by Jodi Picoult
• • •
My new wrist cuff works through telephone lines. If I move 150 feet away from my house, the bracelet makes an alarm go off. A probation officer may visit me at any time, demand a sample of my blood or urine to make sure I have not had any drugs or alcohol. I opt to wear my scrubs home, and ask the deputy sheriff to instruct that my old clothes be given, a gift, to Adrienne. They’ll be short and tight—in other words, a perfect fit for her.
“You have nine lives,” Fisher murmurs as we walk out of the parole office, where my cuff has been computer-programmed.
“Seven left,” I sigh.
“Let’s hope we don’t have to use them all.”
“Fisher.” I stop walking as we reach the staircase. “I just wanted to tell you . . . I couldn’t have done that any better.”
He laughs. “Nina, I think you’d actually choke if you had to say the word thanks.”
We walk side by side upstairs, toward the lobby. Fisher, a gentleman to the last, pushes open the heavy fire door of the stairwell and holds it while I step through.
The immediate burst of light as the cameras explode renders me blind, and it takes a moment for the world to come back to me. When it does, I realize that in addition to the reporters, Patrick and Caleb and Monica are waiting. And then, emerging from a spot behind his father’s big body, I see my son.
• • •
She is wearing funny orange pajamas and her hair looks like a swallow’s nest Nathaniel once found behind the soda bottles in the garage, but her face is his mother’s and her voice, when it says his name, is his mother’s too. Her smile is a hook in him; he can feel the catch in his throat as he swallows it and lets himself be reeled across the space between them. Mommy. Nathaniel’s arms rise up from his sides. He stumbles over a wire, and someone’s foot, and then he is running.
She falls to her knees and that only makes the tug stronger. Nathaniel’s so close that he can see she is crying, and this isn’t even very clear because he is crying too. He feels the hook coming free, drawing out the silence that has swelled in his belly for a week now, and the moment before he reaches her embrace it bursts from his lips in a rusty, trebled joy. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Nathaniel shouts, so loud that it drowns out everything but the drum of his mother’s heart beneath his ear.
• • •
He’s gotten bigger in a week. I heft Nathaniel into my arms, smiling like a fool, as the cameras capture every move. Fisher has corralled the reporters, is even now preaching to them. I bury my face in Nathaniel’s sweet neck, matching my memory with what is real.
Suddenly Caleb stands beside us. His face is as inscrutable as it was the last time we were alone, on opposite sides of a glass visitation booth at jail. Although his testimony helped free me, I know my husband. He did what was expected, but it was not necessarily something he wanted to do. “Caleb,” I begin, flustered. “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
To my surprise, he offers an olive branch: a crooked smile. “Well, that’s a first. No wonder so many reporters are around.” Caleb’s grin slides more firmly into place; and at the same time, he anchors his arm around my shoulders, guides me one step closer to home.
These are the jokes I know.
What’s in the middle of a jellyfish?
A jellybutton.
Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?
It didn’t have the guts.
Why did the cookie go to the hospital?
It felt crumby.
What do lizards put on their kitchen floors?
Reptiles.
What do you call a blind dinosaur?
An I-don’t-think-he-saurus.
There is one more:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Sadie.
Sadie who?
Sadie magic word, Nathaniel, and then you’ll be allowed to go.
When he told it to me, I didn’t laugh.
SIX
And just like that, I have fallen back into my former life. The three of us sit around the breakfast table, like any other family. With his finger, Nathaniel traces the letters in the headline of the morning paper. “M,” he says quietly. “O, M . . .” Over my coffee cup, I look at the photograph. There I am, holding Nathaniel, Caleb at my side. Fisher, somehow, has managed to get his face in the picture too. In the distance, a few steps behind, is Patrick; I recognize him only by his shoes. Across the top, in screaming black letters: MOMMY.
Caleb takes Nathaniel’s empty cereal bowl away as he runs off into the playroom, where he has set up two armies of plastic dinosaurs for a Jurassic war. I glance at the paper. “I’m the poster child for bad parenting,” I say.
“Beats being the local Maine murderess.” He nods to the table. “What’s in the envelope?”
The manila mailer is the interoffice kind, tied shut with red floss. I found it stuffed between the Local and Sports sections of the paper. I flip it over, but there is no return address, no marking of any kind.
Inside is a report from the state lab, the kind of chart I have seen before. A table with results in eight columns, each a different location on human DNA. And two rows of numbers that are identical at every single spot.
Conclusions: The DNA profile detected on the underpants is consistent with the DNA profile of Szyszynski. As a result, he cannot be eliminated as a possible contributor of the genetic material detected in this stain. The chances of randomly selecting an unrelated individual who matches the genetic material found in the underwear are greater than one in six billion, which is approximately the world population.
Or in English: Father Szyszynski’s semen was found on my son’s underwear.
Caleb peers over my shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Absolution,” I sigh.
Caleb takes the paper from my hands, and I point to the first row of numbers. “This shows the DNA from Szyszynski’s blood sample. And the line below it shows the DNA from the stain on the underpants.”
