The Jodi Picoult Collection #3

by Jodi Picoult

  Josie wasn’t looking at the camera. She was staring at Matt, as if she couldn’t see anything else.

  Somehow, it seemed safer to fall apart here in front of a makeshift memorial than at home, where Josie might hear her crying. No matter how cool and collected she had been—for Josie’s sake—the one person she could not fool was herself. She might pick up her daily routine like a missed stitch, she might tell herself that Josie was one of the lucky ones, but when she was alone in the shower, or caught in the interstitial space between waking and sleep, Alex would find herself shaking uncontrollably, the way you do when you’ve swerved to avoid an accident and have to pull to the side of the road to make sure you are really, truly all in one piece.

  Life was what happened when all the what-if’s didn’t, when what you dreamed or hoped or—in this case—feared might come to pass passed by instead. Alex had spent enough nights thinking of good fortune, of how it was thin as a veil, how seamlessly you might stream from one side to the other. This could easily have been Josie’s cross she was kneeling before, Josie’s memorial that hosted this photo. A twitch of the shooter’s hand, a fallen footstep, a bullet’s ricochet—and everything might have been different.

  Alex got to her feet and took a fortifying breath. As she headed back to her car, she saw the narrow hole where an eleventh cross had been. After the ten had been erected, someone had added one with Peter Houghton’s name on it. Night after night that extra cross had been taken down or vandalized. There had been editorials in the paper over it: Did Peter Houghton deserve a cross, when he was still very much alive? Was putting up a memorial for him a tragedy or a travesty? Eventually, whoever had carved Peter’s cross decided to leave well enough alone and stopped replacing it every day.

  As Alex slipped inside her car again, she wondered how—until she’d come here for herself—she had managed to forget that someone, at some point, considered Peter Houghton to be a victim, too.

  * * *

  Since That Day, as Lacy had taken to calling it, she’d delivered three babies. Each time, although the birth was uneventful and the delivery easy, something had gone wrong. Not for the mother, but for the midwife. When Lacy stepped into a delivery room, she felt poisonous, too negative to be the one to welcome another human being to this world. She had smiled her way through the births and had offered the new mothers the support and the medical care that they needed, but the moment she’d sent them on their way, cutting that last umbilical cord between hospital and home, Lacy knew she was giving them the wrong advice. Instead of easy platitudes like Let them eat when they want to eat and You can’t hold a baby too much, she should have been telling them the truth: This child you’ve been waiting for is not who you imagine him to be. You’re strangers now; you’ll be strangers years from now.

  Years ago, she used to lie in bed and imagine what her life would have been like had she not been a mother. She’d picture Joey bringing her a bouquet of dandelion weeds and clover; Peter falling asleep against her chest with the tail of her braid still clutched in his hand. She relived the clenching fist of labor pains, and the mantra she’d used to get through them: When this is done, imagine what you’ll have. Motherhood had painted the colors of Lacy’s world a bit brighter; had swelled her to the seams with the belief that her life could not possibly be more complete. What she hadn’t realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you’d felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.

  She had not told her patients—God, she hadn’t even told Lewis—but these days, when she lay in bed and imagined what her life would have been like had she not been a mother, she found herself sucking on one bitter word: easier.

  Today Lacy was doing office visits; she’d gone through five patients and was about to move on to her sixth. Janet Isinghoff, she read, scanning the folder. Although she was another midwife’s patient, the policy of the group was to have each woman see all of the midwives, since you never knew who’d be on call when you delivered.

  Janet Isinghoff was thirty-three years old, primigravid, with a family history of diabetes. She had been hospitalized once before for appendicitis, had mild asthma, and was generally healthy. She was also standing in the door of the examination room, clutching her hospital johnny shut as she argued heatedly with Priscilla, the OB nurse.

  “I don’t care,” Janet was saying. “If it comes down to that, I’ll just go to a different hospital.”

  “But that’s not the way our practice works,” Priscilla explained.

