by Jodi Picoult
I wait until Nathaniel glances up, terrified by the faces in this foreign world—the clerk, the judge, the stenographer, and the prosecutor. “Nathaniel,” I tell him fiercely, drawing his attention. “You were the best witness I could have had.”
Over his head, I catch Quentin Brown’s eye. And smile.
• • •
When Patrick met Nathaniel Frost, the child was six months old. Patrick’s first thought was that he looked just like Nina. His second thought was that, right here, in his arms, was the reason they would never be together.
Patrick made an extra effort to get close to Nathaniel, even though sometimes it was painful enough to make him ache for days after a visit. He’d bring Weed little dolphins to float in the bathtub; Silly Putty; sparklers. For years Patrick had wanted to get under Nina’s skin; Nathaniel, who’d grown below her heart, surely had something to teach him. So he tagged along on hikes, swapping off with Caleb to carry Nathaniel when his legs got tired. He let Nathaniel spin in his desk chair at the station. He even baby-sat for a whole weekend, when Caleb and Nina went away for a relative’s wedding.
And somewhere along the way, Patrick—who’d loved Nina forever—fell just as hard for her son.
The clock hasn’t moved in two hours, Patrick would swear to that. Right now, Nathaniel is undergoing his competency hearing—a procedure Patrick couldn’t watch, even if he wanted to. And he doesn’t. Because Nina will be there too, and he hasn’t seen or spoken to her since Christmas Eve.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to. God, he can’t seem to think of anything but Nina—the feel of her, the taste of her, the way her body relaxed against his in her sleep. But right now, the memory is crystallized for Patrick. Any words that come between them, aftershocks, are only going to take away from that. And it isn’t what Nina would say to him that worries Patrick—it’s what she wouldn’t say. That she loves him, that she needs him, that this meant as much to her as it did to him.
He rests his head in his hands. Deep inside, there is a part of him that also knows this was a grave error. Patrick wants to get this off his chest, to confess his doubts to someone who would understand implicitly. But his confidante, his best friend, is Nina. If she cannot be that anymore . . . and she cannot be his . . . where does that leave them?
With a deep sigh he grabs the phone from his desk and dials an out-of-state number. He wants resolution, a present to give to Nina before he has to take the stand and testify against her. Farnsworth McGee, the police chief in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, answers on the third ring. “Hello?” he drawls, extending the word an extra syllable.
“It’s Detective-Lieutenant Ducharme, from Biddeford, Maine,” Patrick says. “What’s the latest on Gwynne?”
Patrick can easily envision the chief, with whom he’d met before leaving Belle Chasse. Overweight by a good fifty pounds, with a shock of Elvis-black hair. A fishing rod propped up in the corner behind his desk; a bumper sticker tacked to the bulletin board: HELL, YES, MY NECK’S RED. “Y’all got to understand that we move carefully in our jurisdiction. Don’t want no hasty mishaps, if you understand my meaning.”
Patrick grits his teeth. “Did you arrest him yet or not?”
“Your authorities are still talkin’ to our authorities, Detective. Believe me, you’ll be the first to know when something happens.”
He slams down the phone—angry at the idiot deputy, angry at Gwynne, angriest at himself for not taking matters into his own hands when he was in Louisiana. But he couldn’t make himself forget that he was a law enforcement officer, that he was obligated to uphold certain rules. That Nina had said no, even if it was what she really wanted.
Patrick stares at the phone in its cradle. Then again, it is always possible to reinvent oneself. Particularly in the image of a hero.
He’s seen Nina do it, after all.
After a moment, Patrick grabs his jacket and walks out of the station, intent on effecting change, rather than waiting for it to steamroll him.
• • •
It has turned out to be the best day of my life. First, Nathaniel was ruled not competent. Then Caleb asked me to watch Nathaniel after the hearing, and overnight, because he is scheduled to do a job up near the Canadian border. “Do you mind?” he’d politely said, and I couldn’t even form an answer, I was so delighted. I have visions of Nathaniel standing beside me in the kitchen while we cook his favorite dinner; I imagine watching his Shrek video twice in a row with a bowl of popcorn bridged between us.
