Salem Falls

by Jodi Picoult

  Amos forced his attention back to Wes. "You off soon?"

  "Ten, fifteen minutes."

  "Good, good." He nodded. "Well, thanks for the tip."

  "Just trying to keep everyone safe."

  Amos held up his hand in farewell, already moving off. Wes headed back toward the green again. He never noticed that Amos had turned away from the road that led to his house and was running quickly in the opposite direction.

  Tom O'Neill swung the door open, surprised to find Amos Duncan on his doorstep, panting hard.

  "Amos, you all right?"

  "Sorry to bother you."

  Tom glanced over his shoulder. In the dining room, his family was gathered around their dinner. "No, no problem at all." He stepped out onto the porch. "What's the matter?"

  Amos soberly met his gaze. "Well," he said. "It's like this."

  April 30, 2000

  Salem Falls,

  New Hampshire

  Addie couldn't get Jack out of her mind. Now, she leaned forward, kissing the nape of his neck in a blatant attempt to draw his attention from the TV set in her living room. The Formosa type of this tea is more famous than the Amoy, Foochow, and Canton varieties.

  "What is oolong," Jack said, his elbows resting on his knees. Addie opened her mouth and licked the soft shell of his ear. "Cut it out! I'm on a roll."

  "You could be on me." Most hours of the day, Jack could be counted on to catch her gaze across the diner, hot enough to make her stumble, or manage to pass by her so closely their bodies brushed. But when Jeopardy!came on, she could have paraded in front of him completely naked without managing to capture his attention.

  Jack was addicted to Jeopardy! In three years, he had gone only one day without seeing the show, and that was because he was driving in a sheriff's cruiser to the jail at the time. He was delighted that because he and Addie had taken the afternoon off to move his things, today he'd have the chance to watch at both 7 and 11 P.M. Addie, however, had a different agenda.

  She began to unbutton his shirt, but Jack brushed her away. "I'll get you back during the commercial," he warned halfheartedly.

  "Ooh ... now I'm scared."

  Demeter brought famine upon the earth after this daughter was abducted to the underworld.

  "I bet you know this one," Jack said.

  In response, she slipped her hand down the front of his jeans.

  He jumped. "Addie!" he said, even as he swelled into her palm.

  "Who is Persephone?" the contestant said on the screen.

  Addie squeezed gently. "Aha. You missed."

  Beneath her, Jack's hips moved. "I knew the answer. I was just distracted before I could give it."

  Jefferson said it "is no excuse in any country ... because it can always be prevented."

  Addie straddled him, blocking his view of the television set. Finally, Jack gave up fighting. He drew her face down and kissed her, slipping the answer into her mouth: "What is ignorance of the law."

  "Ignorance," Addie repeated. "A very nice segue to bliss." She arched her throat, tilting back her head, and suddenly stilled. "Did you hear that?"

  But Jack's famous concentration was now focused entirely on Addie. "No."

  A crash, the sound of running. Addie sat up a little straighter. "There it is again."

  "It's an animal," Jack suggested. "You live in the woods."

  She pulled away from him, even as he grabbed for her hand and groaned at the loss of her soft weight on his lap. Peering out the window, Addie could only see the edge of the swing set, serrated by the moonlight. "Nothing out there."

  "Then try looking here." Jack stood up, his erection straining against his jeans. He took Addie into his arms. "It's probably raccoons. Why don't you go upstairs while I get rid of them?"

  "You're going to miss Final Jeopardy?" Addie teased.

  "Never," he said, all seriousness, and then he winked. "There's a rerun at eleven."

  Gilly could not get Jack out of her mind. She relived the moment outside the diner a hundred times, playing different scenarios like a slide show--things she should have said and done instead, images of Jack grabbing her and kissing her so hard her lips bled. Every time she stumbled over the part where Jack had treated her like a child, her stomach clenched, and she'd start to cry, dying a hundred deaths all over again. A moment later, she'd be spitting mad, itching for the next opportunity she might have to show him she wasn't a child after all.

