by Jodi Picoult
“Tomato juice. No ice.”
The man sitting beside Patrick folds his newspaper. “Tomato juice and vodka,” he says, grinning through his thick Texan drawl. “Yes, ice.”
They both take a sip of their drinks as the flight attendant moves on. The man glances down at his newspaper and shakes his head. “Ought to fry the sumbitch,” he mutters.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, it’s this murder case. Y’all must have heard about it . . . there’s some fool who wants an eleventh hour pardon from death row because she’s found Jesus. Truth is, the governor’s afraid to give her the cocktail because she’s a woman.”
Patrick has always been in favor of capital punishment. But he hears himself say, “Seems reasonable.”
“Guess you’re one of those Yankee left-wingers,” the man scoffs. “Me, I think it don’t matter if you’ve got a pecker or not. You shoot someone in the back of the head at a convenience store, you pay the price. You know?” He shrugs, then finishes his drink. “You flying out on business or pleasure?”
“Business.”
“Me, too. I’m in sales. Hav-A-Heart traps,” he confides, as if this is privileged information.
“I’m a lawyer with the ACLU,” Patrick lies. “I’m flying down to plead that woman’s case to the governor.”
The salesman goes red in the face. “Well. I didn’t mean no disrespect—”
“Like hell you didn’t.”
He folds his newspaper again, and stuffs it into the seat pocket in front of him. “Even you bleeding hearts can’t save them all.”
“One,” Patrick answers. “That’s all I’m hoping for.”
• • •
There is a woman wearing my clothes and my skin and my smell but it isn’t me. Sin is like ink, it bleeds into a person, coloring, making you someone other than you used to be. And it’s indelible. Try as much as you want, you cannot get yourself back.
Words can’t pull me back from the edge. Neither can daylight. This isn’t something to get over, it is an atmosphere I need to learn to breathe. Grow gills for transgression, take it into my lungs with every gasp.
It is a startling thing. I wonder who this person is, going through the motions of my life. I want to take her hand.
And then I want to push her, hard, off a cliff.
• • •
Patrick finds himself peeling off layers of clothing as he walks through the streets of Belle Chasse, Louisiana, past wrought-iron gates and ivy-trellised courtyards. Christmas looks wrong in this climate; the decorations seem to be sweating in the humid heat. He wonders how a Louisiana boy like Glen Szyszynski ever survived so far north.
But he already knows the answer. Growing up among Cajuns and the Creoles wasn’t all that far a stretch from tending to the Acadians in his parish. The proof of that rests in his breast pocket, public records copied by a clerk at the Louisiana Vital Records Registry in New Orleans. Arthur Gwynne, born 10/23/43 to Cecilia Marquette Gwynne and her husband, Alexander Gwynne. Four years later, the marriage of Cecelia Marquette Gwynne, widowed, to Teodor Szyszynski. And in 1951, the birth of Glen.
Half-brothers.
Szyszynski’s will was last revised in 1994; it is entirely possible that Arthur Gwynne is no longer a member of the Belle Chasse community. But it is a starting point. Priests don’t go unnoticed in a predominantly Catholic town; if Gwynne had any contact at all with his neighbors, Patrick knows he can pick up a paper trail and track his whereabouts from there. To this end, there is another clue in his pocket, one ripped from the rear of a phone book. Churches. The largest one is Our Lady of Mercy.
He doesn’t let himself think what he will do with the information, once he gets it.
Patrick turns the corner, and the cathedral comes into view. He jogs up the stone steps and enters the nave. Immediately in front of him is a pool of Holy Water. Flickering candles cast waves on the walls, and the reflection from a stained-glass window bleeds a brilliant puddle on the mosaic floor. Above the altar, a cypress carving of Jesus on the cross looms like an omen.
It smells of Catholicism: beeswax and starch and darkness and peace, all of which bring Patrick back to his youth. He finds himself unconsciously making the sign of the cross as he slides into a pew at the rear of the building.
Four women nod their heads in prayer, their faith settling softly around them, like the skirts of Confederate belles. Another sobs quietly into her hands while a priest comforts her in whispers. Patrick waits patiently, running his hands along the bright, polished wood and whistling under his breath.
