by Jodi Picoult
It was both liberating and depressing to find this man, another casualty of Jack’s. Yet no matter how grievously wronged Jay Kavanaugh felt, he had not let Jack slip beneath his defenses, into his heart, into his body. He had not heard Jack say I love you. He had not listened, wide-eyed, and believed it.
“Hey,” Jay said. “You’re a million miles away.”
“No, just thinking.”
“About Jack?”
Addie shook her head. “About how much I don’t like men.”
“Don’t judge us all by Jack. Most of us are a lot stupider than he is and don’t have nearly the finesse to carry off that kind of ruse.” Jay smiled gently. “Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty. And it doesn’t hurt as much, after a while. I’ve had ten months to think on this. But I still remember sitting at my desk after I had to arrest him—my best friend!—and wondering how the hell this had slipped by me.”
Addie watched him spear the yolk of an egg. It ran across the plate, a yellow pool dammed by a wall of hash browns. “How is the girl now?”
“She left Westonbrook. I hear that she’s being home-schooled and that she doesn’t keep in touch with friends who are still in Loyal.” He paused, then added quietly, “I think she just wants to forget this ever happened.”
That was when Addie remembered Catherine Marsh had believed she loved Jack, too. “She won’t be able to,” Addie whispered.
In her hotel room, Addie packed up her suitcase again, with Rosie O’Donnell keeping her company on the TV. She folded her shirts and stacked them on top of her jeans. She tucked her boots into plastic bags so that they did not get anything else dirty.
“I swear, John,” Rosie was saying, “I’m going to win. I’ve been practicing.” Addie looked up as the comedienne’s face filled the screen. “Kelsey Grammer and Joy Behar,” she said, “do you know your potent potables?”
“What’s a potable?” her bandleader asked.
“A drink,” Rosie said. “If you were destined to be the celebrity Jeopardy! champion, you’d know that, as well as the largest lake in Africa and the fact that the queen in the Netherlands is second cousins to the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. I’m making that last one up, John, but see, only a celebrity Jeopardy! champion like myself would even realize this.”
Laughter from the audience. Addie felt her heart contract as she heard Jack’s voice in her head. They water down the questions for the celebrity tournament, he’d told her. Because otherwise, none of those stars would get a single one right.
Jack would have. Most of us are a lot stupider than he is, Jay had said. “Seven P.M. tonight, here on ABC,” Rosie announced. “I’m telling you, John, this could be a whole new career for me.”
Addie remembered Jack telling her about prison, how his knowledge of trivia had saved him from being abused. She remembered unsuccessfully trying to distract him with her body during the show. All that trivia in his head, she used to think. How can there be room for me?
Suddenly, she began to tear through the papers on the table welcoming her as a guest to this hotel. There was a small guide to the Dartmouth–Sunapee region of New Hampshire, and a flyer from an outlet store, and a placard from a pizza place that would deliver until three in the morning. From underneath the mess of blankets and sheets on the bed, she unearthed the complimentary local newspaper. Scanning the pages, she finally found what she was looking for—the little grid of local television programming.
In Loyal, Jeopardy! was syndicated and aired on ABC. At 7 P.M.
Addie did not know nearly as much as Jack did about geography or presidents or even potent potables. She did not know if a discrepancy like this would have ever stood up in a court of law. But she did know that for one half hour a day, nothing would come between Jack and a television trivia show.
Not even Catherine Marsh.
The occult bookstore smelled like an apothecary, and rows of glass jars with small scripted labels held things that Selena really didn’t want to consider. Books were jammed into the narrow shelves, with titles like Anastasia’s Grimoire and Transfiguration for Beginners and The Solitary Witch’s Guide. A cat with a bell around its neck stalked the countertop, and an opiate cloud of incense hung in the air.
Starshine glanced at the untouched cup of tea in Selena’s hand. “Go ahead. It won’t turn you into a toad.”
She seemed to be a cross between an earth mother and a flower child, with stray braids dotting her silver hair and a ring on every toe. It made Selena nervous. She kept expecting to be zapped into nothingness, or for this woman to wiggle her nose.
She glanced around at the walls of the store. “You get a lot of teenagers in here?”
“Too many,” Starshine said, and sighed. “The spells attract most of the kids. They hear the word witch, and immediately think they’ll be able to wave a wand and hurt the bullies in school or to make the star of the basketball team fall madly for them.”
“Something tells me they’re not running home to tell Mom and Dad they’re Wiccans.”
“No,” Starshine agreed, “and it goes right back to the Inquisition, I’m afraid. Being a witch is not something that invites confidence, because too many people misunderstand what it means if you say that you are one. And unfortunately, I think teenagers are attracted to that part of Wicca—doing something, even something natural and innocent, behind their parents’ backs.”
“Does Gillian Duncan come in here often?”
The older woman shrugged. “Just recently, she came in looking for belladonna.”
“Belladonna? The poison?”
Starshine nodded. “She wanted it for an obsolete recipe, once used for out-of-body experiences and psychic visions. Needless to say, I tried to redirect her focus.”
“How?”