But in the end, Nathaniel is exhausted from the events of the day. He falls asleep on the couch by six-thirty P.M. and doesn’t wake when I carry him upstairs. In his bed, his hand unfurls on the pillow, as if he is offering me a hidden gift.
When Nathaniel was born, he waved tight fists in the air, as if he were angry at the world. They softened moment by moment, until I would nurse him and watch his fingers scrabble at my skin, clutching for purchase. I was mesmerized by that grasp, because of all its potential. Would Nathaniel grow up to wield a pencil or a gun? Would he heal with his touch? Create music? Would his palm be covered with calluses? Ink? Sometimes I would separate the tiny fingers and trace the lines of his palm, as if I could truly read his future.
If Nathaniel had been difficult to conceive in the wake of my cyst surgery, he’d been a positively horrendous delivery. Thirty-six hours of labor rendered me trancelike. Caleb sat on the edge of the bed watching a Gilligan’s Island marathon on the hospital TV, something that seemed equally as painful as my contractions. “We’ll name her Ginger,” he vowed. “MaryAnn.”
The vise inside me ratcheted tighter every hour, until agony became a black hole, each pain pulling in another. Over my head Gilligan voted for a chimp as beauty pageant queen, so that he wouldn’t offend any of the stranded ladies. Caleb got behind me, propping up my back when I couldn’t even find the energy to open my eyes. “I can’t,” I whispered. “It’s your turn.”
So he rubbed my spine and he sang. “The weather started getting rough . . . the tiny ship was tossed . . . come on, Nina! If not for the courage of the fearless crew . . .”
“Remind me,” I said, “to kill you later.”
But I forgot, because minutes afterward Nathaniel was born. Caleb held him up, a being so small he curled like an inchworm in my husband’s hands. Not a Ginger or a MaryAnn, but a Little Buddy. In fact, that was what we called him for three days, before we decided on a name. Caleb wanted me to choose, since he refused to take credit for work that was nearly all mine. So I picked Nathaniel Patrick Frost, to honor my deceased father, and my oldest friend.
Now, it is hard to believe that the boy sleeping in front of me was ever so tiny. I touch my hand to his hair, feel it slip through my fingers like time. I suffered once before, I think. And look at what I got in return.
• • •
Quentin, who will cross a black cat’s path without blinking and walk beneath ladders without breaking a sweat, is strangely superstitious about trials. On mornings that he’s set to go to court, he gets fully dressed, eats breakfast, and then takes off his shirt and tie to shave. It’s inefficient, of course, but it all goes back to his very first case, when he was so nervous he nearly walked out the door with a night’s beard.
Would have, too, if Tanya hadn’t called him back in.
He rubs the shaving lather on his cheeks and jaw, then drags the razor the length of his face. He’s not nervous today. In spite of the deluge of media that’s sure to flood the court, Quentin knows he has a strong case. Hell, he’s got the defendant committing the crime on videotape. Nothing she or Fisher Carrington do will be able to erase that action from the eyes of the jury.
His first trial was a traffic ticket, which Quentin argued as if it were a capital murder. Tanya had brought Gideon; had been bouncing him on her hip in the back of the courtroom. Once he’d seen that, well, he had to put on a show.
“Damn!” Quentin jumps as he nicks his jaw. The shaving cream burns in the cut, and he scowls a
nd presses a tissue to the spot. He has to hold it there for a couple of seconds until it clots, blood welling between his fingers. It makes him think of Nina Frost.
He wads up the tissue and sends it shooting across the bathroom, into the trash can. Quentin doesn’t bother to watch his perfect shot. Quite simply, when you think you’re incapable of missing, you don’t.
