Second Glance: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  Ethan couldn't find words, but he nodded. Ross looked up. "Lucy!" he cried. "Where are you?"

  A tiny white face appeared at the edge of the cliff overhead. Tears striped through the dust on her cheeks. Ross looked at the precipitous wall of rock--there were some spots where he could find holds to climb up, but he would never make it carrying Ethan. And Lucy wasn't strong enough to haul them up together.

  "Ethan, I'm going to need you to help me," Ross said.

  "I'm going to put you on my shoulders, and you're going to have to climb up to the top by yourself. Lucy!" he yelled. "I need you to grab hold of Ethan when he gets close, all right?"

  He waited for her to answer, but she didn't. From where he stood, he could no longer even see where Lucy was. But if they waited, another explosion might go off. Another opportunity to climb could be lost. "Come on," he said to Ethan, crouching down so that the boy could scramble onto his shoulders. "By the time you get to the top, she'll be there."

  Lucy was shaking so hard she could not catch her breath. She had seen the world turn inside out--the dawn go gray, the solid ground vanish, her mother trapped. Ross and Ethan were stuck in the bottom of that hole, and she was up here, and nothing was the way it should be. She covered her head with her arms, wishing she could make it all go away. It had worked before, after all--when you didn't want to see what was before your eyes, you simply had to keep them shut.

  "Lucy!" That was Ross's voice. He wanted her to help Ethan up. But that would mean moving to the edge of that cliff, the one whose last edge had collapsed. And Lucy could not bring herself to do it.

  "Hey!" Ethan's hand popped up over the lip of the chasm. "Hey, Lucy, where are you? Uncle Ross, she's not coming!"

  "Lucy!"

  Lucy held her hands up to her ears. They would go away, all this would go away, and when she woke up she would be in her bed at home and the sun would be streaming through the windows and she wouldn't have to worry about ghosts.

  She didn't have to worry about ghosts, though, not anymore. Lucy looked up, brought her hands to her side. Being brave didn't mean that you weren't scared out of your wits. You were--the whole time--but you just kept on doing what you had to.

  She started to crawl to the edge of the cliff again, stopping only once when a little chunk of pebbles slid from beneath her palm into the ravine. Swallowing hard, she peered over the rim and saw Ethan, just a few feet beneath her, clinging to the rock wall like a spider.

  Lucy lay down on her belly and pressed her cheek against the rock. Then she stretched out her right hand, the one that was closest to Ethan. She felt his fingers brush against hers, and then grab tight, a key to a lock.

  Because she couldn't lift his weight, she made herself an anchor. He inched his way up her arm, grasping onto her shoulder and then hitching himself over the edge.

  They stared at each other, panting, breathing in each other's air. "Lucy," Ethan said, his voice so husky that it was easy to imagine the man he might never become.

  She managed a tiny smile. "What took you so long?" she whispered.

  Ross carried Lucy on his back, and guided Ethan footstep by footstep, as he carefully picked a path through the wreckage to the ladder on the other side of the quarry. Several times, he had to change his course as another distant explosion led to a rearrangement of the rocky landscape. It never occurred to him that they would not make it, and that alone was enough to propel him forward.

  At the rusty ladder, he set Lucy on the rungs and told her to climb. Ethan went up behind her. "Call 911," Ross instructed. "Break into the office if you have to."

  Ethan nodded. "Aren't you coming?"

  Ross looked over his shoulder. "Not yet," he said, and he squeezed Ethan's calf. "Go."

  Then he crawled back the way he had come, frantically searching for the large tablet that had pinned Meredith. He hadn't heard her screaming for some time--either because she hadn't been, or because he'd been too busy to listen. By now there were many broad plates of granite scattered in the quarry; it was difficult to remember exactly where she had been. He crested a small rise of stone and saw Meredith's arm.

  "Meredith!" he called, and she shook herself awake.

  "Lucy?"

  "Is fine. She's out."

  She could not see it, but her leg was bent back at a grotesque angle from her body. The large slab that had her pinned at the thigh was twice as wide as Ross, and as thick as his arm. To free her, he would need a smaller rock to make a lever, lift the slab, and drag Meredith away before the makeshift jack collapsed. Then he would have to immobilize her leg enough to carry her on his back across the rubble, like he had done with Lucy. "Go get help, Ross," Meredith said, crying.

