by Jodi Picoult
I realize that, of all the years of cop work I did, and all the private investigations, this might be my first true confession.
The agent sighs, walking toward an empty computer terminal behind the counter, gesturing for me to follow. She takes the confirmation number I hand her, keying in letters so slowly I could invent entire alphabets between the touches of her fingers. “I’ve been here for forty years,” she tells me. “Don’t come across a lot of guys like you.”
This woman is helping me; she’s a bona fide human willing to work her magic instead of leaving me at the mercy of a glitched computer terminal—so I bite my tongue. After an eternity, she hands me a boarding pass. “Just remember, no matter what happens, you’ll get there eventually.”
I grab the boarding pass and start to run for the gate. I take the escalator steps two at a time. To be totally honest, I can’t even remember getting through security, I just know that I am racing down the hall to Gate 12 as I hear the loudspeaker announcing the final call for travelers headed to Nashville, like a narrator broadcasting my fate. I sprint toward the gate agent as she is about to close the door and fling the boarding pass in her direction.
I step onto the plane, so winded I can’t even speak, and immediately see Serenity in a seat about five rows back. I collapse beside her as the flight attendant begins her spiel for departure.
“You made it,” she says, nearly as amazed as I am. She turns to the guy in the window seat to her left. “Guess I got all worked up for nothing.”
The man smiles at her stiffly, then buries his nose in the in-flight magazine as if he has been waiting all his life to read about the best golf courses in Hawaii. From his attitude, I’m pretty sure Serenity has been talking his ear off. I almost want to apologize.
Instead, I pat Serenity’s hand where it sits on the armrest between us. “Oh ye of little faith,” I say.
Our flight is not exactly uneventful.
After being grounded in Baltimore due to thunderstorms, we sleep upright in chairs at the gate, waiting for clearance to fly again. It comes shortly after 6:00 A.M., and by 8:00, we are in Nashville, rumpled and exhausted. Serenity rents a car with the same credit card she used to get our plane tickets. She asks the rental agent if he knows how to get to Hohenwald, Tennessee, and while he is digging for a map I sit down and try to stay awake. A coffee table sports a Sports Illustrated magazine and a dog-eared copy of the white pages from 2010.
The Elephant Sanctuary isn’t listed in the white pages, which makes sense, since it is a business, even though I check under both Elephant and Sanctuary. But there is a Cartwright, G., in Brentwood.
Suddenly, I am alert again. It is almost, as Serenity says, like the universe is trying to tell me something.
What are the odds that G. Cartwright may be the same Gideon Cartwright we had been hoping to find? It is almost too easy, and yet how can we come this far without checking? Especially if Jenna is trying to find him, too?
There is no phone number listed, just the address. And so instead of driving to Hohenwald, Tennessee, to blindly search for Gideon Cartwright, we wind up driving to a place called Brentwood, just outside of Nashville, and the residence that might belong to him.
The street is a dead end, which seems fitting. Serenity pulls the car up to the curb, and for a moment we both just stare at the house on the hill, which looks as though it has not been inhabited for some time. The shutters upstairs are hanging at odd, broken angles; the whole exterior needs a good scraping and a coat of paint. Weeds grow knee-high in what once must have been a tended lawn and garden.
“Gideon Cartwright is a slob,” Serenity says.
“No argument there,” I murmur.
“I can’t imagine Alice Metcalf living here.”
“I can’t imagine anyone living here.” I get out of the car and navigate the uneven stones of the front walkway. On the porch is a potted spider plant, now brown and brittle, and a tacked sign from the town of Brentwood that has been faded by rain and sun: THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED.
The screen falls off when I open it to knock on the front door. I prop it against the house. “Clearly if Gideon lived here, it was past tense,” Serenity says. “As in, Moved out ages ago.”