  Lacy smiled. “Anything I can do here?”

  Priscilla turned, putting herself between Lacy and the patient. “It’s nothing.”

  “Didn’t sound like nothing,” Lacy replied.

  “I don’t want my baby delivered by a woman whose son is a murderer,” Janet burst out.

  Lacy felt her feet root on the floor, her breath go so shallow that she might as well have fielded a blow. And hadn’t she?

  Priscilla turned crimson. “Mrs. Isinghoff, I think I can speak for the whole of the midwifery team when I say that Lacy is—”

  “It’s all right,” Lacy murmured. “I understand.”

  By now the other nurses and midwives were staring; Lacy knew that they would rally to her defense—tell Janet Isinghoff to find herself another practice, explain that Lacy was one of the best and most seasoned midwives in New Hampshire. But that hardly mattered, really—it wasn’t about Janet Isinghoff demanding to have another midwife deliver her child; it was that even after Janet had left, there would be another woman here tomorrow or the next day with the same uneasy request. Who would want the first hands touching her newborn to be the same hands that had held a murderer’s when he crossed the street; that had brushed his hair off his forehead when he was sick; that had rocked him to sleep?

  Lacy walked down the hall to the fire door and ran up four flights of stairs. Sometimes, when she’d had a particularly difficult day, Lacy would take refuge on the roof of the hospital. She’d lie on her back and stare up at the sky and pretend, with that view, she could be anywhere on earth.

  A trial was just a formality—Peter would be found guilty. It didn’t matter how she tried to convince herself—or Peter—otherwise; the fact was there between them at those horrible jail visits, immense and unmentionable. It reminded Lacy of running into someone you hadn’t seen for a while, and finding her bald and missing her eyebrows: you knew she was in the throes of chemotherapy, but pretended you didn’t, because it was easier that way for both of you.

  What Lacy would have liked to say, if anyone had given her the podium on which to do it, was that Peter’s actions were just as surprising to her—as devastating to her—as they were to anyone else. She’d lost her son, too, that day. Not just physically, to the correctional facility, but personally, because the boy she’d known had disappeared, swallowed by this beast she didn’t recognize, capable of acts she could not conceive.

  But what if Janet Isinghoff was right? What if it was something Lacy had said or done . . . or not said or done . . . that had brought Peter to that point? Could you hate your son for what he had done, and still love him for who he had been?

  The door opened, and Lacy spun around. No one ever came up here, but, then again, she rarely left the floor this upset. It wasn’t Priscilla, though, or one of her colleagues: Jordan McAfee stood on the threshold, a sheaf of papers in his hand. Lacy closed her eyes. “Perfect.”

  “Yes, that’s what my wife tells me,” he said, coming toward her with a wide smile on his face. “Or maybe it’s just what I wish she’d tell me. . . . Your secretary told me you were probably up here, and—Lacy, are you all right?”

  Lacy nodded, and then she shook her head. Jordan took her arm and led her to a folding chair that someone had carted all the way up to the roof. “Bad day?”

  “You could say that,” Lacy answered. She tried to keep Jordan from seeing her tears. It was stupid, she knew, but she didn’t want P
eter’s attorney to think she was the kind of person who had to be treated with kid gloves. Then he might not tell her every blunt truth about Peter, and she wanted to hear that, no matter what.

  “I needed you to sign some paperwork . . . but I can come back later . . .”

  “No,” Lacy said. “This is . . . fine.” It was better than fine, she realized. It was sort of nice to be sitting next to someone who believed in Peter, even if she was paying him to do that. “Can I ask you a professional question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why is it so easy for people to point a finger at someone else?”