  "I am help." He searched for something--anything--that might help him budge the rock. "I'm going to try to lift this."

  She was shivering, a combination of pain and panic. "Go back."

  Ross tried to get his weight underneath the rock, but it wouldn't move. In the distance a sounding horn blared, the warning of another round of explosions. He looked around frantically, trying to locate the dynamite or blasting cap. His eyes landed on Meredith, and the truth that stretched between them.

  He couldn't help her.

  He leaned down and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Shh," he whispered, and a charge shuddered somewhere to the left.

  "Ross, go. Please." She began to cry harder. "I need to know that you got out of here safe."

  He forced a crooked smile onto his face. "How many times do I have to tell you? I can't die."

  She reached for his hand, and the small movement unsettled the rocks beneath them. Ross lost his footing, going down hard on one knee beside Meredith's head. At the same time, they both noticed the small red tube about three feet beyond them.

  Ross leaped over the rock that pinned Meredith and reached the stick of dynamite. He grabbed it in his fist and started running, sprinting on serrated granite, on broken stone, deeper into the quarry. Nothing mattered in that moment except getting as far away from Meredith as possible before the computers lit it off.

  The charge swelled in his palm. In the instant before he let go of it, before an explosion hotter than a hundred suns razed the very spot where he stood, Ross had one moment where everything was crystal clear. He had saved Meredith, he had saved everyone. Maybe now, he had even made up for the rest of his life. The force of the blast knocked him head over heels and his skull struck hard against a ragged rock. And just as he considered that he might finally have found something worth living for, Ross discovered that he was not invincible after all.

  By the time Eli and Shelby arrived, the first ambulances had already left. The quarry was crawling with uniformed policemen borrowed from other towns, who were roping off the site. Another detective was interviewing the owners of Angel Quarry, who had arrived hastily, in the company of their corporate lawyer. No one knew where Az Thompson--the night watchman--had gone; his absence made him the easiest scapegoat for blame.

  Eli hurried over to a paramedic. "The kids. Where are the kids?"

  "They're all right. Cuts, bruises. The ambulance already went off to the hospital."

  He felt Shelby sag beside him, and he put his arm around her to keep her upright. Leaning close, he murmured words into her ear, comments that made no sense at all but were meant to give her a lifeline to hold onto.

  "Can we go?" Shelby said. "Now? To the hospital?"

  But before he could answer, a commotion at the guardrail drew his attention. Three rescue workers gently lifted a stretcher over the edge. Strapped onto it, battered and bloody, was Meredith.

  "Oh my God," Shelby breathed, as she watched an unconscious Meredith being loaded into a waiting ambulance. Shelby seemed to notice, for the first time, Ross's car. Shelby grabbed a paramedic by the jacket. "Where's my brother. Where is my brother?" When the man didn't answer, she refused to let go. "Ross Wakeman," she demanded. "He's here somewhere."

  A silence fell. No one would answer her, and that was respon
se enough. "No," Shelby cried, falling to her knees, as Eli's arms came around her. "No!"

  "He's at the hospital," Eli said firmly. Then he turned to one of the EMTs. "Right?"

  "Yeah, he's at the hospital."

  "See?" Eli helped Shelby stand, and carefully walked her to the truck. "We'll go and find Ethan. And Ross."

  "Okay." Shelby nodded through her tears. "Okay."

  Eli closed the door. The paramedic touched his shoulder as he walked around to the driver's side. "Uh, Detective. About that guy . . ."

  "He's at the hospital," Eli repeated.

  "Yeah, but that was only a formality," the paramedic said. "He was dead before we even got to him."

  Ross was driving, and Aimee was in the passenger seat. "Denmark," he said.

  She thought for a moment. "Kyrgyzstan."

  He couldn't take his eyes off her, as if he had not seen her in ages, although he knew this could not possibly be true . . . they never spent more than seventy-two hours apart, and that only when Aimee was pulling the graveyard shift at the hospital. Ross found himself cutting glances away from the road to look at the curve of her jaw, the color of her eyes, the spot where her French braid fell against her back. "New York," he murmured.

