by Jodi Picoult
“Any mother whose daughter came that close to dying has a right to fall apart at the seams,” Patrick said. “Look. I’ve talked to Josie twice. I know her statement back and forth. It doesn’t matter if McAfee puts her on the stand—there’s nothing she can say that’s going to hurt her. The silver lining is that now you don’t have to worry about a conflict of interest. Josie needs a good mother right now more than she needs a good judge.”
Alex smiled ruefully. “What a shame she’s stuck with me instead.”
“Come on.”
“It’s true. My whole life with Josie has been a series of disconnects.”
“Well,” Patrick pointed out, “that presumes that at one point, you were connected.”
“Neither of us remembers back that far. You’ve had better conversations with Josie than I have lately.” Alex stared into the mug of coffee. “Everything I say to Josie comes out wrong. She looks at me like I’m from another planet. Like I have no right to act like a concerned parent now because I wasn’t acting like one before it happened.”
“Why weren’t you?”
“I was working. Hard,” Alex said.
“Lots of parents work hard—”
“But I’m good at being a judge. And lousy at being a mother.” Alex covered her mouth with her hand, but it was too late to take back the truth, which coiled on the bar in front of her, poisonous. What had she been thinking, confessing that to someone when she could barely admit it to herself? She might as well have drawn a bull’s-eye on her Achilles’ heel.
“Maybe you should try talking to Josie the way you talk to the people who come into your court, then,” Patrick suggested.
“She hates it when I act like a lawyer. Besides, I hardly talk in court. Mostly, I listen.”
“Well, Your Honor,” Patrick said. “That might work, too.”
Once, when Josie had been a baby, Alex let her out of her sight long enough for Josie to climb up on a stool. From across the room, Alex watched in terror as Josie’s slight weight upset the balance. She couldn’t get there fast enough to keep Josie from falling; she didn’t want to yell out, because she was afraid that if she startled Josie, that would make her fall, too. So Alex had stood, waiting for an accident to happen.
But instead, Josie managed to perch herself on the stool; to stand up on its little disc seat; to reach the light switch she’d been heading for all along. Alex watched her flick the lights on and off, watched her face split with a smile every time she realized that her actions could transform the world.
“Since we’re not in court,” she said hesitantly, “I’d like it if you called me Alex.”
Patrick smiled. “And I’d like it if you called me Your Majesty King Kamehameha.”
Alex couldn’t help herself; she laughed.
“But if that’s too hard to remember, Patrick would be fine.” He reached for the coffeepot and poured some into her mug. “Free refills,” he said.
She watched him add sugar and cream, in the same quantities that she’d used for her first cup. He was a detective; his job was to notice details. But Alex thought that probably wasn’t what made him such a good cop. It was that he had the capacity to use force, like any other police officer—but instead, he’d trap you with kindness.
That, Alex knew, was always more deadly.
* * *
It wasn’t something he’d put on his résumé, but Jordan was especially gifted at cutting the rug to Wiggles songs. His personal favorite was “Hot Potato,” but the one that really got Sam jazzed up was “Fruit Salad.” While Selena was upstairs taking a hot bath, Jordan put on the DVD—she was opposed to bombarding Sam with media, and didn’t want him to be able to spell D-O-R-O-T-H-Y, as in Dinosaur, before he could even write his own name. Selena always wanted Jordan to be doing something else with the baby, like memorizing Shakespeare or solving differential equations—but Jordan was a big believer in letting the television do its job in turning one’s brain into porridge . . . at least long enough to get one good, silly tango session out of it.
Babies were always just the right weight, so that when you finally put them down, you felt like something was missing. “Fruit salad . . . yummy yummy!” Jordan crooned, whirling around until Sam opened his mouth and let a peal of giggles ribbon out.
The doorbell rang, and Jordan sashayed himself and his tiny partner through the entryway to answer it. Harmonizing—sort of—with Jeff, Murray, Greg, and Anthony in the background, Jordan opened the door. “Let’s make some fruit salad today,” he sang, and then he saw who was standing on his porch. “Judge Cormier!”
“Sorry to interrupt.”
He already knew that she’d recused herself from the case—that happy announcement had been passed down this afternoon. “No, that’s fine. Come on . . . in.” Jordan glanced back at the trail of toys that he and Sam had left in their wake (he had to clean those up before Selena came back downstairs, too). Kicking as many as he could behind the couch, he led the judge into his living room and switched off the DVD.
“This must be your son.”
“Yeah.” Jordan looked down at the baby, who was in the process of deciding whether or not to throw a fit now that the music had been turned off. “Sam.”
She reached out, letting Sam curl his hand around her forefinger. Sam could charm the pants off Hitler, probably, but seeing him only seemed to make Judge Cormier more agitated. “Why did you put my daughter on your witness list?”
Ah.
“Because,” Jordan said, “Josie and Peter used to be friends, and I may need her as a character witness.”
“They were friends ten years ago. Be honest. You did this to get me off the case.”
