by Jodi Picoult
“It’s an expression.”
Charlie glanced dismissively at him. “Thank you, Mr. Pop Culture.”
“Hey, it’s the patrol officers who know what’s really going on in this town.” He was bursting with his knowledge, desperate to tell. “You ever hear of a Jack St. Bride?”
Charlie sighed. “Aw, goddammit. Yeah, I have. He came in to register.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. And I fucked up. I was going to send out a memo to everyone and somehow lost track of it.”
The wind had gone out of Wes’s sails. “So you knew about him.”
“Yeah.”
“Sexual assault.”
Charlie nodded. “It was plea-bargained down from rape.”
“And you know that he’s living in Salem Falls now.”
“Ex-cons have to live somewhere. You can’t round ’em up and stick ’em on a reservation.”
“We don’t have to roll out a welcome mat, either,” Wes said.
Charlie turned, shielding the conversation from public view. “I didn’t just hear you say that, you understand?”
Chagrined, Wes nodded. Charlie outranked him. “I still think people have the right to know someone’s a jerk before they get involved with him.”
Charlie stifled a smile. “Gotta admit, that policy could come in handy.”
“I’m glad you think this is so funny. Let’s see how hard you’re laughing the first time one of these girls is sitting across from you with her clothes torn, crying because she happened to have the bad luck to cross paths with St. Bride.”
Charlie opened his mouth to respond, but the boy in the Abercrombie & Fitch hat punched one of the other kids. “Ten bucks,” he murmured, and followed Wes through a sea of slack-jawed teens to do his job.
Thomas could feel the weight of a hundred pairs of eyes on his shoulders as he rocked back and forth on the dance floor with Selena. She stood a full head taller than he, which made it awkward, since his face was pressed up against her breasts, and he was a guy after all, so of course he couldn’t get that fact out of his mind, even if it was just Selena.
But nobody else knew that. A senior—one who’d stuffed him in a locker for the hell of it last month—had come over to ask if that was really Tyra Banks. Another wanted to know the going rate for an escort service these days. But that wasn’t nearly as rewarding as knowing that Chelsea was watching. He’d seen her standing off to the side of the gym with two of the three girls she usually hung with, the look on her face almost comical.
Thomas lifted his face to Selena’s. “If you kiss me, I’ll give you all the money in my college fund.”
Selena laughed out loud. “Thomas, honey, Bill Gates couldn’t pay me enough to kiss you here in the middle of a dance floor. On the one hand, see all those cops? I’m not about to be locked up for statutory rape. On the other hand, it’s just plain creepy. You’re like a nephew or something.”
The music ended, a faint sappy warbling. Selena patted Thomas’s cheek. “How about you stay here and make up stories about how you met me, while I get us some punch?”
She walked off, her perfect ass twitching beneath the silk tube of her dress. And that wasn’t even the most attractive part of Selena—there was her sense of humor, her sharp mind, and the way she’d yell at schoolyard bullies who killed slugs for the hell of it or kicked sand up into the faces of toddlers. Shit, Thomas thought. If he’d been his father, he would have chained her to the bed.
“Thomas.”
He wheeled around to find Chelsea standing there, and the floor dropped out from beneath him. “Hi,” he said.
Before he could follow that up with a coherent comment, Selena returned with two dripping cups. “Disgusting stuff,” she muttered. “Enough sugar in it to kill a horse.” She handed one cup to Thomas, then smiled brightly at the girl beside him.
“I’m Chelsea Abrams,” she said, sticking out her hand.
“Selena Damascus. Charmed.”
“Apparently,” Chelsea whispered beneath her breath.
The DJ resumed his post at the head of the gym, and music pulsed around them again. “So,” Thomas said, “would you like to dance?”
“Love to,” Selena said, at the same moment that Chelsea answered, “Sure.”
Chelsea reddened and stepped back. “I’m sorry . . . I thought . . .”
“I did,” Thomas assured her. “I was.”