“The numbers are the same.”
“Right. DNA is the same all over your body. That’s why, if the cops arrest a rapist, they draw blood—can you imagine how ridiculous it would be to ask the guy to give a semen sample? The idea is, if you can match the suspect’s blood DNA to evidence, you’re almost guaranteed a conviction.” I look up at him. “It means that he did it, Caleb. He was the one. And . . .” My voice trails off.
“And what?”
“And I did the right thing,” I finish.
Caleb puts the paper facedown on the table and gets up.
“What?” I challenge.
He shakes his head slowly. “Nina, you didn’t do the right thing. You said it yourself. If you match the DNA in the suspect’s blood to the evidence, you’re guaranteed a conviction. So if you’d waited, he would have gotten his punishment.”
“And Nathaniel would still have had to sit in that courtroom, reliving every minute of what happened to him, because that lab report would mean nothing without his testimony.” To my embarrassment, tears rise in my eyes. “I thought Nathaniel had been through enough without that.”
“I know what you thought,” Caleb says softly. “That’s the problem. What about the things Nathaniel’s had to deal with because of what you did? I’m not saying you did the wrong thing. I’m not even saying it wasn’t something I’d thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do . . . or the fitting thing . . . Nina, it still wasn’t the right thing.”
He puts on his boots and opens the kitchen door, leaving me alone with the lab results. I rest my head on my hand and take a deep breath. Caleb’s wrong, he has to be wrong, because if he isn’t, then—
My thoughts veer away from this as the manila envelope draws my eye. Who left this for me, cloak-and-dagger? Someone on the prosecution’s side would have fielded it from the lab. Maybe Peter dropped it off, or a sympathetic paralegal who thought it might go to motive for an insanity defense. At any rate, it is a document I’m not supposed to ha
ve.
Something, therefore, I can’t share with Fisher.
I pick up the phone and call him. “Nina,” he says. “Did you see the morning paper?”
“Hard to miss. Hey, Fisher, did you ever see the DNA results on the priest?”
“You mean the underwear sample? No.” He pauses. “It’s a closed case, now, of course. It’s possible somebody told the lab not to bother.”
Not likely. The staff in the DA’s office would have been far too busy to see to a detail like that. “You know, I’d really like to see the report. If it did come back.”
“It doesn’t really have any bearing on your case—”
“Fisher,” I say firmly, “I’m asking you politely. Have your paralegal call Quentin Brown to fax the report over. I need to see it.”
He sighs. “All right. I’ll get back to you.”
I place the receiver back in its cradle, and sit down at the table. Outside, Caleb splits wood, relieving his frustration with each heavy blow of the ax. Last night, feeling his way under the covers with one warm hand, he’d brushed the plastic lip of my electronic monitoring bracelet. That was all, and then he’d rolled onto one side away from me.
Picking up my coffee, I read the twin lines on the lab report again. Caleb is mistaken, that’s all there is to it. All these letters and numbers, they are proof, in black and white, that I am a hero.
• • •
Quentin gives the lab report another cursory glance and then puts it on a corner of his desk. No surprises there; everyone knows why she killed the priest. The point is, none of this matters anymore. The trial at hand isn’t about sexual abuse, but murder.
The secretary, a harried, faded blonde named Rhonda or Wanda or something like that, sticks her head in the door. “Does no one knock in this building?” Quentin mutters, scowling.
“You take the lab report on Szyszynski?” she asks.
“It’s right here. Why?”
“Defense attorney just called; he wants a copy faxed over to his office yesterday.”
Quentin hands the papers to the secretary. “What’s the rush?”
“Who knows.”
It makes no sense to Quentin; Fisher Carrington must realize that the information will not make or break his case. But then again, it doesn’t matter at all for the prosecution—Nina Frost is facing a conviction, he’s certain, and no lab report about a dead man is going to change that. By the time the secretary has closed the door behind herself, Quentin has put Carrington’s request out of his mind.
• • •
Marcella Wentworth hates snow. She had enough of it, growing up in Maine, and then working there for nearly a decade. She hates waking up and knowing you have to shovel your way to your car; she hates the sensation of skis beneath her feet; she hates the uncontrollable feel of wheels spinning out on black ice. The happiest day of Marcella’s life, in fact, was the day she quit her job at the Maine State Lab, moved to Virginia, and threw her Sorrel boots into a public trash bin at a highway McDonald’s.
She has worked for three years now at CellCore, a private lab. Marcella has a year-round tan and only one medium-weight winter coat. But at her workstation she keeps a postcard Nina Frost, a district attorney, sent her last Christmas—a cartoon depicting the unmistakable mitten shape of her birth state, sporting googly eyes and a jester’s hat. Once a Mainiac, always a Mainiac, it reads.
Marcella is looking at the postcard, and thinking that there may already be a dusting on the ground up there by now, when Nina Frost calls.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Marcella says, “but I was just thinking about you.”
“I need your help,” Nina answers. All business—but then, that has always been Nina. Once or twice since Marcella left the state lab, Nina called to consult on a case, just for the purpose of verification. “I’ve got a DNA test I need checked.”