  Her father had kept a hawk's eye on her all afternoon and evening; then he'd gone running and made her swear she would be there when he got home. Now she was drowning her sorrows in the emotional angst of Sarah McLachlan and painting her fingernails bloodred as the phone rang. Whitney's voice came on the line. "Gil, what time tonight?"

  Gillian sighed. She didn't want to deal with her friends right now. She didn't want to do anything but figure out how to keep her father from being such a goddamned warden, so that she could make Jack see what he was missing. "What time for what?"

  "The meeting?"

  "The meeting ..."

  "I could have sworn I put down April thirtieth on my calendar."

  Understanding bloomed. "Oh, Beltane," Gilly said.

  "How could you forget?"

  Gillian hadn't forgotten, exactly; she'd just been preoccupied with Jack. Her coven had made plans to meet in the woods behind the cemetery, at the base of the flowering dogwood tree. Meg was bringing Georgia fatwood to light a bonfire, Whit had been given the task of sewing herb sachets to hang on the tree as gifts to the God and Goddess, and Chelsea was going to figure out some kind of maypole. Gilly's job had been the Simple Feast, the sharing of food and drink within a circle that had been cast.

  Her father would kill her if she sneaked out of the house.

  Her gaze lit on a small ceramic vase that had once been her mother's. There was a sprig of pussywillows inside, but no water. Instead, hiding at the base, was the vial of atropine she'd taken from the R & D lab.

  "Eleven," she said into the phone. "Be there."

  They attacked him from behind. Jack had no sooner stepped out of the small halo of light cast by the lantern hanging beside the door than he was grabbed, his arms pinned behind him while fists slammed into his ribs, his belly, his face. Blood ran down his throat, tinny; he spat it back at them. He struggled to find their faces, to mark them in his mind, but they were wearing stocking caps pulled low and scarves tugged high; all Jack could see was an ocean of black, a series of hands, and wave after wave of their anger.

  *

  Addie brushed out her hair, then sprayed perfume onto her wrists and knees and navel. Jack had been gone awhile, which was strange; even stranger, she could hear an occasional crash. If it was raccoons, it was a hell of a lot of them.

  She stepped to the bedroom window and pulled back the Swiss organdy curtain. It was dark for eight o'clock, and at first she could not see Jack at all. Then a foot appeared in the yellow periphery cast by the porch light. An elbow. Finally, the entire body of a man, dressed in black, his hands bright with blood.

  "Jack," she gasped, and she reached underneath the bed for the rifle she kept there. She had used it once in twenty years--to shoot a rabid coon that had wandered into the yard where Chloe was playing. She loaded it on the run, hurrying downstairs, and threw open the front door to fire once into the night sky. Five faces turned, and their owners then ran off in disparate directions into the woods behind her house, tracks spreading like the spokes of a wheel.

  On the gravel, in a boneless, battered heap, lay Jack.

  Addie set down the gun, ran to his side, and gently rolled him over. Oh, God, she thought. What have they done to you?

  Jack coughed, his lips pulling back to show teeth shiny with blood. He tried to sit up, wincing away from Addie's hands. "No," he grit out, that one syllable staining the stars. "Noooo!"

  His cry bent back the young grass lining the driveway; it shouldered aside the violet clouds and left the moon to shiver, bare-boned. "Jack," she s
oothed. But his voice rose, until it was an umbrella over Salem Falls, until people on the far side of town had to close their windows to the sweet night air just to block off the sound of his pain.

  The last thing she wanted to do was poison herself. To that end, Gilly logged onto the Internet at about 8:15 P.M., hoping to find the correct dosage of atropine. Thanks to Columbine, it was common knowledge now that you could even build a bomb with the help of the World Wide Web. Surely it would be a piece of cake to find the amount of hallucinogen it took to get high.

  While the Web pages loaded, she painted her fingernails--one hand at a time, so that she could zip from one search engine to another, looking up herbal journals for information about belladonna and atropine sulfate. Finally, she found a site that listed adult dosages. In pill form, 5 milligrams. To dilate pupils, of a grain. And taken internally, to of a grain.

  Gilly frowned. Seemed like quite a range. What if she could take of a grain but Whitney, who was tiny, only needed ?