“You two go on ahead,” Selena demurred. “I want to finish this drink first.” Grimacing, she took a large gulp and smiled over the edge of the cup.
But Chelsea shook her head. “My friends . . . they’re waiting for me,” she said, and darted away.
Thomas’s chest ached as he watched her navigate the crowd. He would have given anything to touch her hand and lead her onto the dance floor, to see her smile at something he’d said, to feel his pulse speed up at the possibility of what might happen next. And yet here he was once again, the victim of another missed opportunity. He tried to pretend that he was perfectly fine, schooling his face into nonchalance before turning to Selena.
But it was there in his eyes, this wish that things had turned out differently. Selena did a double take, as if she could not quite believe what she was seeing.
“What?” Thomas asked.
“Nothing.” Selena sipped her drink. “For a moment there, you just looked so much like your father.”
When the door of the diner opened after hours, Jack glanced up in surprise. He’d assumed Addie had locked it, and he felt a quick flash of anger—who dared to interrupt the time he had alone with this woman?
The man who entered was a regular trying very hard not to appear as drunk as he actually was. “Ms. Peabody,” he said, “can you help me mainline some caffeine?”
Jack stepped forward. “I’m sorry, but we’re—”
Suddenly Addie’s small hand was on his arm, and he lost the power of speech. “I think we can manage that, Mr. McAfee.” She gestured imperceptibly toward the man, so that Jack would understand. The guy was certainly having a rough night; that much was clear from the way his hair stood on end and his eyes sank into red-rimmed sockets, from the scent of despair that buzzed around him like a cloud of midges. “It’ll just be a minute.”
Characters in this literary work include the characters Christian, Faithful, and Evangelist.
Jordan glanced up at the sound of Alec Trebek’s voice. “The Biography of Jerry Falwell.”
Addie grinned. “Is he right, Jack?”
“No. It’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.”
When the answer was announced, Jordan laughed. “Impressive.” He picked up the steaming mug of coffee Addie had given him. “Tell me then, what great oeuvre includes the characters Spurned, Screwed, and Royally Fucked?”
Jack looked at Addie and blinked.
“That,” Jordan said, belching, “would be the story of my life.” He took a healthy swig from his mug. “No offense, Ms. Peabody, but women . . . God, they’re like broken glass lying in the middle of the road. Cut a man to shreds before he realizes what’s happened.”
“Only if you’re intent on running us over,” Addie said dryly.
Jordan gestured toward Jack. “You ever have trouble with women?”
“Some.”
“You see?”
Addie refilled Jordan’s coffee cup. “Where’s your son tonight, Mr. McAfee?”
“School dance. And he took that goddamn piece of glass with him.”
“Piece of . . . glass?”
“The woman!” Jordan moaned. “The one who ruined my life!”
“I’m going to call you a cab now, Mr. M,” Addie said.
Jack leaned his elbows on the counter. It turned out people truly did cry into their coffee cups. Worse, Jordan McAfee seemed to have no idea that he was doing it. “What did she do to you?”
Jordan shrugged. “She said no.”
At the words, a shudder ripped through Jack.
Suddenly, the door opened as W
es blustered in, his stint as a chaper-one now finished. “Addie, you got some coffee for a guy who’s been forced to listen to rap for the past four—”
“We’re closed,” Jack said.
Wes’s eyes passed over Jordan and landed on Jack. “Thank God you’re not alone with him,” he said to Addie.
She smiled. “Mr. McAfee may be a little tipsy, but he’s not dangerous . . .”
“I’m not talking about McAfee.” He protectively closed his hands around her upper arms. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, wrenching away.
“Oh, I get it. You’ll let scum like St. Bride touch you, but not me.”
“Watch what you say, Wes,” Addie warned.
The policeman whirled toward Jack. “You gonna let her fight your battles? Maybe you want to tell your boss what you didn’t tell her the day she hired your sorry ass.”