  Jordan sank down across from her, on the ledge of the roof, which made Lacy nervous, but, again, she couldn’t show it, because she didn’t want Jordan to think she was fragile. “People need a scapegoat,” he said. “It’s human nature. That’s the biggest hurdle we have to overcome as defense attorneys, because in spite of being innocent until proven guilty, the very act of an arrest makes people assume guilt. Do you know how many cops have un-arrested someone? I know, it’s crazy—I mean, do you think they apologize profusely and make sure that person’s family and friends and co-workers all know it was a big mistake, or do they just sort of say, ‘My bad,’ and take off?” He met her gaze. “I’m sure it’s hard, reading the editorials that have already convicted Peter before the trial’s even started, but—”

  “It’s not Peter,” Lacy said quietly. “They’re blaming me.”

  Jordan nodded, as if he’d expected this.

  “He didn’t do this because of how we raised him. He did it in spite of that,” Lacy said. “You have a baby, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Sam.”

  “What if he turns out to be someone you never thought he’d be?”

  “Lacy—”

  “Like, what if Sam tells you he’s gay?”

  Jordan shrugged. “So what?”

  “And if he decided to convert to Islam?”

  “That’s his choice.”

  “What if he became a suicide bomber?”

  Jordan paused. “I really don’t want to think about something like that, Lacy.”

  “No,” she said, facing him. “Neither did I.”

  * * *

  Philip O’Shea and Ed McCabe had been together for almost two years. Patrick stared at the photos on the fireplace mantel—the two men with their arms slung around each other, with a backdrop of the Canadian Rockies; a corn palace; the Eiffel Tower. “We liked to get away,” Philip said as he brought out a glass of iced tea and handed it to Patrick. “Sometimes, for Ed, it was easier to get away than it was to stay here.”

  “Why was that?”

  Philip shrugged. He was a tall, thin man with freckles that appeared when his face flushed with emotion. “Ed hadn’t told everyone about . . . his lifestyle. And to be perfectly honest, keeping secrets in a small town is a bitch.”

  “Mr. O’Shea—”

  “Philip. Please.”

  Patrick nodded. “I wonder if Ed ever mentioned Peter Houghton’s name to you.”

  “He taught him, you know.”

  “Yeah. I meant . . . well, beyond that.”

  Philip led him to a screened porch, a set of wicker chairs. Every room he’d seen in the house looked like it had just been host to a magazine photo shoot: the pillows on the couches were tilted at a forty-five-degree angle; there were vases with glass beads in them; the plants were all lush and green. Patrick thought back to his own living room, where today he’d found a piece of toast stuffed between his sofa cushions that had what could really only be called penicillin growing on top of it by now. It might have been a ridiculous stereotype, but this home had Martha Stewart written all over it, whereas Patrick’s looked more like a crack house.

  “Ed talked to Peter,” Philip said. “Or at least, he tried to.”

  “About what?”

  “Being a bit of a lost soul, I think. Teens are always trying to fit in. If you don’t fit into the popular crowd, you try the athletic crowd. If that doesn’t work, you go to the drama crowd . . . or to the druggies,” he said. “Ed thought that Peter might be trying out the gay and lesbian crowd.”

  “So Peter came to talk to Ed about being gay?”

  “Oh, no. Ed sought Peter out. We all remember what it was like to be figuring out what was different about us, when we were his age. Worried to death that some other kid who was gay was going to come on to you and blow your cover.”

  “Do you think Peter might have been worried about Ed blowing his cover?”

  “I sincerely doubt it, especially in Peter’s case.”

  “Why?”

  Philip smiled at Patrick. “You’ve heard of gaydar?”

  Patrick felt himself coloring. It was like being in the presence of an African-American who made a racist joke, simply because he could. “I guess.”

  “Gay people don’t come clearly marked—it’s not like having a different color skin or a physical disability. You learn to pick up on mannerisms, or looks that last just a little too long. You get pretty good at figuring out if someone’s gay, or just staring at you because you are.”

  Before he realized what he was doing, Patrick had leaned a little farther away from Philip, who started to laugh. “You can relax. Your vibe clearly says you bat for the other team.” He looked up at Patrick. “And so does Peter Houghton.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Peter may have been confused about his sexuality, but it was crystal clear to Ed,” Philip said. “That boy is straight.”

