season and left small puddles of melting snow on the linoleum floor. When he spotted her pink apron, he started toward her. "Excuse me--is the owner in?"

  His voice made Addie think of coffee, deep and dark and rich, with a texture that slid between her senses. "That would be me."

  "Oh." He seemed surprised by this. "Okay. Well. I, um, I'm here because--"

  A wide smile spread over Addie's face. "Because I called you!" She shook his hand, trying not to notice how the man froze in shock. "I was just telling Mr. Pettigrew, here, from the board of he
alth, that the repairman was on his way to fix our refrigerator and dishwasher. They're right through here."

  She began to tug the stranger into the kitchen, with Pettigrew in their wake. "Just a moment," the inspector said, frowning. "You don't look like an appliance repairman."

  Addie tensed. The man probably thought she was insane. Well, hell. So did the rest of Salem Falls.

  *

  The woman was insane. And God, she'd touched him. She'd reached right out and grabbed his hand, as if that were normal for him, as if it had been eight minutes rather than eight months since a woman's skin had come in contact with his own.

  If she was covering something up from the board of health, then the diner was probably violating a code. He started to back away, but then the woman bowed her head.

  It was that, the giving in, that ruined him.

  The part in her dark hair was crooked and pink as a newborn's skin. Jack almost reached out one finger and touched it but stuffed his hands in his pockets instead. He knew better than anyone that you could not trust a woman who said she was telling the truth.

  But what if you knew, from the start, that she was lying?

  Jack cleared his throat. "I came as quickly as I could, ma'am," he said, then glanced at Pettigrew. "I was paged from my aunt's birthday party and didn't stop home to get my uniform. Where are the broken appliances?"

  The kitchen looked remarkably similar to the one at the jail. Jack nodded to a sequoia of a woman standing behind the grill and tried desperately to remember any technical trivia he could about dishwashers. He opened the two rolled doors, slid out the tray, and peered inside. "Could be the pump ... or the water inlet valve."

  For the first time, he looked directly at the owner of the diner. She was small and delicate in build, no taller than his collarbone, but had muscles in her arms built, he imagined, by many a hard day's labor. Her brown hair was yanked into a knot at the back of her head and held in place by a pencil, and her eyes were the unlikely color of peridot--a stone, Jack recalled, the ancient Hawaiians believed to be the tears shed by the volcano goddess. Those eyes, now, seemed absolutely stunned. "I didn't bring my toolbox, but I can have this fixed by ..." He pretended to do the math, trying to catch the woman's eye. Tomorrow, she mouthed.

  "Tomorrow," Jack announced. "Now what's the problem with the fridge?"

  Pettigrew looked from the owner of the diner to Jack, and then back again. "There's no point in checking out the rest of the kitchen when I have to return anyway," he said. "I'll come by next week to do my inspection." With a curt nod, he let himself out.

  The owner of the diner launched herself across the line, embracing the cook and whooping with delight. Radiant, she turned to Jack and extended her hand ... but this time, he moved out of the way before she could touch him. "I'm Addie Peabody, and this is Delilah Piggett. We're so grateful to you. You certainly sounded authentic." Suddenly, she paused, an idea dawning. "You don't actually know how to fix appliances, do you?"

  "No. That was just some stuff I heard in the last place I worked." He saw his opening and leaped. "I was on my way in to ask about the HELP WANTED sign."

  The cook beamed. "You're hired."

  "Delilah, who died and left you king?" She smiled at Jack. "You're hired."

  "Do you mind if I ask what the job is?"

  "Yes. I mean, no, I don't mind. We're in the market for a dishwasher."

  A reluctant grin tugged at Jack's mouth. "I heard."

  "Well, even if we fix the machine, we'll still need someone to run it."

  "Is it full time?"

  "Part time ... afternoons. Minimum wage."

  Jack's face fell. He had a Ph.D. in history, and was applying for a job that paid $5.15 per hour. Misinterpreting his reaction, Delilah said, "I've been asking Addie to hire a prep cook a while now. That would be a part-time morning job, wouldn't it?"

  Addie hesitated. "Have you ever worked in a kitchen before, Mr. ..."

  "St. Bride. Jack. And yeah, I have." He didn't say where the kitchen was, or that he'd been a guest of the state at the time.

  "That beats the last guy you hired," Delilah said. "Remember when we found him shooting up over the scrambled eggs?"

  "It's not like he mentioned his habit at the interview." Addie turned to Jack. "How old are you?"

  Ah, this was the moment--the one where she'd ask him why a man his age would settle for menial work like this. "Thirty-one."

  She nodded. "If you want the job, it's yours."

  No application, no references, no questions about his past employment. And anonymity--no one would ever expect to find him washing dishes in a diner. For a man who had determined to put his past firmly behind him, this situation seemed too good to be true. "I'd like it very much," Jack managed.

  "Then grab an apron," said his new boss.

