by Jodi Picoult
"Is she willing to testify to that?"
"No," Addie whispered.
Selena's eyes softened. Addie's feelings were written all over her, clear as permanent marker on her pale skin. "This may seem like I'm prying, Ms.--"
"Addie, please."
"Addie. Why didn't you come to us two weeks ago?"
For a long time, Addie didn't answer. Then, she quietly explained, "I needed to see for myself first if Jack was the man I made him out to be."
Selena thought of the morning she'd told Jordan that she would not marry him. And of every single morning since then, when she'd second-guessed herself. "I know you'd like to help, but without an alibi, there's not too much you can add to his case."
"That's not why I came," Addie said. "I was hoping that you could help me."
*
"Saxton here."
"Hey, Charlie, it's me."
Charlie froze. There was only one reason Albert Ozmander would have been calling, and it directly involved the thermos Charlie had seized from his daughter's room. Not that Oz knew where the thermos came from. As far as the toxicologist was concerned, this was just a routine workup on some evidence in an unnamed case.
He felt his foot tapping so nervously beneath his desk that he had to physically restrain himself with his own hand. "Got a match for you," Oz said, "but it's a weird one. Don't ask me why the kids in your town aren't smoking pot or doing coke like the rest of the free world, Charlie, but this stuff tested positive for atropine sulfate."
"Never heard of it."
"Yeah, you have. It's a drug used to control digestive tract problems, among other things. You ever taken Lomotil?"
Once, God, yes, when he and Barbara had visited Mexico and got sick as dogs. Charlie squirmed just remembering it. "Why would kids try to get off on an antidiarrheal?"
"Because if you take enough of it, it'll make you high. I'm sending the results right now." The fax beeped on in the corner of Charlie's office; he watched the paper curl its way out and somersault into the wire bin beneath.
"Thanks, Oz," Charlie said, and hung up the phone. He sat at his desk, hands covering his face. Meg, who had never lied to her father in her life; Meg, for whom he would tilt the world on its axis ... Meg had somehow come to be in possession of this drug.
His heart sank so low that it changed his center of gravity, and Charlie had to fight his way upright so that he could reach the buttons of his phone. "Matt," he said, when the prosecutor answered, "we have to talk."
Jack dragged himself through the gray halls, trailing the officer who led him to the conference room where Jordan was waiting. The trial was only days away; no doubt his attorney had come with the prosecution's plea. Not that Jack was going to accept. He would stand up and hear a guilty verdict read twenty times by the jury, but he wasn't giving up his own freedom like an extra piece of gum he'd never miss. If they wanted him, they'd get him ... kicking and screaming all the way to the appellate court.
"Save your breath," he said to Jordan, as the CO opened the door. "I'm not--" He stopped abruptly as he realized that Jordan was not the only one there. Sitting beside him, looking fragile and tired and so beautiful it made his stomach ache, was Addie.
Jordan stood up, sending ripples through Jack's shock. "How did you--"
"Happy birthday," Jordan said.
"It's not my birthday."
"I know," Jordan admitted, and he left the conference room.
Jack didn't know what to do. The last time he had seen Addie was during his arrest. He took a step toward her, his heart racing.
He had shamelessly used Addie during these weeks in jail, in solitary. She was the image his mind turned to for comfort. She was the reason he could survive in a cell--because presumably, one day, he would be able to get out and explain.
What if she had come to tell him she never wanted to speak to him again?
Addie turned away, and that stopped Jack in his tracks as effectively as any gate. "Don't." She closed her eyes and began to speak. "I'm so sorry, Jack. That morning when Charlie showed up and started saying things, I shouldn't have heard him. I shouldn't have heard him, because I was supposed to be too busy listening to you."
"Addie--"
"Let me finish. Please." She looked down at her hands. "I went to Loyal. I met Catherine. She ... she's a very pretty girl." Jack remained absolutely still. "I'm ashamed that I even had to go there. I wish I could have just looked up at Charlie that morning and told him he had the wrong man. I wish I could turn back time and do it all over again ... differently ... except for one thing." She looked up, smiling through her tears. "A very wise man once told me that you can't look back--you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future."
