The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  Caleb looks at the police shield in Patrick’s hand. “Something tells me it’s a little more awkward for me than for you.”

  This is the man who has lived with Nina for seven years. Slept beside her, made a baby with her. This is the man who has had the life Patrick wanted. He had thought that he’d come to terms with the way things had worked out. Nina was happy, Patrick wanted her to be happy, and if that meant that he himself was out of the picture, so be it. But that equation only worked when the man Nina chose was worthy. When the man Nina chose didn’t make her cry.

  Patrick has always believed Caleb to be a good father, and it stuns him a little, now, to realize how badly he wants Caleb to be the perp. If he is, it immediately discredits Caleb. If he is, there is proof that Nina picked the wrong guy.

  Patrick feels his fingers curve into fists, but he tamps down on the urge to inflict pain. In the long run, that’s not going to help either Nina or Nathaniel.

  “Did you put her up to this?” Caleb says tightly.

  “You did this all by yourself,” Patrick answers. “Are you willing to come down to the station?”

  Caleb grabs a jacket from the bed. “Let’s go right now,” he says.

  At the threshold of the door, he reaches out and touches Patrick’s shoulder. Instinct makes Patrick tense; reason forces him to relax. He turns and looks coolly at Caleb. “I didn’t do it,” Caleb says quietly. “Nina and Nathaniel, they’re the other half of me. Who would be stupid enough to throw that away?”

  Patrick does not let his eyes betray him. But he thinks, for the first time, that perhaps Caleb is telling the truth.

  • • •

  Another man might not have felt comfortable with the relationship between his own wife and Patrick Ducharme. Although Caleb had never doubted Nina’s fidelity—or even her feelings for him—Patrick wore his tattered heart on his sleeve. Caleb had spent enough dinners watching Patrick’s eyes follow his wife around the kitchen; he’d seen Patrick spin Nathaniel in the air and tuck the boy’s giggles into his pockets when he thought no one was looking. But Caleb did not mind, really. After all, Nina and Nathaniel were his. If he felt anything for Patrick, it was pity, because he wasn’t as lucky as Caleb.

  Early on, Caleb had been jealous of Nina’s close friendship with Patrick. But she was a woman with a number of male friends. And it quickly became clear that Patrick was too much a part of Nina’s past: Asking her to remove him from her life would have been a mistake, like separating Siamese twins who grew out from a shared heart.

  He is thinking of Nina, now, as he sits at the scarred table in the investigation room of the police station with Patrick and Monica LaFlamme. He is remembering, specifically, the way Nina categorically denied any suggestion that Patrick might have been the one to hurt Nathaniel—yet just a few days later, had seemingly accused Caleb without a second thought.

  Caleb shivers. Once, Patrick had said that they keep the interrogation rooms ten degrees cooler than the rest of the station, to make suspects physically uncomfortable. “Am I under arrest?” he asks.

  “We’re just talking.” Patrick doesn’t meet Caleb’s eye. “Old friends.”

  Old friends, oh yes. Like Hitler and Churchill.

  Caleb doesn’t want to be sitting here, defending himself. He wants to talk to his boy. He wants to know if Nina finished reading him the pirate book. He wants to know if Nathaniel wet his bed again.

  “We might as well get started.” Patrick turns on a tape recorder.

  Caleb suddenly realizes his best source of information is sitting three feet away. “You saw Nathaniel,” he murmurs. “How is he?”

  Patrick glances up, surprised. He’s used to being the one who asks the questions.

  “Was he okay, when you were there? Did he look like he’d been crying?”

  “He was . . . he was all right, given the circumstances,” Patrick says. “Now—”

  “Sometimes, if he’s not eating, you can distract him by talking about something he likes. Soccer, or frogs, like that. And while you talk you just keep putting food on his fork. Tell Nina.”

  “Let’s talk about Nathaniel.”

  “What do you think I’m doing? Has he said anything yet? Verbally, I mean. Not with his hands?”

  “Why?” Patrick asks guardedly. “Are you worried he might have more to tell us?”

  “Worried? I wouldn’t care if the only word he could say was my name. I wouldn’t care if it meant I’d be locked up for life. I just want to hear it for myself.”

  “His accusation?”

  “No,” Caleb says. “His voice.”

  • • •

  I have run out of places to go. The bank, the post office, an ice cream for Nathaniel. A local park, the pet store. Since leaving the church, I have dragged us from building to building, running errands that don’t need to be done, all so that I won’t have to go back to my own home.

  “Let’s visit Patrick,” I announce, swinging into the parking lot of the Biddeford police station at the last minute. He’ll hate me for this—checking up on his investigation—but above all, he’ll understand. In the backseat of the car, Nathaniel slumps to the side, letting me know what he thinks of this idea.

  “Five minutes,” I promise.

  The American flag cracks sharply in the cold wind as Nathaniel and I walk up the path toward the front door. Justice for all. When we are about twenty feet away, the door opens. Patrick steps out first, shielding his eyes against the sun. Directly behind him are Monica LaFlamme and Caleb.

  Nathaniel sucks in his breath, then wrenches free of me. At the same moment, Caleb sees him and goes down on one knee. His arms catch Nathaniel tight, hold him close. Nathaniel looks up at me with a wide smile, and in that awful moment I realize he thinks I have planned this for him, a wonderful surprise.

  Patrick and I stand a distance away, bookends, bracketing this story as it happens.

  He comes to his senses first. “Nathaniel,” Patrick says quietly, firmly, and he goes to pull my son away. But Nathaniel is having none of that. He wraps his arms around Caleb’s neck, he tries to burrow inside his coat.

  Over our son’s head, Caleb’s eyes meet mine. He stands up, taking Nathaniel with him.

  I force myself to look away. To think of the hundreds of children I’ve met—the ones who are bruised and filthy and starving and neglected—who scream as they are removed from their homes, and beg to stay with an abusive mother or father.

  “Buddy,” Caleb says quietly, forcing Nathaniel to look at him. “You know I’d like nothing better than to spend some time with you right now. But . . . I have something to do.”

  Nathaniel shakes his head, his face crumpling.

  “I’m gonna see you just as soon as I can.” Caleb walks toward me, bouncing Nathaniel in his arms; peels him off his own body and settles him into my embrace. By now, Nathaniel is crying so hard that the silent sobs choke him. His rib cage shudders under my palm like a dragon coming to life.

  As Caleb heads toward his truck, Nathaniel lifts his gaze. His eyes are slitted and nearly black. He raises his fist and hits me on the shoulder. Then he does it again, and again, a tantrum waged against me.

  “Nathaniel!” Patrick says sharply.

  But it doesn’t hurt. Not nearly as much as the rest.

  • • •

  “You have to expect some regression,” Dr. Robichaud says quietly, as we both watch Nathaniel lie listlessly on his stomach on the carpet of the playroom. “His family is coming apart; in his mind, he’s responsible for it.”

  “He ran to his father,” I say. “You should have seen it.”

  “Nina, you know better than most people that doesn’t prove Caleb’s innocent. Kids in that situation believe they’ve got a special bond with the parent. Nathaniel running to him—that’s textbook behavior.”

  Or maybe, I let myself think, Caleb did nothing wrong. But I push the doubt away, because I am on Nathaniel’s side now. “So what do I do?”

  �€