• • •
This is what I have tried on so far: my black prosecutor’s suit, the one that makes me look like Marcia Clark on a tear; the pale rose suit I wore to my cousin’s wedding; the corduroy jumper Caleb got me one Christmas that still has the tags on it. I’ve tried slacks, but that’s too mannish, and besides, I can’t ever figure out whether you can wear loafers with slacks or if that comes off as too casual. I am angry at Fisher for not thinking of this—dressing me, the way defense attorneys dress prostitutes—in oversize clothes with ugly floral prints, garments handed down from the Salvation Army that never fail to make the women look slightly lost and impossibly young.
I know what to wear so that a jury believes I’m in control. I have no idea how to dress helpless.
The clock on the nightstand is suddenly fifteen minutes later than it should be.
I pull on the jumper. It’s nearly two sizes too big—have I changed that much? Or did I never bother to try it on in the first place? I hike it up to my waist and pull on a pair of stockings, only to notice that they have a run in the left leg. I grab a second pair—but they are ripped too. “Not today,” I say under my breath, yanking open my underwear drawer, where I keep a reserve pair of stockings for emergencies. Panties and bras spill like foam over the sides of the bureau and onto my bare feet while I search for the plastic packet.
But I used that spare pantyhose the day I killed Glen Szyszynski, and since I haven’t been working since then, never thought to replace them.
“Goddammit!” I kick the leg of the dresser, but that only hurts my toes and brings tears to my eyes. I toss out the remaining contents of the drawer, yank the whole thing from its slot in the bureau and throw it across the room.
When my legs give out, I find myself sitting on the soft cloud of undergarments. I tuck my knees up under the skirt of my jumper, bury my face in my arms, and cry.
• • •
“Mommy was on TV last night,” Nathaniel says as they are driving to the courthouse in Caleb’s truck. “When you were in the shower.”
Lost in his own thoughts, Caleb nearly drives off the side of the road at this comment. “You weren’t supposed to be watching TV.”
Nathaniel hunches his shoulders, and immediately Caleb is sorry. So quickly, these days, he thinks he has done something wrong. “It’s all right,” Caleb says. He forces his attention to the road. In ten minutes, he’ll be at the superior court. He can give Nathaniel to Monica in the children’s playroom; maybe she’ll have some better answers.
Nathaniel, however, isn’t finished yet. He chews the words in his mouth for a bit, then spits them out in one great rush. “How come Mommy yells at me when I pretend a stick is a gun but she was playing with one for real?”
Caleb turns to find his son staring up at him, expecting explanations. He puts on his signal and pulls the truck onto the shoulder of the road. “Remember when you asked me why the sky was blue? And how we went to go look it up on the computer and there was so much science stuff there that neither of us could really understand it? Well, this is kind of the same thing. There’s an answer, but it’s really complicated.”
“The man on TV said what she did was wrong.” Nathaniel worries his bottom lip. “That’s why today she’s gonna get yelled at, right?”
Oh, Christ, if only it could be that easy. Caleb smiles sadly. “Yeah. That’s why.”
He waits for Nathaniel to speak again, and when he doesn’t, Caleb pulls the truck back into the line of traffic. He drives three miles, and then Nathaniel turns to him. “Daddy? What’s a martyr?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“The man, last night, on TV.”
Caleb takes a deep breath. “It means your mother loves you, more than anything. And that’s why she did what she did.”
Nathaniel fingers the seam of his seat belt, considering. “Then why is it wrong?” he asks.
• • •
The parking lot is a sea of people: cameramen trying to get their reporters in their sights, producers adjusting the line feeds from their satellites, a group of militant Catholic women demanding Nina’s judgment at the hands of the Lord. Patrick shoulders his way through the throngs, stunned to see national newscasters he recognizes by virtue of their celebrity.
An audible buzz sweeps the line of onlookers hovering around the courthouse steps. Then a car door slams, and suddenly Nina is hurrying up the stairs with Fisher’s avuncular arm around her shoulders. A cheer goes up from the waiting crowd, along with an equally loud catcall of disapproval.
Patrick pushes closer to the steps. “Nina!” he yells. “Nina!”
He yanks his badge out, but brandishing it doesn’t get him where he needs to be. “Nina!” Patrick shouts again.
She seems to stumble, to look around. But Fisher grabs her arm and directs her into the courthouse before Patrick has the chance to make himself heard.