I don’t disagree with her. But I also don’t tell her what I’m thinking: that if Gideon turns out to be the joint at the crux of Nevvie Ruehl’s death and Thomas Metcalf’s anger and Alice’s disappearance, then he has a lot to lose if a kid like Jenna starts asking the wrong questions. And if he wants to get rid of her, this is exactly the sort of place no one would ever look twice.
I knock again, harder. “Let me do the talking,” I say.
I don’t know which of us is more surprised when we hear footsteps approaching the door. It swings open, and standing before me is a disheveled woman. Her gray hair is tangled in a messy braid; her blouse is stained. On her feet are two different shoes. “Can I help you?” she asks, but she does not look me in the eye.
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. We’re looking for Gideon Cartwright.”
My investigator’s brain is buzzing. My gaze is taking in everything behind her: the cavernous parlor, without a stick of furniture. The cobwebs lacing the corners of each doorway. The moth-eaten carpets and the scatter of newspapers and mail on the floor.
“Gideon?” she says, and she shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him for years.” She laughs, then raps her cane against the doorframe. For the first time I notice its white tip. “Then again, I haven’t seen anyone for years.”
She’s blind.
She would be an awfully convenient roommate, if Gideon was living there and had something to hide. More than ever, I want to get into this house and make sure Jenna isn’t trapped in some room in the basement or in a concrete cell in the gated backyard.
“But this is Gideon Cartwright’s home?” I press for the answer, so that before I officially break the law by trespassing without a warrant, it’s for good reason.
“No,” the woman says. “It belongs to my daughter, Grace.”
Cartwright, G.
Serenity’s eyes fly to mine. I grab her hand and squeeze it before she can open her mouth.
“Who did you say you were again?” the woman asks, her brow furrowed.
“I didn’t,” I admit. “But I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me by my voice.” I reach for the old woman’s hand. “It’s me, Nevvie. Thomas Metcalf.”
From the look on Serenity’s face, I think she might have swallowed her tongue. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a disaster. “Thomas,” the woman gasps. “It’s been a very long time.”
Serenity elbows me. What are you doing! she mouths silently.
The answer is: I have no idea. I’m having a conversation with a woman I saw zipped into a body bag, who now apparently lives with her daughter—a girl who allegedly committed suicide. And I’m pretending to be her former boss, who may have gone crazy ten years ago and attacked her.
Nevvie reaches up until her searching hand finds my face. Using her fingers, she traces my nose, my lips, my cheekbones. “I knew you’d come for us one day.”
I pull away, before she can figure out that I’m not who I said I was. “Of course,” I lie. “We’re a family.”
“You must come inside. Grace will be back soon, and we can visit in the meantime …”
“I’d like that,” I say.
Serenity and I follow Nevvie inside. Not a single window in the house is open, and there is no air circulation. “I wonder if I could trouble you for a glass of water?” I ask.
“No trouble at all,” Nevvie says. She leads me into a living room, a big space with a vaulted ceiling and several couches and tables covered with white sheets. One couch has had its protective cover removed. Serenity sits on it while I peek under the sheets, trying to find a desk, a filing cabinet, any sort of information to explain this turn of events.
“What the holy hell is happening?” Serenity hisses at me as soon as Nevvie shuffles into the kitchen. �
�Grace will be back soon? I thought she was dead. I thought Nevvie was trampled.”
“I thought that, too,” I admit. “I saw a body, that’s for sure.”
“Was it hers?”
But that I can’t answer. When I had reached the scene, Gideon was cradling the victim in his lap. I remember the skull split like a melon, the hair shampooed with blood. But I don’t know if I ever actually got close enough to see the face. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to say it was Nevvie Ruehl, since I’d never even seen a picture of her; I trusted Thomas when he named the victim, because he would have recognized his own employee.
“Who called the police that night?” Serenity asks.
“Thomas.”
“So maybe he was the one who wanted you to believe Nevvie was dead.”