Suddenly the hair stands up on the back of his neck. Walking along the lip of the pew behind him is a cat. Its tail strokes Patrick on the nape again, and he lets out his breath in a rush. “You scared the hell out of me,” he murmurs, and then glances at the carving of Jesus. “The heck,” he amends.
The cat blinks at him, then leaps with grace into the arms of the priest who has come up beside Patrick. “You know better,” the priest scolds.
It takes Patrick a moment to realize the cleric is speaking to his kitten. “Excuse me. I’m trying to locate a Father Arthur Gwynne.”
“Well.” The man smiles. “You found me.”
• • •
Every time Nathaniel tries to see his mother, she’s sleeping. Even when it’s light outside; even when it’s time for Franklin on Nickelodeon. Leave her alone, his father says. It’s what she wants. But Nathaniel doesn’t think that’s what his mother wants at all. He thinks about how sometimes in the middle of the night he wakes up dreaming of spiders under his skin and screams that don’t go away, and the only thing that keeps him from running out of the room is how dark it is and how far it seems from his bed to the door.
“We have to do something,” Nathaniel tells his father, after it has been three days, and his mother is still asleep.
But his father’s face squeezes up at the top, like it does when Nathaniel is yelling too loud while he’s having his hair washed and the sound bounces around the bathroom. “There’s nothing we can do,” he tells Nathaniel.
It’s not true. Nathaniel knows this. So when his father goes outside to put the trash cans at the end of the driveway (Two minutes, Nathaniel . . . you can sit here and be good for two minutes, can’t you?) Nathaniel waits until he can no longer hear the scratch-drag on the gravel and then bolts upstairs to his bedroom. He overturns his garbage can to use as a stool and takes what he needs from his dresser. He twists the knob to his parents’ room quietly, tiptoes inside as if the floor is made of cotton.
It takes two tries to turn on the reading lamp near his mother’s side of the bed, and then Nathaniel crawls on top of the covers. His mother isn’t there at all, just the great swollen shape under the blankets that doesn’t even move when he calls her name. He pokes at it, frowns. Then he pulls away the sheet.
The Thing That Isn’t His Mother moans and squints in the sudden light.
Her hair is wild and matted, like the brown sheep at the petting zoo. Her eyes look like they’ve fallen too deep in her face, and grooves run the length of her mouth. She smells of sadness. She blinks once at Nathaniel, as if he might be something she remembers but can’t quite fish to the front of her mind. Then she pulls the blankets over her head again and rolls away from him.
“Mommy?” Nathaniel whispers, because this place cries for quiet. “Mommy, I know what you need.”
Nathaniel has been thinking about it, and he remembers what it felt like to be stuck in a dark, dark place and not be able to explain it. And he also remembers what she did, back then, for him. So he takes the sign-language binder he got from Dr. Robichaud and slips it under the blankets, into his mother’s hands.
He holds his breath while her hands trace the edges and rifle through the pages. There is a sound Nathaniel has never heard before—like the world opening up at the start of an earthquake, or maybe a heart breaking—and the binder slips from beneath the sheets, cracking open onto the floor. Suddenly the comforter r
ises like the hinged jaw of a white whale and he finds himself swallowed whole.
Then he is in the spot where he put the sign-language book, smack in the middle of her arms. She holds him so tight there is no room for words between them, spoken or signed. And it doesn’t matter one bit, because Nathaniel understands exactly what his mother is telling him.
• • •
Christ, I think, wincing. Turn off the lights.
But Fisher starts laying out papers and briefs on the blankets, as if it is every day that he conducts meetings with a client too exhausted to leave her bedroom. Then again, what do I know? Maybe he does.
“Go away,” I moan.
“Bottom line: He had a bone marrow transplant,” Fisher says briskly. “You shot the wrong priest. So we need to figure out how to use that to our best advantage and get you off.” Before he remembers to check himself, his eyes meet mine, and he cannot hide it: the shock and, yes, distaste of seeing me like this. Unwashed, undressed, uncaring.