  The telephone rang again. "Gilly," her father said. "I wanted to check in on you."

  "Check up on me, you mean."

  "Now, sweetheart. You know why I'm doing this."

  Her heart began to pound in triple time. "Aren't you supposed to be jogging?"

  "Just finished. I should be home soon."

  What would she do if he arrived to find her missing? "Actually," Gilly said, "I'm glad you called. Meg wants to know if I can come over tonight."

  "I really don't think it's a terrific idea, Gilly, with all that's going on."

  "Please, Daddy. Her mom is going to pick us up for a ten o'clock movie, and who's going to be stupid enough to hurt me while I'm out with a detective's wife?" When he didn't respond, Gilly forged ahead. "Mrs. Saxton says I can stay over. If it's okay with you." She was amazed at how easily the lies came, now that she had them in her mind. She was going to celebrate Beltane tonight, come hell or high water or Amos Duncan.

  She could hear her father's resolve cracking just the tiniest bit. Meg's dad was a cop; her mom, a woman they'd known their whole lives. Gilly would probably be safer in the Saxton household than in his own. "Okay," he said. "But I want you to call me when you get home from the movie. No matter what time it is."

  "I will. Love you, Daddy."

  "Me, too."

  For a long moment after she hung up, Gilly just stared at the phone and smiled. Webs were the very easiest things to spin.

  She logged off the computer and walked to the kitchen. Astral projection was going to be her Beltane surprise for the coven; the effects would be even more startling if they were completely unexpected. Gilly stirred the thermos of iced tea and considered the vial in her hand once again.

  Courage.

  She trickled a tiny bit of the liquid into the tea, then stuck her finger into the thermos for a taste ... nope, it was still tea, if a little bit bitter-- of a grain? ? Shrugging, Gilly emptied the entire contents of the test-tube into the thermos and screwed on the cap.

  Jack woke to find Addie curled beside him, her hand clutching a washcloth that was spreading a water stain over the comforter in the shape of a bell. He came up on one elbow, wincing at the ache of his ribs, and touched the side of her face. When she didn't stir, he carefully levered himself off the bed.

  What might his life have been like if he'd had someone like her standing by his side during the nightmare in Loyal? What if he'd served his time but met her every Tuesday night in the common room where inmates could face their visitors over long folding tables, under the watchful eyes of the guards? What if he'd had Addie to come home to?

  He paced through the dark house, wishing he could do for her all she'd done for him. Thanks to Addie, Jack no longer spent time reviewing his mistakes. He had put them into a box and shut the lid tight. Addie, though ... she sorted through the box daily, holding up each memory to the light like an heirloom, even though it made her bleed inside.

  He found himself standing in front of Chloe's bedroom door.

  Within minutes, he had stripped the bed of its sheets and covers and removed the posters from the walls. He stacked Chloe's toys in a box he'd found in her closet. If he could just clear out the constant reminder of what Addie had lost, maybe it wouldn't be so hard for her to look forward rather than back.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Addie's voice throbbed, as if she'd taken a punch.

  "Cleaning up. I thought that if you didn't have to look at this every day--"

  "That I wouldn't see her face first thing when I wake up in the morning anyway? That I don't know her by heart? Do you think that I have to look at a ... a hair clip to remember the person I love the most in the world?"

  "Loved," Jack said quietly.

  "That doesn't stop just because she's not here anymore." Addie sank into the tousled sheets, the fabric floating up around her like the petals of a tulip.

  "Addie, I didn't do this to hurt you. If what we've got means anything ..."

  She turned her face to his. "You will never, ever mean more to me than my daughter does."

  Jack reeled back, her words more painful than any blow he'd felt that night. He watched her fold herself into the pool of linens, her spine rounding. "What did you do with it?" she said, suddenly lifting her tear-stained face.

  "With what?"

  "The smell of her. Of Chloe." Addie scrabbled through the sheets and pillows. "It was here; it was here just this morning ... but it's gone now."

  "Sweetheart," Jack said gently. "Those sheets don't smell like Chloe. They haven't in a very long time."

  Her hands made fists in the fabric. "Get out," she sobbed, turning her face away as Jack shut the door softly behind him.