Jordan hefted Sam higher on his hip. “Your Honor, with all due respect, I’m not going to allow anyone to try this case for me. Especially not a judge who isn’t even involved in it anymore.”
He watched something flare behind her eyes. “Of course not,” she said tightly, and then she turned on her heel and walked out.
* * *
Ask a random kid today if she wants to be popular and she’ll tell you no, even if the truth is that if she was in a desert dying of thirst and had the choice between a glass of water and instant popularity, she’d probably choose the latter.
* * *
As soon as she heard the knock, Josie took her notebook and shoved it between the mattress and the box spring, which had to be the world’s lamest hiding spot.
Her mother stepped inside the bedroom, and for a second, Josie couldn’t put her finger on what wasn’t quite right. Then she figured it out: it wasn’t dark out yet. Usually by the time her mother got home from court, it was dinnertime—but now it was only 3:45; Josie had barely gotten home from school.
“I have to talk to you,” her mother said, sitting down beside her on the comforter. “I took myself off the case today.”
Josie stared at her. In her whole life, she’d never known her mother to back down from any legal challenge; plus, hadn’t they just had a conversation about the fact that she wasn’t recusing herself?
She felt that sick sinking that came when the teacher called on her and she hadn’t been paying attention. What had her mother found out that she hadn’t known days ago?
“What happened?” Josie asked, and she hoped her mother wasn’t paying attention enough to hear the way her voice was jumping all over the place.
“Well, that’s the other thing I need to talk to you about,” her mother said. “The defense put you on their witness list. They may ask you to go to court.”
“What?” Josie cried, and for just one moment, everything stopped: her breath, her heart, her courage. “I can’t go to court, Mom,” she said. “Don’t make me. Please . . .”
Her mother reached out for her, which was a good thing, because Josie was certain that at any second, she was going to simply vanish. Sublimation, she thought, the act of going from solid to vapor. And then she realized that this term was one she’d studied for the science test
she’d never had because of everything else that had happened.
“I’ve been talking to the detective, and I know you don’t remember anything. The only reason you’re even on that list is because you used to be friends with Peter a long, long time ago.”
Josie drew back. “Do you swear that I won’t have to go to court?”
Her mother hesitated. “Honey, I can’t—”
“You have to!”
“What if we go talk to the defense attorney?” her mother said.
“What good would that do?”
“Well, if he sees how upset this is making you, he might think twice about using you as a witness at all.”
Josie lay down on her bed. For a few moments, her mother stroked her hair. Josie thought she heard her whisper I’m sorry, and then she got up and closed the door behind her.
“Matt,” Josie whispered, as if he could hear her; as if he could answer.
Matt. She drew in his name like oxygen and imagined it breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, funneling into her red blood cells, beating through her heart.
* * *
Peter snapped a pencil in half and stuck the eraser end into his corn bread. “Happy birthday to me,” he sang under his breath. He didn’t finish the song; what was the point when you already knew where it was heading?
“Hey, Houghton,” a correctional officer said, “we got a present for you.”
Standing behind him was a kid not much older than Peter. He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and he had snot running down his nose. The officer led him into the cell. “Make sure you share your cake,” the officer said.
Peter sat down on the lower bunk, just to let this kid know exactly who was in charge. The boy stood with his arms crossed tight around the blanket he’d been given, staring down at the ground. He reached up and pushed his glasses up his nose, and that’s when Peter realized there was something, well, wrong with him. He had that glassy-eyed, gum-lipped look of a special-needs kid.
Peter realized why they’d stuck the kid in his cell instead of anyone else’s: they figured Peter would be least likely to fuck with him.
He felt his hands ball into fists. “Hey, you,” Peter said.
The boy swiveled his head toward Peter. “I have a dog,” he said. “Do you have a dog?”
Peter pictured the correctional officers watching this comedy through their little video hookups, expecting Peter to put up with this shit.
Expecting something of him, period.
He reached forward and plucked the glasses off the kid’s nose. They were Coke-bottle-thick, with black plastic frames. The boy started to shriek, grabbing at his own face. His scream sounded like an air horn.
Peter put the glasses down on the floor and stomped on them, but in his rubber flip-flops that didn’t do much damage. So he picked them up and smashed them into the bars of the cell until the glass shattered.
By then the officers had arrived to pull Peter away from the kid, not that he was touching him anyway. They handcuffed him as the other inmates cheered him on. He was dragged down the hall to the superintendent’s office.
He sat hunched in a chair, with a guard watching him breathe, until the superintendent came in. “What was that all about, Peter?”
“It’s my birthday,” Peter said. “I just wanted to be alone for it.”
The funny thing, he realized, was that before the shooting, he’d believed that the best thing in the world was being left alone, so nobody could tell him he didn’t fit in. But as it turned out—not that he was about to tell the superintendent this—he didn’t much like himself, either.
The superintendent started to talk about disciplinary action; how this could affect him in the event of a conviction, what few privileges were left to be taken away. Peter deliberately tuned him out.