But I shake my head. “If Thomas had been the one to go after her in the enclosure, she’d be a lot more nervous than she is right now, and she certainly wouldn’t have invited us into her house.”
“Unless she’s planning to poison us.”
“Then don’t drink the water,” I suggest. “Gideon was the one who found the body. So either he made a mistake—which I don’t buy—or he wanted people to think it was Nevvie.”
“Well, she didn’t just get up from the autopsy table,” Serenity says.
I meet her gaze. And I don’t have to say anything else.
One victim had been taken away that night in a body bag. One victim had been found unconscious, with a blow to the head that maybe could even have resulted in latent blindness, and had been taken to the hospital.
Just then, Nevvie comes into the room, carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and two glasses. “Let me help,” I say, taking them from her hands and setting them down on top of a covered coffee table. I pick up the pitcher and pour a glass for each of us.
There is a clock somewhere; I can hear the ticking even if I cannot see it. It’s probably rotting away underneath one of the sheets. It’s like the whole room is filled with the ghosts of former furniture.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask her.
“I’ve lost track now. Grace was the one who took care of me, you know, after the accident. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
“Accident?”
“You know. That night at the sanctuary. The one where I lost my sight. I suppose after hitting my head like that, it could have been much worse. I’m lucky. Or so they say.” She sinks down, oblivious to the sheet that covers the wing chair. “I don’t remember any of it, which is probably a blessing. When Grace gets here, she can explain everything.” She glances in my direction. “I never blamed you or Maura, Thomas. I hope you know that.”
“Who’s Maura?” Serenity pipes up.
Until this moment, she hasn’t spoken in Nevvie’s presence. Nevvie turns, a hesitant smile playing over her lips. “How rude of me. I didn’t realize you brought a guest.”
I look at Serenity, panicked. I have to introduce her in a way that follows the fiction I’ve created, where I am impersonating Thomas Metcalf. “No, I’m the one who’s been rude,” I say. “You remember my wife, Alice?”
The glass slides out of Nevvie’s hand, shattering on the floor. I kneel to mop up the water, using one of the sheets covering the furniture.
But I am not mopping fast enough. The water soaks through the sheet, and the puddle widens. The knees of my jeans are drenched and the spill has swelled into a pool. It covers Nevvie’s feet, in her mismatched shoes.
Serenity cranes her neck to look around the room. “Sweet Jesus …”
The wallpaper is weeping. Water trickles from the ceiling. I glance at Nevvie and find her leaning back in her chair, her hands gripping the armrests, her face wet with her own tears and the sobs of this house.
I can’t move. I can’t explain what the hell is happening. Overhead, I watch a crack form in the center of the ceiling and spread as if it is only a matter of time before the plaster gives way.
Serenity grabs my arm. “Run,” she shouts, and I follow her out of the house. My shoes splash in puddles that have pooled on the hardwood floors. We don’t stop until we are back at the curb, panting. “I think I lost my goddamn weave,” Serenity says, patting the back of her head. Her pink hair, soaked, makes me think of the bloody skull of the victim at the elephant sanctuary.
I lean down, still gasping for air. The house on the hill looks just as ramshackle and uninviting as it did when we first arrived; the only evidence of our visit is the damp, frantic trail of footprints on the path—tracks that are rapidly vanishing in the heat, as if we were never there at all.
ALICE
Two months is a long time to be gone. A lot can happen in two months.
I didn’t know where Thomas was, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. I didn’t know if he was coming back. But he hadn’t just left Jenna and me, he had left seven elephants and a sanctuary staff. Which meant that someone needed to take over the business.
In two months, you can start to feel confident again.
In two months, you might discover that, in addition to being a scientist, you are also a very good businesswoman.
In two months, a child can start talking up a storm, cobbled sentences and twisted syllables, naming the world that looks just as new to her as it does to you.
In two months, you can start over.