And then he was in her arms, burying his face in the sweet fall of her hair and holding tight to the only anchor he had. His lips moved over her skin, her sorrow tightening his own throat. He swallowed, then whispered, "Do you think I did it?"
Addie cupped his cheek. "How can you know so much and not know the answer to that?"
Jack had been a hero in so many walks of life--academically, physically, socially. He knew what it was like to be the one other heads turned to follow, and he understood how far a fall it was from such a pedestal. But until this moment, when Addie handed over her trust like the keys to a golden city, Jack had never felt such honor.
"I wish you didn't have to see me here. Like this."
"I'm not. I'm seeing you stretched out on a picnic blanket in my backyard with an entire feast you've cooked just for me." Addie smiled at him. "And I'm seeing me wearing ... nope, I don't think I'm going to tell you."
"That's cruel."
"Guess you'll have to get out of here and see for yourself."
He pulled Addie close again and held her until their hearts tuned together in perfect pitch. Then Jack spoke softly, so that his words were nothing more than a thought set on the shell of Addie's ear. "About the past," he whispered. "I would do it all over. The conviction, the jail, the arrest--all of it--if that was the only way I'd get to meet you."
Shadows chased across Addie's face in the spectral shapes of her rape, her daughter, her mother. "Oh, Jack," she said, her voice shaking. "I love you, too."
The last week of June 2000
Salem Falls,
New Hampshire
You could fall asleep with your eyes open.
Meg knew this because sometimes, in school, she would be staring at a bug on the wall and suddenly class would be over. She didn't sleep well at night anymore, because of the Memory. If her mind chose to zone out in broad daylight, it was all right with her.
Meg tried to make sure there was always something to focus on, other than That Night. But she couldn't keep her father from talking about what he'd done for Matt Houlihan and who the witnesses were going to be at trial. She couldn't stop her friends from whispering about it. All of it was pulling at Meg, ripping her apart at the seams.
She ran into the house and past her mother. This was her obsession, a Lady Macbeth spot check she did every afternoon when she came home. She flung open her bedroom door, gasping for breath, and stuck her head inside the closet.
"Margaret Anne Saxton," her mother said from the doorway.
Meg startled, smashing her head on the wooden frame of the closet.
"Honey, are you all right?" Meg's mother walked over and touched her forehead lightly, feeling for fever, or maybe insanity. "You look like you're being chased by the hounds of hell."
"No hounds," Meg managed, with a weak smile. "Only a heap of homework."
"I'm worried about you. You don't look right." She glanced at Meg's clothing. "You're losing weight."
"Jesus, Mom, you've been suggesting I go on a diet for years."
"I never said that. I only felt that with a face as lovely as yours, you might want not to draw attention away from it."
Meg rolled her eyes. "I love you too, Ma," she said dryly. "Now can I please have some pri
vacy? For once?"
The moment her mother closed the door, Meg dove into the closet. On her hands and knees, she tossed aside her dolls and shoes ... but the ballet bag that had been there just yesterday afternoon was missing. "Oh, shit," she whispered, and then felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
Her father had quietly opened the door of her bedroom and now leaned against it, holding the pink sack. "Looking for this?"
Meg hung her head. Just shoot me, she thought.
He came into the room, closed the door, and sat down on the floor across from her. "You want to talk first, or should I?"
Suddenly, Meg felt herself dissolve. From the inside out, like those disgusting bacteria in sci-fi movies that leave people with Jell-O instead of organs. She felt her mind go blank.
"Meggie," her father said, in a voice so quiet it made her ache, "did you bring drugs to the woods that night?"
Meg shook her head, stunned. That thermos ... the one Gillian had brought filled with iced tea ... it had been full of drugs?
And her father believed that Meg was responsible.