He thought instead of how angry the rest of the pod would be when this incident cost them television for a week.
He thought of Jordan’s bullied victim syndrome and wondered if he believed it; if anyone would.
He thought of how nobody who saw him in jail—not his mother, not his lawyer—ever said what they should: that Peter would be imprisoned forever, that he’d die in a cell that looked just like this one.
He thought of how he would rather end his life with a bullet.
He thought of how at night, you could hear the wings of bats beating in the cement corners of the jail, and screams. No one was stupid enough to cry.
* * *
At 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, when Jordan opened the door, he was still wearing pajama bottoms. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.
Judge Cormier pasted on a smile. “I’m really sorry we got off on the wrong foot,” she said. “But you know how it is when it’s your child who’s in trouble . . . you just can’t think straight.” She stood arm in arm with the mini-me standing beside her. Josie Cormier, Jordan thought, scrutinizing the girl who was shaking like an aspen leaf. She had chestnut hair that hit her shoulders, and blue eyes that wouldn’t meet his.
“Josie is really scared,” the judge said. “I wondered if we could sit down for a minute . . . maybe you could put her at ease about being a witness. Hear whether or not what she knows will even help your case.”
“Jordan? Who is it?”
He turned around to find Selena standing in the entryway, holding on to Sam. She was wearing flannel pajamas, which might or might not have been one step more formal.
“Judge Cormier was wondering if we could talk to Josie about her testimony,” he said pointedly, trying desperately to telegraph to Selena that he was in deep trouble—since they all knew, with the exception perhaps of Josie, that the only reason he’d noticed up his intent to use her was to get Cormier off the case.
Jordan turned toward the judge again. “You see, I’m not really at that stage of planning yet.”
“Surely you have some idea of what you’re after if you call her as a witness . . . or you wouldn’t have put her on the list,” Alex pointed out.
“Why don’t you ring my secretary, and make an appointment—”
“I was thinking of now,” Judge Cormier said. “Please. I’m not here as a judge. Just as a mother.”
Selena stepped forward. “You come right on in,” she said, using her free arm to circle Josie’s shoulders. “You must be Josie, right? This here’s Sam.”
Josie smiled shyly at the baby. “Hi, Sam.”
“Baby, why don’t you get the judge some coffee or juice?”
Jordan stared at his wife, wondering what the hell she was up to now. “Right. Why don’t you come on in?”
Thankfully, the house looked nothing like it had the first time Cormier had showed up unannounced: there were no dishes in the sink; no papers cluttered the tables; toys were mysteriously missing. What could Jordan say—his wife was a neat freak. He pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and offered it to Josie, then did the same for the judge. “How do you take your coffee?” he asked.
“Oh, we’re fine,” she said. She reached under the table for her daughter’s hand.
“Sam and I, we’re just going into the living room to play,” Selena said.
“Why don’t you stay?” He gave her a measured glance, one that begged her not to leave him alone to be eviscerated.
“You don’t need us distracting you,” Selena said, and she took the baby away.
Jordan sat down heavily across from the Cormiers. He was good at thinking on his feet; surely he could suffer through this. “Well,” he said, “it really isn’t anything to be scared of at all. I was just going to ask you some basic questions about your friendship with Peter.”
“We’re not friends,” Josie said.
“Yes, I know that. But you used to be. I’m interested in the first time you met him.”
Josie glanced at Alex. “Around nursery school, or maybe before.”
“Okay. Did you play at your house? His?”
“Both.”
“Did you have o
ther friends who used to hang out with you?”
“Not really,” Josie said.
Alex listened, but she couldn’t help tuning a lawyer’s ear to McAfee’s questions. He’s got nothing, she thought. This is nothing.
“When did you two stop hanging around?”
“Sixth grade,” Josie answered. “We just kind of started liking different things.”
“Did you have any contact with Peter after that?”
Josie shifted in her chair. “Only in the halls and stuff.”
“You worked with him, too, right?”
Josie looked at her mother again. “Not for very long.”
Both mother and daughter stared at him, anticipatory—which was awfully funny, because Jordan was making this all up as he went. “What about the relationship between Matt and Peter?”
“They didn’t have one,” Josie said, but her cheeks went pink.
“Did Matt do anything to Peter that might have been upsetting?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you be more specific?”
She shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.
“When was the last time you saw Matt and Peter together?”
“I don’t remember,” Josie whispered.
“Did they fight?”
Tears clouded her eyes. “I don’t know.” She turned to her mother and then slowly sank her head down to the table, her face pressed into the curve of her own arm.
“Honey, why don’t you go wait in the other room?” the judge said evenly.
They both watched Josie sit down on a chair in the living room, wiping her eyes, hunching forward to watch the baby playing on the floor.
“Look,” Judge Cormier sighed. “I’m off the case. I know that’s why you put her on the witness list, even if you’d never actually intended to call her. But I’m not questioning that right now. I’m talking to you parent to parent. If I give you an affidavit signed by Josie saying she doesn’t remember anything, would you think twice about putting her on the stand?”