The cat leaped into the woman’s lap; she stroked its fur until its eyes slit shut. “I told her to celebrate the upcoming sabbat instead.”
“Do you remember when that conversation occurred?”
“Right before Beltane,” Starshine said, then noticed Selena’s blank look. “The night of April thirtieth.”
“What if she found it somewhere else?” Jordan asked. He and Selena sat on a teak bench in his backyard, watching a blue jay fight a flock of finches at the bird feeder. They sat side by side, and Jordan could have told her exactly how many centimeters of space separated their bodies from shoulder to hip to thigh. Christ, the electricity between them was enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay.
Selena didn’t seem to notice. Or if she did, she was doing a damn good job of hiding it. “The belladonna?” she asked.
“Yeah. What if she made her recipe and passed it out the night of April thirtieth? Then Jack stumbles by, drunk, and Gillian hallucinates the assault.”
Selena frowned. “It must have been some pretty good shit, then, to conjure up the semen on her thigh.”
“Okay,” Jordan conceded, “that’s a sticking point.”
“No pun intended?”
“I can’t explain the semen. But that’s not my job. All I have to do is make the jury think for a nanosecond that there might be another explanation for what happened that night, other than rape. And the victim’s credibility is called into question if we prove that her recollections are drug-impaired.”
“Still, Jordan,” Selena argued, “it’s not like there are occult suppliers on Main Street. Belladonna’s a poison. It isn’t easy to come by.”
“She could have substituted another hallucinogenic drug.”
Selena snorted. “From the local pharmacy?”
“From the high school dealer,” Jordan corrected, and then smiled slowly. “Or from Daddy.”
It took three and a half hours for the Reverend Marsh to leave the house, three and a half hours that Addie spent sitting behind a small clot of hydrangea in the front yard. She waited until he had driven off in his Buick and then she knocked on the door.
“You lied,” Addie said, the minute Catherine Marsh opened it.
“I don’
t know what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t have a relationship with Jack St. Bride. You never slept with him. I don’t know why, Catherine, and I don’t know how, exactly, but you somehow got this rumor started and managed to ruin his life.”
“He told me . . . he told me . . .”
“He didn’t tell you anything he wouldn’t have told any other student.”
Catherine started to protest but then crumbled. There was no other word for it—the edges of her mouth waffled in, her eyes drifted shut, and all her bravado collapsed. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she whispered. “My father . . . he found birth control pills in my underwear drawer, and it made him crazy. Then he found my diary . . . and read that, too.” Catherine swallowed. “It was only pretend. I mean, we all had crushes on Coach. When my boyfriend broke up with me . . . Coach took extra care to make sure I was okay, to let me cry on his shoulder. I pretended it was because he liked me, you know, that way, a little. So I wrote about him. I wrote about us.”
“Fiction,” Addie said, to clarify, and Catherine nodded miserably. “And when your father went to the police? Did you ever think that maybe you ought to tell them?”
“I did. But they all thought I was just trying to keep him out of jail because I loved him.” She dashed a tear from her cheek. “When I was lying, they hung on every word. And when I told the truth, no one listened.”
“Catherine—”
“I am so ashamed,” the girl whispered. “I am so sorry I did this to him.”
Addie fought for control. “Then help him now.”
“You’re the last guy I expected to see,” Charlie said, holding the door open so that Jordan could walk inside.
“That’s because I’m not here as an attorney,” Jordan answered. “Just as a dad.”
Charlie invited Jordan to sit down on a floral couch with an afghan hanging over the back. “That’s right. I forget you have a kid.”
“Bad news, I guess.” Jordan grinned. “We defense lawyers can procreate.”
That surprised a laugh out of Charlie. “Your boy’s in, what? His freshman year?”
“Yeah.” Jordan could feel himself sweating through the back of his short-sleeved polo shirt. He had absolutely no proof of what he was about to tell Charlie—this was a pure hunch, one that he hoped would prey on the detective’s parental sensibilities and net Jordan a windfall. Short of this white lie, he didn’t know how else to confirm his intuitions. “Charlie, first things first. This is all off the record, all right?”
The detective nodded slowly.
“My son—Thomas—has been seeing Chelsea Abrams.”
“Oh?” Charlie said easily. “She’s a sweet kid.”
“Yeah. Well, he certainly thinks so, anyway.” They both laughed. “This is a little awkward, Charlie,” Jordan said, exhaling heavily. “Thomas came home with some information I thought I should pass along.”
At that, Charlie sat up, immediately alert.
“Chelsea said that the night the girls were in the woods, they were doing drugs.”
Charlie didn’t move a muscle. “My daughter doesn’t . . . she wouldn’t do that.”
“I didn’t think so. And you have to know, given our circumstances right now, this was about the last thing I figured you’d want to hear from me. But as a father—well, hell, if someone knew that about Thomas, I’d want to be told.” He stood, wary of overstaying his welcome. “It’s probably a misunderstanding.”
“Probably.” Charlie led the way out of the house. He watched the lawyer walk down the slate path that led to the driveway. “Jordan.”
For a moment, the two men simply stared at each other.
“Thank you,” Charlie said.
