by Jodi Picoult
Caleb looks at the police shield in Patrick’s hand. “Something tells me it’s a little more awkward for me than for you.”
This is the man who has lived with Nina for seven years. Slept beside her, made a baby with her. This is the man who has had the life Patrick wanted. He had thought that he’d come to terms with the way things had worked out. Nina was happy, Patrick wanted her to be happy, and if that meant that he himself was out of the picture, so be it. But that equation only worked when the man Nina chose was worthy. When the man Nina chose didn’t make her cry.
Patrick has always believed Caleb to be a good father, and it stuns him a little, now, to realize how badly he wants Caleb to be the perp. If he is, it immediately discredits Caleb. If he is, there is proof that Nina picked the wrong guy.
Patrick feels his fingers curve into fists, but he tamps down on the urge to inflict pain. In the long run, that’s not going to help either Nina or Nathaniel.
“Did you put her up to this?” Caleb says tightly.
“You did this all by yourself,” Patrick answers. “Are you willing to come down to the station?”
Caleb grabs a jacket from the bed. “Let’s go right now,” he says.
At the threshold of the door, he reaches out and touches Patrick’s shoulder. Instinct makes Patrick tense; reason forces him to relax. He turns and looks coolly at Caleb. “I didn’t do it,” Caleb says quietly. “Nina and Nathaniel, they’re the other half of me. Who would be stupid enough to throw that away?”
Patrick does not let his eyes betray him. But he thinks, for the first time, that perhaps Caleb is telling the truth.
• • •
Another man might not have felt comfortable with the relationship between his own wife and Patrick Ducharme. Although Caleb had never doubted Nina’s fidelity—or even her feelings for him—Patrick wore his tattered heart on his sleeve. Caleb had spent enough dinners watching Patrick’s eyes follow his wife around the kitchen; he’d seen Patrick spin Nathaniel in the air and tuck the boy’s giggles into his pockets when he thought no one was looking. But Caleb did not mind, really. After all, Nina and Nathaniel were his. If he felt anything for Patrick, it was pity, because he wasn’t as lucky as Caleb.
Early on, Caleb had been jealous of Nina’s close friendship with Patrick. But she was a woman with a number of male friends. And it quickly became clear that Patrick was too much a part of Nina’s past: Asking her to remove him from her life would have been a mistake, like separating Siamese twins who grew out from a shared heart.
He is thinking of Nina, now, as he sits at the scarred table in the investigation room of the police station with Patrick and Monica LaFlamme. He is remembering, specifically, the way Nina categorically denied any suggestion that Patrick might have been the one to hurt Nathaniel—yet just a few days later, had seemingly accused Caleb without a second thought.
Caleb shivers. Once, Patrick had said that they keep the interrogation rooms ten degrees cooler than the rest of the station, to make suspects physically uncomfortable. “Am I under arrest?” he asks.
“We’re just talking.” Patrick doesn’t meet Caleb’s eye. “Old friends.”
Old friends, oh yes. Like Hitler and Churchill.
Caleb doesn’t want to be sitting here, defending himself. He wants to talk to his boy. He wants to know if Nina finished reading him the pirate book. He wants to know if Nathaniel wet his bed again.
“We might as well get started.” Patrick turns on a tape recorder.
Caleb suddenly realizes his best source of information is sitting three feet away. “You saw Nathaniel,” he murmurs. “How is he?”
Patrick glances up, surprised. He’s used to being the one who asks the questions.
“Was he okay, when you were there? Did he look like he’d been crying?”
“He was . . . he was all right, given the circumstances,” Patrick says. “Now—”
“Sometimes, if he’s not eating, you can distract him by talking about something he likes. Soccer, or frogs, like that. And while you talk you just keep putting food on his fork. Tell Nina.”
“Let’s talk about Nathaniel.”
“What do you think I’m doing? Has he said anything yet? Verbally, I mean. Not with his hands?”
“Why?” Patrick asks guardedly. “Are you worried he might have more to tell us?”
“Worried? I wouldn’t care if the only word he could say was my name. I wouldn’t care if it meant I’d be locked up for life. I just want to hear it for myself.”