  * * *

  Peter burst through the door of the conference room, bristling. “How come you haven’t come to see me?”

  Jordan looked up from the notes he was making on a pad. He noticed, absently, that Peter had put on some weight—and apparently some muscle. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Well, I’m stuck here all by myself.”

  “Yeah, and I’m busting my ass to make sure that isn’t a permanent condition,” Jordan replied. “Sit down.”

  Peter slumped into a chair, scowling. “What if I don’t feel like talking to you today? Clearly, you don’t always feel like talking to me.”

  “Peter, how about we drop the bullshit so I can do my job?”

  “Like I care if you can do your job.”

  “Well, you should,” Jordan said. “Seeing as you’re the beneficiary.” At the end of this, Jordan thought, I will be either reviled or canonized. “I want to talk about the explosives,” he said. “Where would a person get something like that?”

  “At www.boom.com,” Peter answered.

  Jordan just stared at him.

  “Well, it’s not all that far from the truth,” Peter said. “I mean, The Anarchist Cookbook is online. So are about ten thousand recipes for Molotov cocktails.”

  “They didn’t find a Molotov cocktail at the school. They found plastic explosives with a blasting cap and a timing device.”

  “Yeah,” Peter said. “Well.”

  “Say I wanted to make a bomb with stuff I had lying around the house. What would I use?”

  Peter shrugged. “Newspaper. Fertilizer—like Green Thumb, the chemical stuff. Cotton. And some diesel fuel, but you’d probably have to get that at a gas station, so it wouldn’t technically be in your house.”

  Jordan watched him count off the ingredients. There was a matter-of-factness to Peter’s voice that was chilling, but even more unsettling was the tone threaded through his words: this was something Peter had been proud of.

  “You’ve done this kind of thing before.”

  “The first time I built one, I just did it to see if I could.” Peter’s voice grew more animated. “I did some more after that. The kind you throw and run like hell.”

  “What made this one different?”

  “The ingredients, for one. You have to get the potassium chlorate from bleach, which isn’t easy, but it’s kind of like doing a chemistry lab. My dad came into the kitchen when I was filtering out the crystals,” Peter said. “T
hat’s what I told him I was doing—extra credit.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Anyway, after you’ve got that, all you need is Vaseline, which we keep under the bathroom sink, and the gas you’d find in a camp stove, and the kind of wax you use to can pickles. I was kind of freaked out about using a blasting cap,” Peter said. “I mean, I’d never really done anything that big before. But you know, when I started to come up with the whole plan—”

  “Stop,” Jordan interrupted. “Just stop right there.”

  “You’re the one who asked in the first place,” Peter said, stung.

  “But that’s an answer I can’t hear. My job is to get you acquitted, and I can’t lie in front of the jury. On the other hand, I can’t lie about the things I don’t know. And right now, I can honestly say that you did not plan in advance what happened that day. I’d like to keep it that way, and if you have any sense of self-preservation, you should, too.”

  Peter walked to the window. The glass was fuzzy, scratched after all these years. From what? Jordan wondered. Inmates clawing to get out? Peter wouldn’t be able to see that the snow had all melted by now; that the first crocuses had choked their way out of the soil. Maybe it was better that way.

  “I’ve been going to church,” Peter announced.

  Jordan wasn’t much for organized religion, but he didn’t begrudge others their chosen comforts. “That’s great.”

  “I’m doing it because they let me leave my cell to go to services,” Peter said. “Not because I’ve found Jesus or anything.”

  “Okay.” He wondered what this had to do with explosives or, for that matter, anything else regarding Peter’s defense. Frankly, Jordan didn’t have time to have a philosophical discussion with Peter about the nature of God—he had to meet Selena in two hours to go over potential defense witnesses—but something kept him from cutting Peter off.

  Peter turned. “Do you believe in hell?”

  “Yeah. It’s full of defense attorneys. Just ask any prosecutor.”

  “No, seriously,” Peter said. “I bet I’m headed there.”