Perfect Match Read online

  Perfect Match

  By Jodi Picoult

  Songs of the Humpback Whale

  Harvesting the Heart

  Picture Perfect

  Mercy

  The Pact

  Keeping Faith

  Plain Truth

  Salem Falls

  Perfect Match

  Second Glance

  My Sister's Keeper

  Vanishing Acts

  The Tenth Circle

  Nineteen Minutes

  Change of Heart

  Handle with Care

  JODI PICOULT

  Perfect Match

  This edition first published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin in 2009

  First published in Australia in 2002

  First published in the United States in 2002 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Copyright (c) Jodi Picoult 2002

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74175 803 0

  Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Acknowledgments

  I'm often asked how much of my books come from my own life, and given the nature of the issues I cover the answer is, thankfully, not much. Perfect Match was particularly difficult, however, because I would sit at the breakfast table with my children and take away their conversations to put into the mouth of young Nathaniel Frost. So I'd like to thank Kyle, Jake, and Samantha--not only for their jokes and their stories, but because they gave me the soul of my main character, a mother who would do anything for someone she loves. Thanks to my psychiatric research staff: Burl Daviss, Doug Fagen, Tia Horner, and Jan Scheiner; to my medical experts, David Toub and Elizabeth Bengtson; to Kathy Hemenway for an insight into social work; to Katie Desmond for all things Catholic; to Diana Watson for sharing kindergarten war stories; to Chris Keating and George Waldron for early legal information; to Syndy Morris for transcribing so fast; and to Olivia and Matt Licciardi, for the Holy Goats and the oxygen query. Also, thanks to Elizabeth Martin and her brother, who found my ending; and to Laura Gross, Jane Picoult, Steve Ives, and JoAnn Mapson for reading the early draft and loving it enough to help me make it better. Judith Curr and Karen Mender make me feel like a supernova among a constellation of Pocket authors. Having Emily Bestler and Sarah Branham as my angels in the editorial department at Pocket makes me the luckiest author alive; and Camille McDuffie and Laura Mullen--my fairy godmothers of publicity--deserve wands and crowns so everyone will know how much magic they can weave. I need to thank my husband, Tim van Leer, who is not only a ready source of information about guns, stars, and stonework but who also spoils me with coffee and salads and smooths the world so that I am free to do what I love to do. And finally, I'd like to thank three people who have become such strong research contributors that it's hard to imagine writing anything without their input: Detective-Lieutenant Frank Moran, who made me think like a detective; Lisa Schiermeier, who not only taught me DNA but also mentioned, in passing, the wonderful medical twist that made my head start humming; and Jennifer Sternick, the district attorney who talked into a tape recorder for four straight days, and without whom Perfect Match would simply not have been possible.

  To Jake,

  the bravest boy I know.

  Love, Mom

  PROLOGUE

  When the monster finally came through the door, he was wearing a mask.

  She stared and stared at him, amazed that no one else could see through the disguise. He was the neighbor next door, watering his forsythia. He was the stranger who smiled across an elevator. He was the kind man who took a toddler's hand to help him cross the street. Can't you see? she wanted to scream. Don't you know?

  Beneath her, the chair was unforgiving. Her hands were folded as neatly as a schoolgirl's, her shoulders were squared; but her heart was all out of rhythm, a jellyfish writhing in her chest. When had breathing become something she had to consciously remember to do?

  Bailiffs flanked him, guiding him past the prosecutor's table, in front of the judge, toward the spot where the defense attorney was sitting. From the corner came the sibilant hum of a TV camera. It was a familiar scene, but she realized she had never seen it from this angle. Change your point of view, and the perspective is completely different.

  The truth sat in her lap, heavy as a child. She was going to do this.

  That knowledge, which should have stopped her short, instead coursed through her limbs like brandy. For the first time in weeks, she didn't feel as if she were sleepwalking on the ocean floor, her lungs fiery, holding on to the breath she'd taken before she went under--a breath that would have been bigger, more deliberate, had she known what was coming. In this horrible place, watching this horrible man, she suddenly felt normal again. And with this feeling came the most wonderfully normal thoughts: that she hadn't wiped down the kitchen table after breakfast; that the library book which had gone missing was behind the dirty clothes hamper; that her car was fifteen hundred miles overdue to have the oil changed. That in the next two seconds, the bailiffs escorting him would step back to give him privacy to speak to his attorney.

  In her purse, her fingers slipped over the smooth leather cover of her checkbook, her sunglasses, a lipstick, the furry nut of a Life Saver, lost from its package. She found what she was looking for and grabbed it, surprised to see that it fit with the same familiar comfort as her husband's hand.

  One step, two, three, that was all it took to come close enough to the monster to smell his fear, to see the black edge of his coat against the white collar of his shirt. Black and white, that was what it came down to.

  For a second she wondered why no one had stopped her. Why no one had realized that this moment was inevitable; that she was going to come in here and do just this. Even now, the people who knew her the best hadn't grabbed for her as she rose from her seat.

  That was when she realized she was wearing a disguise, just like the monster. It was so clever, so authentic; nobody really knew what she had turned into. But now she could feel it cracking into pieces. Let the whole world see, she thought, as the mask fell away. And she knew as she pressed the gun to the defendant's head, she knew as she shot him four times in quick succession, that at this moment she would not have recognized herself.

  I

  When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should--so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

  --Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

  We're in the woods, just the two of us. I have on my best sneakers, the ones with rainbow laces and the place on the back that Mason chewed through when he was just a puppy. Her steps are bigger than mine, but it's a game--I try to jump into the hole her shoes leave behind. I'm a frog; I'm a kangaroo; I'm magic.