“His accusation?”
“No,” Caleb says. “His voice.”
• • •
I have run out of places to go. The bank, the post office, an ice cream for Nathaniel. A local park, the pet store. Since leaving the church, I have dragged us from building to building, running errands that don’t need to be done, all so that I won’t have to go back to my own home.
“Let’s visit Patrick,” I announce, swinging into the parking lot of the Biddeford police station at the last minute. He’ll hate me for this—checking up on his investigation—but above all, he’ll understand. In the backseat of the car, Nathaniel slumps to the side, letting me know what he thinks of this idea.
“Five minutes,” I promise.
The American flag cracks sharply in the cold wind as Nathaniel and I walk up the path toward the front door. Justice for all. When we are about twenty feet away, the door opens. Patrick steps out first, shielding his eyes against the sun. Directly behind him are Monica LaFlamme and Caleb.
Nathaniel sucks in his breath, then wrenches free of me. At the same moment, Caleb sees him and goes down on one knee. His arms catch Nathaniel tight, hold him close. Nathaniel looks up at me with a wide smile, and in that awful moment I realize he thinks I have planned this for him, a wonderful surprise.
Patrick and I stand a distance away, bookends, bracketing this story as it happens.
He comes to his senses first. “Nathaniel,” Patrick says quietly, firmly, and he goes to pull my son away. But Nathaniel is having none of that. He wraps his arms around Caleb’s neck, he tries to burrow inside his coat.
Over our son’s head, Caleb’s eyes meet mine. He stands up, taking Nathaniel with him.
I force myself to look away. To think of the hundreds of children I’ve met—the ones who are bruised and filthy and starving and neglected—who scream as they are removed from their homes, and beg to stay with an abusive mother or father.
“Buddy,” Caleb says quietly, forcing Nathaniel to look at him. “You know I’d like nothing better than to spend some time with you right now. But . . . I have something to do.”
Nathaniel shakes his head, his face crumpling.
“I’m gonna see you just as soon as I can.” Caleb walks toward me, bouncing Nathaniel in his arms; peels him off his own body and settles him into my embrace. By now, Nathaniel is crying so hard that the silent sobs choke him. His rib cage shudders under my palm like a dragon coming to life.
As Caleb heads toward his truck, Nathaniel lifts his gaze. His eyes are slitted and nearly black. He raises his fist and hits me on the shoulder. Then he does it again, and again, a tantrum waged against me.
“Nathaniel!” Patrick says sharply.
But it doesn’t hurt. Not nearly as much as the rest.
• • •
“You have to expect some regression,” Dr. Robichaud says quietly, as we both watch Nathaniel lie listlessly on his stomach on the carpet of the playroom. “His family is coming apart; in his mind, he’s responsible for it.”
“He ran to his father,” I say. “You should have seen it.”
“Nina, you know better than most people that doesn’t prove Caleb’s innocent. Kids in that situation believe they’ve got a special bond with the parent. Nathaniel running to him—that’s textbook behavior.”
Or maybe, I let myself think, Caleb did nothing wrong. But I push the doubt away, because I am on Nathaniel’s side now. “So what do I do?”
�
�Absolutely nothing. You keep being the mother you always have been. The more Nathaniel understands that parts of his life are going to remain the same, the more quickly he’ll overcome the changes.”
I bite my lip. It is in Nathaniel’s best interests to admit to my own faults, but that’s never easy to do. “That may not be the best idea. I work a sixty-hour week. I wasn’t exactly the hands-on parent. Caleb was.” Too late, I realize these were not the right words to use. “I mean . . . well, you know what I mean.”
Nathaniel has rolled onto his side. Unlike the other times we’ve been in Dr. Robichaud’s office, nothing has engaged his attention today. The crayons sit untouched, the blocks are neatly stacked in the corner, the puppet theater is a ghost town.
The psychiatrist takes off her glasses and wipes them on her sweater. “You know, as a woman of science, I’ve always believed that we have the power to shape our own lives. But there’s a big part of me that also thinks things happen for a reason, Nina.” Dr. Robichaud glances toward Nathaniel, who has gotten to his feet now, and is finally moving toward the table. “Maybe he’s not the only one who’s starting over.”