  Suddenly, he remembered that there was something he needed to do, if Salem Falls was going to become his new residence. "I need about an hour to run an errand," he said.

  "No problem. It's the least I can do for the person who saved me."

  Funny, Jack thought. I was thinking the same thing.

  Detective-Lieutenant Charlie Saxton fiddled with the radio in his squad car for a few moments, then switched it off. He listened to the squelch of slush under the Bronco's tires and wondered, again, if he should have stayed with the Miami Police Department.

  It was a hard thing to be a law enforcement officer in the town where you'd once grown up. You'd walk down the street, and instead of noticing the IGA, you'd remember the storeroom where a local teen had knifed his girlfriend. You'd pass the school playground and think of the drugs confiscated from the children of the town selectmen. Where everyone else saw the picture-perfect New England town of their youth, you saw the underbelly of its existence.

  His radio crackled as he turned onto Main Street. "Saxton."

  "Lieutenant, there's some guy here insisting he'll talk only to you."

  Even with the bad reception, Wes sounded pissed. "He got a name?"

  "If he does, he isn't giving it up."

  Charlie sighed. For all he knew, this man had committed murder within town lines and wanted to confess. "Well, I'm driving into the parking lot. Have him take a seat."

  He swung the Bronco into a spot, then walked in to find his guest cooling his heels.

  Literally. Charlie's first thought, pure detective, was that the guy couldn't be from around here--no one who lived in New Hampshire was stupid enough to wear a sports jacket and dress shoes in the freezing slush of early March. Still, he didn't seem particularly distraught, like the recent victim of a crime, or nervous, like a perp. No, he just looked like a guy who'd had a lousy day. Charlie extended his hand. "Hi there. Detective-Lieutenant Saxton."

  The man didn't identify himself. "Could I have a few minutes of your time?"

  Charlie nodded, his curiosity piqued. He led the way to his office, and gestured to a chair. "What can I do for you, Mr. ..."

  "Jack St. Bride. I'm moving to Salem Falls."

  "Welcome." Ah, it all was falling into place. This was probably some family man who wanted to make sure the locale was safe enough for his wife and kids and puppy. "Great place, great town. Is there something in particular I can help you with?"

  For a long moment, St. Bride was silent. His hands flexed on his knees. "I'm here because of 651-B," he said finally.

  It took Charlie a moment to realize this well-dressed, soft-spoken man was talking about a legal statute that required certain criminals to report in to a local law enforcement agency for ten years or for life, depending on the charge for which they had been convicted. Charlie schooled his features until they were as blank as St. Bride's, until it was clear that his former words of welcome had been rescinded. Then he pulled from his desk drawer the state police's form to register a sexual offender.

  March 2000

  Salem Falls,

  New Hampshire

  "What are you doing?"

  Jack spun at the
sound of his new employer's voice. He hid his fists behind his back. "Nothing."

  Addie's lips tightened, and she stuffed her order pad into the waist-band of her apron. "Look," she said, "I don't put up with anything shady on this job. Not drugs, not drinking, and if I catch you stealing, you'll be out on your butt so quick you won't know what kicked you." She extended a hand, palm up. "Give it over."

  Jack glanced away from her and passed her the steel wool he'd been using.

  "This is what you're hiding? A Brillo pad?"

  "Yeah."

  "For God's sake ... why?"

  Jack slowly uncurled his fist. "My hands were dirty." He stared again at the pads of his fingers, still black with ink from when Detective Saxton had taken a set of prints for the station's records. The baby wipes at the booking room had been ineffective, and Jack could have asked to use the men's room, but the feeling of having his fingers rolled one by one, again, was so unsettling that he wanted only to put the building far behind him. By the time he'd arrived at the diner, the ink had dried, and no amount of soap had managed to remove it.

  He held his breath. There was no way she'd be able to tell, was there?

  "Ink," Addie announced. "It happens to me, too, when I read the newspaper. You'd think they could figure out a substance that stays on the page instead of your fingers."

  With relief, Jack followed her into the small pantry off the kitchen. She held out a bottle of industrial cleaner. "I got this from a customer, once, a farmer. It's probably used to cure leather or something ... but it also cleans just about every mess you can imagine." Smiling, she held up her hands--chapped, red, cracked. "You keep using Brillo, you'll wind up looking like me."

  Jack nodded and took the bottle from her. But what he really wanted to do was touch her hand, feel the tips of her fingers, see if they were the catastrophe she made them out to be or if they were simply as warm as they looked.

  Roy sat up in bed with a start, cradling his head. God, it hurt. The room was spinning, but that was nothing compared to the noise that was nearly splitting his skull. Scowling, he stood. Damn Delilah Piggett, anyway. The cook thought she had a right to play alley cat with the pots and pans when people were trying to sleep just above her.

  "Delilah!" he roared, stamping down the stairs that led into the kitchen.