For a moment, the only sound was Alec Trebek’s voice: With 8,891 points, Dan O’Brien holds the world record in this track and field event. Jack felt the floor shift beneath his feet and thought, not for the first time, that life is in the details.
He could not bear to meet Addie’s eyes—Addie, who had trusted him. “I was in jail,” Jack admitted. “For eight months.”
It was all coming together for her now—why Jack had surfaced from nowhere, why a man moving to a town would have only a box of possessions and the clothes on his back, why he did not talk about his past. Jack waited for her to speak, his own mouth dry as a desert.
“Tell her why,” Wes prodded.
But that, Jack wouldn’t do.
“I’m sure if this is true, Jack can explain,” Addie said shakily.
“He raped a woman. You think there’s any explanation for that?”
The room fell away, until all that was left was the small rectangle of silence that trapped both Jack and Addie. Her nostrils flared; her eyes were bright with disbelief. “Jack?” she said softly, urging him to set Wes straight.
Jack knew the exact moment she realized that he wasn’t going to answer.
Addie grabbed for her coat, slung over a counter chair. “I have to go,” she managed, and she stumbled out the front door.
Jack started after her, and found a hand at his throat. “Over my dead body,” Wes said quietly.
“Don’t tempt me.”
The policeman’s wrist cut into Jack’s windpipe. “Want to say that on the record, St. Bride?” Then, abruptly, Wes released him. “Do us all a favor. Lock the door behind you; keep walking until you cross the town line.”
When Wes left, Jack sank down onto a banquette and buried his face in his hands. As a kid, his favorite toy had been a snow globe, that held a small town of gingerbread buildings and peppermint streets. He’d wanted so badly to live there that one day he’d smashed the glass ball—only to find that the houses were made of plaster, the candy stripes painted on. He had known that this existence he’d carved in Salem Falls was an illusion, that one day it would crack open just like that snow globe. But he’d hoped—God, he’d hoped—that it wouldn’t just yet.
“They can’t do that to you, you know.”
Jack had completely forgotten that Jordan McAfee was still here. “Do what?”
“Run you out of town. Threaten you. You paid your debt to society for eight months; you’re now free to join it again.”
“I didn’t belong in jail.”
Jordan shrugged, as if he’d heard this a hundred times before. “You just spent three-quarters of a year in a place because you had to. Don’t you think you deserve to stay somewhere because you want to?”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
A pair of headlights swept the interior of the diner, the arriving cab. “Well, I’m a pretty good judge of character. And that sure wasn’t the story I got from the look you gave me when I interrupted your evening with a certain waitress.” Jordan set his empty coffee mug in the clean-up basin behind the counter. “Thank Addie for me.”
“Mr. McAfee,” Jack asked. “Would you mind if I shared your taxi?”
The light from the porch fell over him, brightening an unlikely halo around Jack’s head. “I didn’t do it,” he said immediately. There was still a screen door between them, and Addie pressed one hand up against it.
Jack placed his own hand on the other side of the screen. Addie thought of jail and wondered if he had received visitors, with a wall between him and them, just like this.
“Wes told me everything,” she said. “The records are computerized down at the station. He said you even came in to register as a sexual offender.”
“I had to. It was part of the plea bargain.”
There were tears in Addie’s eyes. “Innocent people don’t get sent to jail.”
“And children don’t die. Addie, you know better than anyone that the world doesn’t always work the way it ought to.” Jack hesitated. “Did you ever wonder why I’m never the one to reach for you? Why you’re the one who kisses me, who takes my hand?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t ever want to be the man they all said I was. I don’t want to be some animal, out of control. And I am afraid that once I touch you, really touch you, I won’t be able to stop.” Jack turned his cheek, so that his lips brushed her palm through the wire screen. “You have to believe me, Addie. I would never rape a woman.”
“I never thought they would, either.”
“Who?”
She lifted her face. “The boys who did it to me.”