• • •
Nathaniel wants to disappear. It can’t be that hard; it happens every day to all sorts of things. The rain puddle outside the school is gone by the time the sun is in the middle of the sky. His blue toothbrush vanishes and is replaced by a red one. The cat next door goes out one night and never comes back. When he thinks about all this, it makes him cry. So he tries to dream of good things—X-Men and Christmas and maraschino cherries—but he can’t even make pictures of them in his head. He tries to imagine his birthday party, next May, and all he can see is black.
He wishes he could close his eyes and fall asleep forever, just stay in that place where dreams feel so real. Suddenly he has a thought: Maybe this is the nightmare. Maybe he’ll wake up and everything will be the way it is supposed to be.
From the corner of his eye Nathaniel sees that fat stupid book with all the hands in it. If it wasn’t for that book, if he’d never learned how to talk with his fingers, if he’d stayed quiet, this wouldn’t have happened. Drawn upright, he walks to the table where it rests.
It’s a loose-leaf, the kind of binder with three big teeth. Nathaniel knows how to open one; they have them at home. When the jaw is wide he takes out the first page, the one with a happy smiling man using his hand to say hello. The next page shows a dog, and a cat, and the signs for them. Nathaniel throws both on the floor.
He starts ripping out big chunks of paper, scattering them all around his feet like snow. He stomps on the pages with pictures of food. He tears in half the ones that show a family. He watches himself do this on the magic wall, a mirror on this side but glass out there. And then he looks down, and sees something.
This picture, it’s the one he’s been looking for all along.
He grabs the piece of paper so hard it wrinkles in his fist. He runs to the door that leads into Dr. Robichaud’s office, where his mother is waiting. He does it just the way the black-and-white man on the page does. Pinching together his thumb and his forefinger, Nathaniel drags them across his neck, as if he is cutting his own throat.
• • •
He wants to kill himself.
“No, Nathaniel,” I say, shaking my head. “No, baby, no.” Tears are running down his cheeks, and he holds fast to my shirt. When I reach for him he fights me, smooths a paper over my knee. He jabs his finger at one of the sketches.
“Slowly,” Dr. Robichaud instructs, and Nathaniel turns to her. He draws a line across his windpipe again. He taps together his forefingers. Then he points to himself.
I look down at the paper, at the one sign I do not recognize. Like the other groupings in the ASL book, this one has a heading. RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS. And the motion of Nathaniel’s hands has not been suicidal. He has been tracing an imaginary clerical collar; this is the sign for priest.
Priest. Hurt. Me.
Tumblers click in my mind: Nathaniel mesmerized by the word father—although he has always called Caleb daddy. The children’s book Father Szyszynski brought, which disappeared before we even had a chance to read it at bedtime, and still has not turned up. The fight Nathaniel put up this morning when I told him we were going to church.
And I remember one more thing: a few weeks ago, one Sunday when we’d mustered the effort to go to Mass. That night, when Nathaniel was getting undressed, I noticed he was wearing underwear that wasn’t his. Cheap little Spiderman briefs, instead of the $7.99 miniature boxers I bought at GapKids so that Nathaniel could match his dad. Where are yours? I had asked.
And his answer: At church.
I assumed he’d had an accident at Sunday school and had received this spare pair from his teacher, who rummaged through the Goodwill bin. I made a mental note to thank Miss Fiore for taking care of it. But I had a wash to do and a child to bathe and a pair of motions to write, and I never did get a chance to speak to the teacher.
Now, I take my son’s shaking hands, and I kiss the fingertips. Now, I have all the time in the world. “Nathaniel,” I say, “I’m listening.”
• • •
An hour later, in my own home, Monica carries her mug to the sink. “Is it all right with you if I tell your husband?”
“Of course. I would have told him myself, but . . .” My voice trails off.
“That’s my job,” she finishes, saving me from speaking the truth: Now that I have forgiven Caleb, I do not know if he will forgive me.