Gideon had become my right-hand man. Although we talked about hiring a new employee, we didn’t have the money for it. We could do this, he assured me. If I could balance my research with the more cerebral financial work, he could be the brawn. Because of this, he was often working an eighteen-hour day. One evening after dinner, I picked up Jenna and wandered out to the point on the property where he was trying to mend a fence. I reached for a pair of pliers and went to work beside him. “You don’t have to do that,” he told me.
“Neither do you,” I said.
It became a routine: After six o’clock, we would work in tandem at whatever was still left on the endless to-do list. We took Jenna with us, and she would collect flowers and chase the wild rabbits that ran through the tall grass.
Somehow, we fell into that habit.
Somehow, we fell.
Maura and Hester were together again in the African enclosure. They had begun to bond, and were rarely seen apart. Maura was definitely in charge; when she challenged Hester, the younger elephant would turn around, presenting her bottom, a sign of subordinance. I had witnessed Maura returning to the grave site of her calf only once since our evening in the swimming pond. She had managed to compartmentalize her grief, to move on.
I took Jenna with me every day to observe the elephants, even though I knew Thomas thought it was dangerous. He was not here; he no longer got a vote. My toddler was a natural scientist. She would move around the enclosures collecting rocks and grasses and wildflowers, and would sort them into piles. Most of these afternoons, Gideon found some work in our vicinity, so that he could sit down and rest with us for a little while. I started to bring an extra snack for him, more iced tea.
Gideon and I talked about Botswana, about the elephants I had known there and how they were so different from the animals here. We talked about the stories he’d heard from the keepers who traveled with the elephants when they arrived at the sanctuary, of animals being beaten or stuffed into a chute while being trained. One day, he was telling me about Lilly, the elephant whose leg had never set properly after breaking. “She was in a different circus before that,” Gideon said. “The ship she was traveling on was docked in Nova Scotia, when it caught on fire. It sank; some of the animals on it were killed. Lilly made it out alive, but with second-degree burns on her back and her legs.”
Lilly, who I’d been taking care of now for nearly two years, had been hurt even more than I’d imagined. “It’s amazing,” I said. “How they don’t blame us for what other people did to them.”
“I think they forgive.” Gideon looked at Maura, his mouth turning down at the corner
s. “I hope they forgive. Do you think she remembers me taking the baby away?”
“Yes,” I said bluntly. “But she doesn’t hold it against you anymore.”
Gideon looked like he was about to respond. But suddenly his face froze, and he leaped up and started running.
Jenna, who knew better than to stray close to the elephants—who had never tested her limits before—was standing two feet away from Maura, staring up at her in a trance. She looked at me, smiling. “Elephant!” she announced.
Maura reached out her trunk, huffing over Jenna’s fairy-fine pigtails.
It was a moment of magic, and of supreme danger. Children, and elephants, are unpredictable. One sudden move and Jenna could have been trampled.
I rose, my mouth dry. Gideon was already there, moving slowly so as not to startle Maura into action. He scooped Jenna into his arms, as if this were a game. “Let’s get you back to your mama,” he said, and he looked over his shoulder at Maura.
That’s when Jenna started to scream. “Elephant,” she yelled. “I want!” She kicked against Gideon’s abdomen and squirmed like a fish on the line.
It was a full-blown tantrum. The noise startled Maura, who bolted into the woods, trumpeting. “Jenna,” I snapped. “You don’t go near the animals! You know better than that!” But the fear in my voice only made her cry harder.
Gideon grunted as one of her little sneakers connected with his groin. “I’m so sorry—” I said, reaching for her, but Gideon turned away. He kept rocking Jenna, bouncing her in his arms, until her screams thinned and her sobs became hiccups. She grabbed the collar of his red uniform shirt in her fist and started to rub the corner of it against her cheek, the way she did with her blanket when she was falling asleep.
A few minutes later, he laid my dozing child down at my feet. Jenna’s cheeks were flushed, her lips parted. I crouched beside her. She might have been made of porcelain, of moonlight.