Marcella glances at the overwhelming stack of files piling her in-box. “No problem. What’s the story?”
“Child molestation. There’s a known blood sample and then semen on a pair of underwear. I’m not an expert, but the results looks pretty cut and dried.”
“Ah. I’m guessing they don’t jive, and you think the state lab screwed up?”
“Actually, they do jive. I just need to be absolutely certain.”
“Guess you really don’t want this one to walk,” Marcella muses.
There is a hesitation. “He’s dead,” Nina says. “I shot him.”
• • •
Caleb has always liked chopping wood. He likes the Herculean moment of hefting the ax, of swinging it down like a man measuring his strength at a carnival game. He likes the sound of a log being broken apart, a searing crack, and then the hollow plink of two halves falling to opposite sides. He likes the rhythm, which erases thought and memory.
Maybe by the time he has run out of wood to split, he will feel ready to go back inside and face his wife.
Nina’s single-mindedness has always been attractive—especially to a man who, in so many matters, is naturally hesitant. But now the flaw has been magnified to the point of being grotesque. She simply cannot let go.
Once, Caleb had been hired to build a brick wall in a town park. As he’d worked, he’d gotten used to the homeless man who lived beneath the birthday pavilion. His name was Coalspot, or so Caleb had been told. He was schizophrenic but harmless. Sometimes, Coalspot would sit on the park bench next to Caleb as he worked. He spent hours unlacing his shoe, taking it off, scraping at his heel, and then putting his shoe back on. “Can you see it?” the man asked Caleb. “Can you see the hole where the poison’s leaking?”
One day a social worker arrived to take Coalspot to a shelter, but he wouldn’t go. He insisted he would infect everyone else; the poison was contagious. After three hours, the woman had reached the end of her rope. “We try to help them,” she sighed to Caleb, “and this is what we get.”
So Caleb sat down beside Coalspot. He took off his own work boot and sock, pointed to his heel. “You see?” he said. “Everyone already has one.”
After that, the homeless man went off, easy as a kitten. It didn’t matter there was no poisonous hole—just at that moment, Coalspot truly believed there was one. And that for a second, Caleb had told the man he was right.
Nina is like that, now. She has redefined her actions so that they make sense to her, if not to anyone else. To say that she killed a man in order to protect Nathaniel? Well, whatever trauma he might suffer as a witness couldn’t be nearly as bad as watching his mother get handcuffed and carted off to jail.
Caleb knows that Nina is looking for vindication, but he can’t do what he did with Coalspot—look her in eye and tell her that yes, he understands. He can’t look her in the eye, period.
He wonders if the reason he’s putting up a wall between them is so that, when she is sentenced, it is easier to let her go.
Caleb takes another log and sets it on end on the chopping block. As the ax comes down, the wood cleaves into two neat pieces, and sitting in the center is the truth. What Nina has done doesn’t make Caleb feel morally superior, by default. It makes him a coward, because he wasn’t the one brave enough to cross the line from thought to deed.
• • •
There are parts of it Nathaniel can’t remember—like what he said when Nathaniel first shook his head no; or which one of them unbuttoned his jeans. What he can still think of, sometimes even when he is trying his hardest not to, is how the air felt cold when his pants came off, and how hot his hand was after that. How it hurt, it hurt so bad, even though he had said it wouldn’t. How Nathaniel had held Esme so tight she cried; how in the mirror of her gold eyes he saw a little boy who no longer was him.
• • •
It will make Nina happy.
Those are Marcella’s first thoughts when she reads the DNA results, and sees that the semen stain and the priest’s blood are indistinguishable from each other. No scientist will ever say it quite this way in t
estimony, but the numbers—and the stats—speak for themselves: This is the perp, no question.
She picks up the phone to tell Nina so, tucking it under her chin so that she can rubber-band the medical files that came attached to the lab report. Marcella hasn’t bothered to scan these; it is pretty clear from what Nina said that the priest died as a result of the gunshot wound. But still, Nina has asked Marcella for a thorough review. She sighs, then puts back the receiver and opens the thick folder.
Two hours later, she finishes reading. And realizes that in spite of her best intentions to stay away, she’ll be heading back to Maine.
• • •
Here is what I have learned in a week: A prison, no matter what shape and size, is still a prison. I find myself staring out windows along with the dog, itching to be on the other side of the glass. I would give a fortune to do the most mundane of errands: run to the bank, take the car to Jiffy Lube, rake leaves.
Nathaniel has gone back to school. This is Dr. Robichaud’s suggestion, a step toward normalcy. Still, I can’t help but wonder if Caleb had some small part in this; if he really doesn’t like the thought of leaving me alone with my son.
One morning, before I could think twice, I walked halfway down the driveway to pick up the newspaper before I remembered the electronic bracelet. Caleb found me on the porch, sobbing, waiting for the sirens I was certain would come. But through some miracle, the alarm did not go off. I spent six seconds in the fresh air, and no one was the wiser.