• • •
“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Quentin Brown, and I’m an assistant attorney general for the state of Maine.” He smiles at the jury. “The reason you’re all here today is because on October thirtieth, 2001, this woman, Nina Frost, got up and drove with her husband to the Biddeford District Court to watch a man being arraigned. But she left her husband waiting there while she went to Moe’s Gun Shop in Sanford, Maine—where she paid four hundred dollars cash for a Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun and twelve rounds of ammunition. She tucked these in her purse, got back in her car, and returned to the courthouse.”
Quentin approaches the jury as if he has all the time in the world. “Now, you all know, from coming in here today, that you had to pass through a security-screening device. But on October thirtieth, Nina Frost didn’t. Why? Because she’d worked as a prosecutor for the past seven years. She knew the bailiff posted at the screening device. She walked by him without a backward glance, and she took that gun and the bullets she’d loaded into it, into a courtroom just like this one.”
He moves toward the defense table, coming up behind Nina to point a finger at the base of her skull. “A few minutes later she put that gun up to Father Glen Szyszynski’s head and fired four rounds directly into his brain, killing him.”
Quentin surveys the jury; they are all staring at the defendant now, just like he wants. “Ladies and gentlemen, the facts in this case are crystal clear. In fact, WCSH News, which was covering that morning’s arraignment, caught Ms. Frost’s actions on tape. So the question for you will not be if she committed this crime. We know that she did. The question will be: Why should she be allowed to get away with it?”
He stares into the eyes of each juror in sequence. “She would like you to believe that the reason she should be held exempt from the law is because Father Szyszynski, her parish priest, had been charged with sexually molesting her five-year-old son. Yet she didn’t even bother to make sure that this allegation was true. The state will show you scientifically, forensically, conclusively, that Father Szyszynski was not the man who abused her child . . . and still the defendant murdered him.”
Quentin turns his back on Nina Frost. “In Maine, if a person unlawfully kills someone with premeditation, she is guilty of murder. During this trial, the state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that this is exactly what Nina Frost did. It doesn’t matter if the person who is murdered was accused of a crime. It doesn’t matter if the person who was murdered was murdered by mistake. If the person was murdered, period, there needs to be punishment exacted.” He looks to the jury box. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where you come in.”
• • •
Fisher only has eyes for that
jury. He walks toward the box and meets each man’s or woman’s gaze, making a personal connection before he even speaks a word. It’s what used to drive me crazy about him, when I faced him in a courtroom. He has this amazing ability to become everyone’s confidante, no matter if the juror is a twenty-year-old single welfare mother or an e-commerce king with a million tucked into the stock market.
“What Mr. Brown just told you all is absolutely true. On the morning of October thirtieth, Nina Frost did buy a gun. She did drive to the courthouse. She did stand up and fire four bullets into the head of Father Szyszynski. What Mr. Brown would like you to believe is that there’s nothing to this case beyond those facts . . . but we don’t live in a world of facts. We live in a world of feelings. And what he’s left out of his version of the story is what had been going on in Nina’s head and heart that would lead her to such a moment.”
Fisher walks behind me, like Quentin did while he graphically showed the jury how to sneak up on a defendant and shoot him. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and it is comforting. “For weeks, Nina Frost had been living a hell that no parent should have to live. She’d found out that her five-year-old son had been sexually abused. Worse, the police had identified the abuser as her own priest—a man she had confided in. Betrayed, heartbroken, and aching for her son, she began to lose her grasp on what was right and what was wrong. The only thing in her mind by the time she went to court that morning to see the priest arraigned was that she needed to protect her child.
“Nina Frost, of all people, knows how the system of justice works for—and fails—children. She, of all people, understands what the rules are in an American court of law, because for the past seven years she has measured up to them on a daily basis. But on October thirtieth, ladies and gentlemen, she wasn’t a prosecutor. She was just Nathaniel’s mother.” He comes to stand beside me. “Please listen to everything. And when you make your decision, don’t make it only with your head. Make it with your heart.”