  The Rooster's Spit had never, in anyone's recollection, had anything to do with either chickens or expectorating, but a few old-timers could have told you that the bar tucked at the far edge of town had been a Knights of Columbus hall in a past life, and a Baptist church in another. Now, it was a dark, close space where a man could fall into a puddle of his own troubles, or a tumbler of whiskey, which was just as good.

  Roy Peabody nuzzled the lip of his drink, closing his eyes at the sweet heat that rolled down his throat to bloom in his belly. After weeks of being hounded by Addie, or kept watch over by Jack St. Bride, he was in a bar again. He was alone, with the exception of Marlon, the barkeep, who was polishing glasses until they squeaked. Unlike some bartenders Roy had known--and Roy had known many--Marlon was gifted at simply staying quiet and letting a fellow savor his alcohol. In fact, Roy felt more at home in this bar, where no one expected a goddamn thing of him, than in his apartment.

  When the door to the Rooster's Spit swung open, both Roy and Marlon looked up in surprise. It was rare for people in Salem Falls to be out drinking at 10 P.M. on a weeknight, and Roy felt a small needle of resentment at the thought that now he would have to share this wonderful moment with someone else.

  It was hard to say who was more stunned when each first saw the other: Jack or Roy.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "What does it look like?" Roy grimaced. "Run along now; go tell my daughter."

  But Jack just sat heavily down on the barstool beside him. "I'll have whatever he's having," he said to Marlon.

  The whiskey was stamped before him like a seal of approval. Jack could feel Roy's eyes on him as he took his first long swallow. "You going to watch me the whole time?"

  "I didn't figure you for a drinking man," Roy admitted.

  Jack laughed softly. "People aren't always what they seem."

  Roy accepted this, and nodded. "You look like shit."

  "Thanks so very much."

  The old man reached out and gingerly touched the cut over Jack's eye. "You walk into a wall?"

  Jack glanced at him sidelong. "You drinking lemonade?"

  At that, Roy hesitated. "I take it Addie knows you're here."

  " 'Bout as much as she knows you are."

  "I told you, St. Bride, if you break her heart--"
r />   "How about when she breaks mine, Roy?" Jack interrupted bitterly. "What are you going to do for me in that case?"

  Roy took one look at the deep grooves carved beside Jack's mouth and saw in his face something too, too familiar. "I'll buy you a drink," he said.

  Once, on a Girl Scout campout, Gillian had built a fire. While the other kids were busy making their s'mores and singing "Kum ba Yah," Gilly had fed things to the flame: sticks and pine needles and shoelaces, bits of bread and pennies and even a hapless toad. She had been mesmerized by its greed, by the way it devoured everything in its path. She'd stared at the bonfire and thought: I don't have a heart. I have one of these inside of me.

  Tonight's bonfire was smaller ... or maybe she was bigger. She stood holding hands with the others around it. But they were no longer Gillian, Chelsea, Whitney, and Meg. Goddesses all, they were a coven. And she was their high priestess.

  The wind, ripe with spring, slipped between Gillian's thighs like a lover. It was her only covering; her clothes lay in a pile by the dogwood. When she'd said that she wanted to be as pure as possible, the others had been surprised. But Whitney had whipped off her shirt. Chelsea shivered in her bra and panties. Only Meg, self-conscious, was fully dressed.

  Gilly met the eyes of each of the others. Did they feel it? Never had her body buzzed like this. She tilted her head back, casting her voice into the night sky. "Guardians of the watchtowers of the east, where sun, moon, and stars are born, I do summon, stir, and call you up!"

  The words wrote themselves, drawn from her heart like a ribbon, and for the first time Gilly understood what Starshine had meant about the power of writing your own spells. "Travel over our skin like a whisper, caress us. Bring us imagination; teach us to dance. Blessed be."

  The others swayed slightly. "Blessed be," they repeated.

  Whitney turned, her face glowing. "Guardians of the watchtowers of the south, passionate and hot, I do summon, stir, and call you up. Share your heat with us; make us burn inside. Blessed be!"

  "Blessed be!"