Memories chased each other at the heels: the forest shimmying that night before her eyes; the white blanks still crowding out huge blocks of time in her mind; the four of them, hysterical and sobbing, when her father had found them. Suddenly, the dam burst. In her life, Meg had never cried like this, sobbing until she shook, until she couldn't make any sound at all, until her mother raced into the room in a panic. "Charlie," she heard her mother say, from a tunnel of distance. "Do something!"
Meg cried for Gillian, for the expression on her father's face, for what she was beginning to remember. She flung her arms wide and kicked at whoever came close to her.
In the end, a paramedic gave her a shot of Haldol. She drifted back to earth like one of the flowers that had fallen from the dogwood that night. Her father's strong arms were wrapped tight around her, and his coffee breath fell onto her cheek. "Meggie," he said, his voice broken. "Who?"
They were not speaking of the same thing, not at all, and in some small corner of her mind Meg knew this. But as her eyes drifted shut, as she fell headfirst into that night again, she murmured, "It could have been me."
It was the first time that Gillian had been in Matt Houlihan's office without her father sitting beside her. Granted, he was only a hundred feet away in the waiting room, maybe even had his ear pressed to the door, but the privacy was empowering. "I hope you feel comfortable being here alone with me," Houlihan said.
What a sensitive guy, Gillian thought. Making sure the rape victim isn't threatened by a Big Bad Male and a small closed room. She looked into her lap. "I'm okay," she said.
"The reason I asked to speak to you without your father present is because of some new evidence that I thought you might feel more comfortable discussing in private."
Every cell in Gillian's body went on alert. She froze, waiting for him to speak again.
"Detective Saxton found a thermos and some cups in his daughter's room, Gillian. Meg said they belonged to you."
Gillian was so relieved that this was the crucial evidence, she nearly laughed out loud. "That's true."
"Did the residue of drugs in the thermos and cups belong to you, too?"
Gillian blinked. "What drugs?"
"Atropine. It's a prescription drug ... that can also make you high."
"I've never heard of it."
"Well, according to Meg, you're the one who brought the drinks that night. Atropine and all."
The bitch. "Meg said that?" Gilly managed, her voice so tight she thought her vocal cords might snap like the strings of a rock guitar. "I would never bring drugs. I would never do drugs." She laughed, but it sounded forced. "Mr. Houlihan, I've grown up around pharmaceuticals my whole life. My first memory is of my dad telling me to say no to drugs." She looked toward the waiting room. "Go ask him if you don't believe me."
"If you didn't bring the atropine, who did?"
"I have no idea," Gillian said. "Probably Meg."
"Meg's father is a policeman. Presumably, she's heard the same party line as you."
"That's not my problem," she snapped.
Houlihan sighed. "I couldn't care less who's the dealer here, Gillian. That's not in the least important to my case. What I need to know is if you drank any of the tea that night."
Before Gilly could answer, the telephone rang. The county attorney picked it up, spoke for a moment, and then turned, apologetic. "I have to see someone before they go off to trial," he explained. "Will you excuse me?"
Two seconds later, Gillian was alone in the office.
Had she taken the drugs that night? Well, of course. But hearing that wasn't going to make Houlihan happy. Someone who took a hallucinogen wasn't a reliable eyewitness.
Then again, it had been nearly six weeks. No drug stayed in your system that long, especially one ingested in such a small volume. Houlihan could draw blood this instant and never know if Gillian was lying.
The ER had drawn blood.
The memory hit her; the doctor drawing vial after vial. Chewing on her bottom lip, Gillian stared at the folder on Houlihan's desk.
It took her less than a second to decide to open it. The front page gave the lab results from the rape kit. She skimmed the odd numbers and phrases until she came to the typing for victim, known sample. And all the drugs for which she had tested negative.
Atropine wasn't on the list ... but it hadn't been flagged in her system, either.
She slid the folder back on the edge of the leather blotter just as Houlihan came in. "I didn't drink anything," Gilly said.
"You're absolutely certain?"
"Yes. Meg borrowed my thermos, but she brought iced tea. I hate iced tea."