  Aimee rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Ross, another K?"

  "You have fifteen years of education; you can play a round of Geography."

  "Kalamazoo, then."

  He grinned and looked out the windshield. The car was moving quickly, and it was pouring outside, but he could swear that he'd seen someone he recognized walking along the edge of the highway--his old kindergarten teacher. She was wearing a yellow jumper Ross still recalled and her hair was in tight white pincurls. He looked again in the rearview mirror, but she was gone. "Oshkosh," Ross replied.

  Aimee crossed her legs on the seat. She had taken off her shoes--she never liked to travel with shoes on. "Heaven."

  "Heaven isn't a place."

  "Of course it is," Aimee argued.

  Ross raised a brow. "And you know this for a fact." He looked into his side mirror and nearly swerved: behind him on the opposite side of the road was his mother. She was wearing a sweater with little pearls around the top, one he remembered because as a child he'd sit in her lap and roll them between his fingers. She smiled at him, and waved.

  His mother had been dead since 1996. His kindergarten teacher had been dead even longer than that. And Kyrgyzstan had still been in the U.S.S.R. when Aimee had died.

  Heaven isn't a place.

  Suddenly they curved around a bend and saw a tractor-trailer coming at them, in their lane. "Ross!" Aimee cried out, and he jerked the steering wheel to the left, into the oncoming lane, noticing too late that a tiny car that had been hidden by the bulk of the truck was speeding toward them.

  There was glass exploding inward, and the horrible screech of tires on a wet road, and the sudden, shocking impact of steel striking steel. Ross found himself sprawled outside the overturned car. The tractor-trailer had wobbled off to the side of the road with its driver thrown onto the horn so that the wail would not let up. Ross ratcheted open the passenger door, reached inside, and unbuckled Aimee.

  Her shoulder was cut and blood stained her shirt, but her face, it was heart-shaped and smooth-skinned and stunning. Her French braid had unraveled, the impact loosening whatever she'd used to secure the bottom. It fanned over her chest like a silk shawl. "Aimee," he murmured. "God."

  He sat down and pulled her into his lap, crying as the full force of his memories hit him in the gut. He brushed her hair away from her face, as the rain matted it together. "I won't let you go. I won't leave."

  Aimee blinked at him. "Ross," she said, looking past his shoulder. "You have to."

  In all of these years he had not recalled those words, that directive from Aimee that freed him from the blame of not being by her side when she died. He closed his arms more tightly around her and bent forward, but suddenly there was someone standing behind him, trying to get him to stand up just as hard as he was trying to stay.

  He turned, furious, and found himself staring at Lia.

  With Aimee in his arms, and Lia behind him, Ross went absolutely still. This was hell, a nightmare played out in his mind. Both women needed him; each held a half of his heart. Which one do I go to? he thought, And which one do I lose?

  Lia tugged him upright, toward the other passenger car that had crashed and now lay sideways against a highway barrier. Ross tried to break away from her, to get back to Aimee, certain that this was a test, the one thing he had to get right.

  But by then he couldn't even see Aimee, because the other car was between them. Frustrated, Ross tore away from Lia's firm hold and yanked open the door of the totaled green Honda. A body lay crumpled into a heap behind the steering wheel, canted onto its side. Ross smelled gas; he knew the vehicle was going to blow at any minute.

  He fumbled for the seat belt, which was stuck. "Aimee," he yelled over his shoulder. "I'm coming. You hang on." Another push of the button, and this time it sprang free. Ross reached in at an awkward angle with both hands and hauled the unconscious driver from the wreckage. He dragged the body a distance away, to the lip of the woods. There was a burst of light and heat, and the car torched into flame.

  A fleet of sirens approached, a spray of water from a fire hose showered the car. As a paramedic ran up, Ross grabbed him. "There's a woman at the other car who needs help," he cried.

  "Someone's already taking care of her." The EMT knelt down beside Ross. "What's this one's name?"