Yes, look, Fisher, I think. Now you don’t have to pretend I’m crazy.
I roll onto my side, and some of the papers flutter off the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to play this game with me, Nina,” Fisher sighs. “You hired me so that you won’t go to jail, and goddammit, you’re not going to jail.” He pauses, as if he is about to tell me something important, but what he says doesn’t matter at all. “I’ve already filed the paperwork requesting a jury, but you know, we can waive it at the last minute.” His eyes take in my nightgown, my tangled hair. “It might be easier to convince one person that . . . that you were insane.”
I pull the covers over my head.
“We got the report back from O’Brien. You did a nice job, Nina. I’ll leave it for you to look over . . .”
In the dark under here, I begin to hum, so that I can’t hear him.
“Well.”
I stick my fingers in my ears.
“I don’t think there’s anything else.” I feel a commotion to my left as he gathers his files. “I’ll be in touch after Christmas.” He begins to walk away from me, his expensive shoes striking the carpet like rumors.
I have killed a man; I have killed a man. This has become a part of me, like the color of my eyes or the birthmark on my right shoulder blade. I have killed a man, and nothing I do can take that away.
I pull the covers down from my face just as he reaches the door. “Fisher,” I say, the first word I’ve spoken in days.
He turns, smiles.
“I’m taking the stand.”
That smile vanishes. “No you’re not.”
“I am.”
He approaches the bed again. “If you take the stand, Brown is going to rip you to shreds. If you take the stand, even I can’t help you.”
I stare at him, unblinking, for a lifetime. “So?” I say.
• • •
“Someone wants to talk to you,” Caleb announces, and he drops the portable phone on the bed. When I don’t bother to reach for it, Caleb seems to think twice. “It’s Patrick,” he adds.
Once, on a trip to the beach, I let Nathaniel bury me in the sand. It took so long that the hills enclosing my legs—the spot where he’d started—had dried and hardened. The weight of the beach pressed down on my chest, and I remember feeling claustrophobic as his small hands built a dune around me. When I finally did move, I was a Titan, rising from the earth with enough leashed power to topple gods.
Now, I watch my hand crawl across the covers toward the phone, and I cannot stop it. As it turns out, there is one thing strong enough to seduce me away from my careful paralysis and self-pity—the possibility of action. And even though I have looked the consequences right in their yellow-wolf eyes, it turns out I am still addicted. Hello, my name is Nina, and I need to know where he is.
“Patrick?” I press the receiver to my ear.
“I found him. Nina, he’s in Louisiana. A town called Belle Chasse. He’s a priest.”
All my breath leaves my lungs in a rush. “You arrested him.”
There is a hesitation. “No.”
As I sit up, the covers fall away. “Did you . . .” I cannot finish. There is a part of me hoping so hard that he will tell me something horrible, something I desperately want to hear. And there is another part of me hoping that whatever I have turned into has not poisoned him too.
“I talked to the guy. But I couldn’t let him know I was onto him, or that I was even from Maine. You remember going through this at the beginning, with Nathaniel—tip off a molester and he’s going to run, and we’ll never get a confession. Gwynne’s even more cagey, because he knows his half-brother was killed due to an allegation of child sexual abuse that he committed himself.” Patrick hesitates. “So instead I said I was getting married and looking for a church for the ceremony. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
Tears spring to my eyes. He was within Patrick’s grasp, and still nothing has happened. “Arrest him. For God’s sake, Patrick, get off this phone and run back there—”
“Nina, stop. I’m not a cop in Louisiana. The crime didn’t happen here. I need an arrest warrant in Maine before I can get a fugitive charge lodged against Gwynne in Louisiana, and even then, he might fight extradition.” He hesitates. “And what do you imagine my boss will say when he finds out I’m using my shield to dig up information about a case that I haven’t even been assigned to?”
“But Patrick . . . you found him.”
“I know. And he’s going to be punished.” There is a silence. “Just not today.”