As laboratory technician, Arthur Quince had enough trouble trying to keep afloat at Duncan Pharmaceuticals without investigators coming along to foul up the rhythm of his day. Especially investigators who arrived with a light in their eyes, intent on linking your place of business to a crime. First the rape of his boss’s daughter, and now a drug case right here in Salem Falls? What was this world coming to?
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to help you,” Arthur told Selena Damascus.
“On any given week, we might be making six drugs at a time.”
“Like which six?”
Jesus, the woman was like a dog with a bone. Arthur punched up records on his computer and pointed to the screen. “Recently, we’ve been making fentanyl citrate, lidocaine hydrochloride, and phenobarbital sodium.”
“What about before that?”
He scrolled up to the previous three-week period, starting the week of April 24. “Acyclovir, pemoline, risedronate, and atropine were in various stages of production.”
“Are any of those hallucinogens?”
“We’re not in the habit of making drugs that are sold on the street.”
“I understand. That’s why it’s imperative that Duncan Pharmaceuticals be ruled out as the source of the substance we’re investigating.” Selena lowered her voice. “Look, Dr. Quince, I don’t think you guys are responsible. But you find something like this in the halls of Salem Falls High . . . in the same town where there’s a pharmaceutical company . . . well, to cover all of our own asses, if you’ll excuse my language, we have to just make sure we’re not talking about the same stuff.” She turned her attention to the screen again. “How come that one has a star next to it?”
Arthur looked where she was pointing. “Duncan Pharmaceuticals is introducing a new homeopathic line—prescription drugs derived from all-natural sources instead of chemical ones. The atropine was one of the drugs in that focus group.”
Selena hiked herself up on a stool beside him. “Natural sources? Where does it come from?”
“The belladonna plant.”
“Belladonna?”
“That’s right. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s extremely poisonous.”
“Can you overdose on it?”
Immediately, Arthur bristled. “Almost any drug on the market has adverse effects, Ms. Damascus.”
“What would some of these adverse effects be?”
“Confusion. Agitation.” Arthur sighed. “Delirium.”
“Delirium? So it is a hallucinogen.”
At that moment, Amos Duncan entered the lab. Noticing Selena, he did a double take. He’d seen her around town, certainly, but because Selena had known better than to try to talk to Amos directly, there was no way he’d know she was there on Jordan’s behalf. “Arthur,” he boomed, walking toward them. “I need to speak to you.”
“Ms. Damascus was just leaving,” Arthur hurried to explain. “She’s here gathering information for a drug case.”
In spite of what Arthur had thought, this information didn’t make Amos the least bit nervous, as if he knew how tight a ship he ran. “You work for Charlie Saxton? You’ve got my sympathy!” Amos said, but he was grinning. Selena grinned right back. If he wanted to mistakenly believe she was a local cop, she wasn’t going to be the one to correct him.
No, he’d figure it out for himself when he saw her in the courtroom.
They wandered through the aisles of the music store, clicking their fingernails on CDs arranged neatly as teeth. Without any conscious effort, other eyes gravitated toward these girls, light to a black hole. And how couldn’t you look? Such ripe beauty, bursting at the seams; such confidence, left behind them as sure as footprints.
Chelsea, Meg, and Whitney were oblivious to the power of their attraction. They shopped aimlessly, each of them as aware of their missing mate as a soldier with pain in a phantom limb.
Meg tripped and knocked over an entire display of CDs. “Oh, gosh. Let me help,” she said in apology to the pimpled employee who came to clean up.
“Fucking cow,” he muttered.
Whitney turned, hands on her hips. “What did you say?”
Reddening, the boy didn’t look up.
“Listen here, you little toad,” Whitney whispered fiercely.
“With a snap of my fingers, I could make your dick curl up and rot.”
The kid snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“Maybe I’m bluffing. And then again, maybe I’m a witch.” Whitney smiled sweetly. “You wanna stick around and take that chance?”
The employee scurried into the back room. “Whit,” Meg chided. “I don’t think you should have done that.”
“Why not?” She shrugged. “He was pissing me off. And besides, I could do it, too, if I wanted.”
“You don’t know that,” Chelsea said. “And even if you could, you’re not supposed to. Magick isn’t about getting rid of everything blocking your path.”
“Says who? Healing’s boring. So is all that crap about moon cycles. Now that we’ve figured out spells, we’re supposed to just keep them all inside us?”
“It’s safer that way.” Chelsea shrugged. “Fewer people get hurt.”
Whitney laughed. “That little asshole made fun of Meg. Just like Hailey McCourt.”
“She’s better now,” Meg pointed out. “And nicer.”
“She learned a lesson, thanks to us.” Whit stared in the direction the boy had fled. “The little weasel deserves to be humiliated.”
“And what about Jack St. Bride?”
The question, which fell from Chelsea’s mouth like a burning match, devoured the air between them. “Jesus,” Whitney managed finally. “I don’t think this is a public conversation, Chels.”
But now that it had burst from her, Chelsea couldn’t stop. She held her hand up over her mouth, and still the words bled through. “Don’t you wonder, Whit? Don’t you think about it all the time?”
“I do,” Meg murmured. “I can’t get it off my mind.”