The lawyer studied her, then nodded, satisfied. He opened a drawer of his butt-ugly metal desk and began to unravel a silver ribbon. "You have any idea what this is?"
"No," she said, letting it slide through her fingers. "Where did you find it?"
"With the thermos and cups."
"Well," Gillian shrugged. "Then it must be Meg's, too."
Addie came into the diner after the dinner rush to find Darla playing chess with her father in the kitchen. "You're back," Roy said.
An apron--her father was wearing an apron. Before she could get past this startling fact, Darla was in her face. "I had to work double shifts, on account of Delilah getting sick, and don't think I'm not expecting time and a half." Turning to Roy, she said, "Check," and then sashayed into the front room.
"Look at you," Addie said, swallowing past the sadness in her throat.
"Yeah." Her father laughed, twirling like a beauty queen. "Go figure."
"First time I up and leave, you go ... you go ..." That was as far as she got, and then the tears came. Exhausted, tired from putting on a brave face for Jack, she moved into her father's embrace, which had always been the softest spot in the world.
"Ah, Addie," he said. "I'm sorry about him."
Addie drew back. "He's innocent, Daddy."
"Then why are you crying?"
"Because," Addie said, "I'm the only one who thinks so."
Roy walked to the stove, then poured her a bowl of potato leek soup. This he set down in front of his daughter with a spoon. "Eat," he ordered.
"I couldn't, even if I wanted to."
He lifted the spoon to her mouth, made the soup trickle down the constriction of her throat. "Isn't that fine?"
Addie nodded and lifted the spoon herself. Meanwhile, Roy moved around his kitchen, heaping potatoes and steamed carrots, breads and stuffings and gravies, all onto a tremendous platter. He piled it high with starches and placed it in front of Addie.
This time, she didn't even hesitate. She tucked into the meal with a hunger she had not even known she'd had, until her belly swelled. "Better?" he asked.
Addie realized she no longer hurt inside. She imagined all these soft foods, rices and puddings and couscous, forming an extra barrier within. Her father had
filled her, because he knew better than anyone that the best way to prevent a heartache was to cushion the coming blow.
*
"Relax," Gillian said, looking at each of her friends. "They don't know anything."
They were sitting in a small garden behind the Duncan household, one hidden from public view by a thicket of roses. "My dad is gonna kill me," Chelsea said. "If he finds out there were drugs there--"
"Why were there drugs there?" Whitney demanded. "I'm a little curious, Gill, since you were the one responsible for bringing the refreshments." The others looked at Gillian, too. "I'm not saying I wouldn't have tried it ... but I would have liked to have had the choice."
"Whit, don't be such a priss. It was a pinch of stuff, so little that it wouldn't even affect you. God, you'd have gotten more of a buzz from a wine cooler." Gillian stared intently at the others. "Think hard. Do any of you remember getting high that night?"
"I was dancing around without a shirt on," Whitney hissed.
"Before you drank a damn thing," Gilly pointed out.
Meg's eyes were dark, striped with betrayal. "My dad says it screws up the case."
"Matt Houlihan doesn't think so," Gillian said.
"Only because you told him that the drugs were mine. If a jury hears that you were stoned, they're not going to believe anything you say."
"I wasn't stoned, Meg. No more than you were."
"Then how come I have to be the fall guy?"
Gillian narrowed her eyes. "Because if you don't, it's going to hurt all of us."
"Says who?"
The other girls shrank back at Meg's response. You didn't cross Gilly. Everyone knew that.
"Look, Meg, this isn't about you or me; it's about sticking together so that our stories match. The minute that starts to fall apart, so does everything else." Gillian swallowed, her throat working.
"You aren't the only one who can't forget that night. But the difference between us is that you don't want to." Meg's hands closed into fists. "You are so fucking full of it, Gillian. If I tell my father I never saw the thermos before, you think he'll assume we're witches? No, he'll believe exactly what I tell him ... that you brought it so we could get high."
Gillian went white. "You wouldn't, Meg."
"Why not?" Meg said, pushing her way out of the rose arbor. "You did it to me."