I busy myself with the dishes—rinsing our mugs, squeezing dry the tea bags and putting them into the trash. I have specifically tried to focus on Nathaniel since leaving Dr. Robichaud’s office—not only because it is the right thing to do, but because I am a terrible coward at heart. What will Caleb say, do?
Monica’s hand touches my forearm. “You were protecting Nathaniel.”
I look directly at her. No wonder there is a need for social workers; the relationships between people knot so easily, there needs to be a person skilled at working free the threads. Sometimes, though, the only way to extricate a tangle is to cut it out and start fresh.
She reads my mind. “Nina. In your shoes, he would have reached the same conclusions.”
A knock on the door captures our attention. Patrick lets himself in, nods to Monica. “I’m just on my way out,” she explains. “If you want to reach me later, I’ll be in my office.”
This is directed to both Patrick and me. Patrick will need her, presumably, to be kept abreast of the case. I will need her, presumably, for moral support. As soon as the door closes behind Monica, Patrick steps forward. “Nathaniel?”
“He’s in his room. He’s okay.” A sob hops the length of my throat. “Oh, my God, Patrick. I should have known. What did I do? What did I do?”
“You did what you had to,” he says simply.
I nod, trying to believe him. But Patrick knows it isn’t working. “Hey.” He leads me to one of the stools in the kitchen, sits me down. “Remember when we were kids, and we used to play Clue?”
I wipe my nose with my sleeve. “No.”
“That’s because I always trounced you. You’d pick Mr. Mustard every time, no matter what the evidence said.”
“I must have let you win.”
“Good. Because if you’ve done it before, Nina, it’s not going to be that hard to do it again.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Give over. I know this game, Nina, and I’m good at it. If you let me do what I have to, without messing yourself up in the process, we can’t lose.” Suddenly he takes a step away from me, stuffs his hands into his pockets. “And you’ve got other things to work on, now.”
“Other things?”
Patrick turns, meets my eye. “Caleb?”
It’s like that old contest: Who will blink first? This time, I can’t bear it; I am the one to look away. “Then go lock him up, Patrick. It’s Father Szyszynski. I know it, and you know it. How many priests have been convicted of doing just
this—shit!” I wince, my own mistake hammering back. “I talked to Father Szyszynski about Nathaniel during confession.”
“You what? What were you thinking?”
“That he was my priest.” Then I glance up. “Wait. He thinks it’s Caleb. That’s what I thought, then. That’s good, right? He doesn’t know that he’s the suspect.”
“What’s important is whether Nathaniel knows it.”
“Isn’t that crystal clear?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not. Apparently, there’s more than one way to interpret the word father. And by the same logic, there’s a whole country full of priests out there.” He looks at me soberly. “You’re the prosecutor. You know this case can’t afford another mistake.”
“God, Patrick, he’s only five. He signed priest. Szyszynski is the only priest he even knows, the only priest who has any contact with him on a regular basis. Go ahead and ask Nathaniel if that’s who he meant.”
“That’s not going to stand up in court, Nina.”
Suddenly I realize that Patrick has not come only for Nathaniel; he has also come for me. To remind me that while I’m being a mother, I still have to think like a prosecutor now. We cannot name the accuser for Nathaniel; he has to do it himself. Otherwise, there is no chance of a conviction.
My mouth is dry. “He isn’t ready to talk yet.”
Patrick holds out his hand to me. “Then let’s just see what he can tell us today.”
• • •
Nathaniel is on the top bunk, sorting his daddy’s old collection of baseball cards into piles. He likes the feel of their frayed edges, and the way they smell gray. His dad says to be careful, that one day these could pay for college, but Nathaniel couldn’t care less. Right now he likes touching them, staring at all the funny faces, and thinking that his dad used to do the same thing.
There’s a knock, and his mom comes in with Patrick. Without hesitation, Patrick climbs up the ladder—all six-feet-two inches of him squashing into the small space between ceiling and mattress. It makes Nathaniel smile a little. “Hey, Weed.” Patrick thumps the bed with a fist. “This is comfy. Gotta get me one of these.” He sits up, pretends to crack his head on the ceiling. “What do you think? Should I ask your mom to buy me a bed like this too?”