He asks me if I am all right, and I lie to him. How can I be all right? I am back where I started. Except now, after I am tried for the murder of an innocent man, Nathaniel will be embroiled in another trial. While I sit in jail, he’ll have to face his abuser, drag back the nightmare. Nathaniel will suffer; he will hurt.
Patrick says good-bye, and I hang up the phone. I stare at the receiver in my hand for a minute, rub the edge of the smooth plastic.
The first time, I had much more to lose.
• • •
“What are you doing?”
My head pops through the turtleneck to find Caleb standing in the bedroom. “What does it look like I’m doing?” I button my jeans. Stuff my feet into my clogs.
“Patrick got you out of bed,” he says, and there is a note in his voice that strikes off-chord.
“Patrick gave me information that got me out of bed,” I correct. I try to move around Caleb, but he blocks my exit. “Please. I have to go somewhere.”
“Nina, you’re not going anywhere. The bracelet.”
I look at my husband’s face. There are lines on his brow I cannot remember seeing; with no small shock I realize I have put them there.
I owe him this.
So I put my hand on his arm, lead him to the bed, have him sit beside me on the edge. “Patrick found the name of the bone marrow donor. He’s the priest that came to visit St. Anne’s this October. The one with the cat. His name is Arthur Gwynne, and he works at a church in Belle Chasse, Louisiana.”
Caleb’s face goes pale. “Why . . . why are you telling me this?”
Because the first time, I acted alone, when I should have at least told you my plans. Because when they ask you in court, you will not have to testify. “Because,” I say, “it’s not finished yet.”
He reels back. “Nina. No.” I get up, but he catches my wrist, pulls me up close to his face. My arm, twisted, hurts. “What are you gonna do? Break your house arrest to go kill another priest? One life sentence isn’t enough for you?”
“They have the death penalty in Louisiana,” I shoot back.
My response is a guillotine, severing us. Caleb releases me so quickly I stumble and fall onto the floor. “Is that what you want?” he asks quietly. “Are you that selfish?”
“Selfish?” By now I am crying, hard. “I’m doing this for our son.”
“You’re doing this for yourself, Nina. If you were thinking of Nathaniel, even a lit
tle, you’d concentrate on being his mother. You’d get out of bed and get on with your life and let the legal system deal with Gwynne.”
“The legal system. You want me to wait for the courts to get around to charging this bastard? While he rapes ten, twenty other children? And then wait some more while the governors of our states fight over who gets the honor of holding his trial? And then wait again while Nathaniel testifies against the son of a bitch? And watch Gwynne get a sentence that ends before our son even stops having nightmares about what was done to him?” I draw in a long, shaky breath. “There’s your legal system, Caleb. Is it worth waiting for?”
When he doesn’t answer, I get to my feet. “I’m already going to prison for killing a man. I don’t have a life anymore. But Nathaniel can.”
“You want your son to grow up without you?” Caleb’s voice breaks. “Let me save you the trouble.”
Standing abruptly, he leaves the bedroom, calling Nathaniel’s name. “Hey, buddy,” I hear him say. “We’re going on an adventure.”
My hands and feet go numb. But I manage to get to Nathaniel’s bedroom, and find Caleb haphazardly stuffing clothes into a Batman knapsack. “What . . . what are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Caleb replies, an echo of my own earlier words.
Nathaniel jumps up and down on his bed. His hair flies to the sides like silk. “You can’t take him away from me.”
Caleb zips shut the bag. “Why not? You were willing to take yourself away from him.” He turns to Nathaniel, forces a smile. “You ready?” he asks, and Nathaniel leaps into his outstretched arm.
“Bye, Mommy!” he crows. “We’re on an adventure!”
“I know.” Smiling is hard, with this knot in my throat. “I heard.”
Caleb carries him past me. There is the thunder of footsteps on the stairs, and the definitive slam of a door. The engine of Caleb’s truck, revving and reversing down the driveway. Then it is so quiet I can hear my own misgivings, small susurrations in the air around me.
I sink onto Nathaniel’s bed, into sheets that smell of crayons and gingerbread. The fact of the matter is, I cannot leave this house. The moment I do, police cars will come screaming up behind me. I will be arrested before I ever board a plane.