She had been sixteen, a straight-A student at Salem Falls High School. The editor of the school newspaper, with dreams of becoming a journalist. Deadlines often kept her working late, but because her parents were busy with the diner, she wasn’t missed at home.
It was cold for April, so cold that when she closed the door behind her and struck off across the playing fields she wished she’d worn jeans instead of a thin skirt. Pulling her coat tight, she skirted the football field, heading toward town.
She heard their voices first—three letter athletes, seniors, who’d led the team to a state championship this year. Shy—brains didn’t mix with jocks—she gave them a wide berth, pretending that she hadn’t seen their bottle of Jack Daniels.
“Addie,” one of them said, and she was so surprised they knew her name that she turned.
“Come here for a second.”
She went over the way a bird hops toward food—cautious, a little hopeful, but ready to fly at the first movement of a human nearby. “You remember that article you wrote on the last game of the season? You did a real nice job. Didn’t she, you guys?”
The other boys nodded. There was something almost beautiful about them, with their flushed faces and the bright caps of their hair, like some strange breed she had read about but never really studied firsthand. “Problem was, you spelled my name wrong.”
“I didn’t.” Addie always checked everything; she was a stickler for detail.
The boy laughed. “I may not be as smart as you, but I know how to spell my own name!” The others elbowed each other and snuffled laughter. “Hey, you want a sip?” Addie shook her head. “It’ll warm you up . . .”
Gingerly, she took a drink. A comet, streaking down her throat—she coughed up most of it into the grass, her eyes tearing. “Whoa there, Addie,” he said, bracing his arm around her. “Take it easy, now.” His hand began to slide up and down. “You know, you aren’t nearly as skinny as you look walking around the halls.”
Addie tried to draw away. “I’ve got to go.”
“First I want you to learn how to spell my name.”
As a compromise, it seemed fair. Addie nodded, and the boy beckoned her closer. “It’s a secret,” he whispered.
Playing along, she bent down, her ear near his lips. And felt his tongue slide inside.
She backed away, but his arms held her tight. “Now you repeat it,” he said, and ground his mouth into hers.
Addie did not remember much after that. Except that there wer
e three of them. That the bleachers, underneath, were painted blaze orange. That fear, in large doses, smells of sulfur. And that there is a place in you that you don’t even know exists, where you can simply stand back and watch without feeling any pain.
“Did you never wonder about Chloe’s father?” Addie asked.
Standing in her living room now, Jack swallowed around the block that had settled in his throat. “Which one was it?”
“I don’t know. I never wanted to find out. I figured after that, I deserved for her to be mine and only mine.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Because I would have been branded as a slut. And because I’m not sure . . . I’ve never been sure . . . that they even remembered it happened.” Her voice hitched. “Wish I had been so lucky. For years I’ve wondered what I did that made them do that to me.”
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Jack murmured. We both were.
For eight months, he’d hated the system, which gave women the benefit of the doubt. But seeing Addie—well, a million men could be locked up wrongfully, and it still couldn’t make up for what had happened to her.
“Do they . . . live in town?”
“Going to slay my dragons, Jack?” Addie smiled faintly. “One died in a motorcycle crash. One moved to Florida. One stayed here.”
“Who.”
“Don’t go there.” She shook her head. “No one ever knew what happened except my father, and now you. People figured I was sleeping around and got in trouble. And that’s okay with me, Jack.” Her features softened. “Out of that horrible thing, something wonderful happened. I got Chloe. That’s all I want to remember. That, and nothing else.”
Jack was quiet for a moment. “Do you believe I’m innocent?”
“I don’t know,” Addie admitted. Her voice dropped to a whisper. She had known Jack for such a short time that the depth of her feelings for him seemed disproportionate, as if she’d turned on a faucet and unleashed a geyser. She did not understand this, but then there was much in the world she did not understand. Raw love, like raw heartache, could blind-side you. It could make you forget what you did not know to focus exclusively on those few pieces you could commit to heart. “I want to believe you,” she said.