  Ross did not know; it was a stranger. He glanced down at the body before him illuminated by the blaze, as he had done nine years ago. Just like then, there was a gash across the driver's hairline, and blood covering her face and her black dress. But this time, he saw her face--really saw her face-- and everything was different. My God. "Her name," Ross said hoarsely, "is Meredith."

  F. Juniper Smugg had been a resident for exactly twenty-seven days at Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington. He was doing a rotation in emergency medicine, but he really wanted dermatology or plastic surgery, something that wasn't a life-or-death specialty where he could go into private practice and not have to deal with all the surprises of a county medical center. Still, he was perfectly willing to pay his dues, which was why he didn't mind taking the body down to the morgue. It beat what they'd been doing to the guy when he arrived-- shocking him and intubating him when any premed could have told you he was dead as a doornail upon arrival.

  He was alone in the elevator. He pushed the button, waited till the doors closed, and turned to the mirrored wall so that he could watch himself rock out as he sang Smash Mouth vocals. He'd just gotten to the chorus of "All-Star" when a hand grabbed his arm.

  The dead man on the stretcher sat up. "Shut the hell up," he said huskily.

  When the doors opened into the morgue, the dead man was standing, and the medical resident was slumped over the narrow stretcher. "Can someone help me?" Ross asked the shocked staff. "This guy's out cold."

  Once Az Thompson's body washed up on the shore of Lake Champlain, it was readied for burial within twenty-four hours, in keeping with native traditions. Winks Champigny, acting as a spokesperson for the Abenaki, recommended laying Az Thompson's remains to rest on the newly acquired property at the junction of Otter Creek Pass and Montgomery Road. He was interred facing east, on his side, to better see the sunrise.

  In the months that followed, a seasonless garden that had never been planted would bloom around the grave--blackberries that did not dry up in winter, calla lilies that kept their heads above the snow line, holly and ivy that thrived in July. The site became a trysting spot for lovers, who valued its privacy and the scent of roses even in December, and who would come to catch sight of the black-haired boy and the blond girl often spied chasing each other through the wildflowers, feeding each other berries until their lips and fingers were stained red as blood.

  Eli almost didn't come home that night. It was a he
ll of paperwork and arbitration with the owners of the quarry, and all he wanted was to collapse next to Shelby and not wake up for the next millennium.

  Except that he wasn't sure if Shelby was ready to see him, or anyone right now.

  He had held her while she cried at the hospital, until she hiked up her chin and said she needed to go home to make arrangements. For the funeral, Eli presumed, but he'd felt her putting up that wall and refusing to let anyone take care of her, and it annoyed the hell out of him. He was going to shower and head over there, whether she liked it or not.

  He went to set his key in the door and realized it was open. As it swung forward, he mustered his defenses, ready for anything. But there was no thief in his kitchen. Just Shelby, her hands buried in a bowl of flour.

  "I broke in," she said, her voice shaking. "To a cop's house."

  Eli wrapped her close, kissed the top of her head. "I'm sorry. I'm so goddamn sorry."

  She was crying, and when she wiped her face with her finger she left a white streak behind. "I couldn't be at my house. I couldn't make any calls to . . . to funeral homes. Reporters, they kept calling, and I couldn't even listen to their messages. The doctors at the hospital gave Ethan and Lucy something to make them sleep, so I gave it to them here and put them in your bed. I made soup. And bread. The phone rang once, but I didn't . . . I fed the dog for you."

  She was making no sense whatsoever, and yet Eli understood every word that came out of her mouth. He rocked her in his embrace and imagined her small white handprints on the back of his suit jacket, as ghostly as the ones that had risen in the mirror at the old Pike place. Shelby wiped her nose on his shirt. "I'll go if you want."

  "Don't," he whispered. "Ever."

  Meredith looked nothing like Lia. Ross didn't know how he had ever even seen a resemblance, now. Her eyes were set farther apart, her hair was a completely different texture. Her skin, it looked to be as soft, but he did not want to touch her to find out, in case he'd disturb her sleep.

  She was in traction. Her leg had been pinned and hoisted and set. Her bloodstream was pumped full of painkillers. Ross had been allowed into her room only because no one at the hospital seemed prepared to deny a man who had been dead just hours earlier.