The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “Why did the girls accuse the goodwives of the town of seeing the Devil?” Mrs. Fishman said. “Gillian?”

  She had read the play—it was their homework assignment. Totally lame, too. A bunch of Puritan girls saying the town biddies were witches, just so that one of them could do the nasty with a married man and not have to worry about his loser of a wife finding out. “Well, at first they didn’t want to get caught for practicing voodoo. So they tried to take the heat off themselves by telling a lie. But this lie . . . it turned out to be the one thing that brought all these other truths out into the open.”

  “Such as?”

  “Like Proctor and Abigail hiding the salami,” the jock behind her called out, and the rest of the class laughed.

  Mrs. Fishman’s lips twitched. “Thank you, Frank, for putting it so succinctly.” She began to walk through the aisles. “Rumor has it that Abigail wound up as a prostitute in Boston. Elizabeth Proctor remarried after her husband was hung. And New Age witches, of course, are no longer accused of consorting with the Devil.”

  Gilly bowed her head, so that her hair spilled forward to shield her face from view. You’d be surprised, she thought.

  It was 8 A.M., and already Addie was so tired she could barely stand. “More coffee?” she asked, holding the pot so it hovered like a bumblebee above the bloom of Stuart Hollings’s mug.

  “You know, Addie, the docs said I ought to stop drinking it because it wasn’t good for my heart.” Then he grinned. “So I said, if three cups a day got me to see the sunny side of 86, I’m just gonna keep doin’ what I’ve been doin’!”

  Smiling, Addie poured. “Let’s hope this gets you another 86 years.”

  “Christamighty, no,” Wallace groaned, beside him. “I’m hoping he’ll buy the farm before me, just so’s I can have a decade of peace and quiet.”

  At the cash register, Roy cracked a package of pennies like an egg and let the coins shimmy into the bowl of the money drawer. “Busy today,” he remarked as Addie passed by, seating more customers.

  She sighed. “We haven’t had this kind of volume since the summer we offered free blue plate specials every time the thermometer topped a hundred degrees.”

  She smiled at her father, and he smiled back, but they both knew what had caused the sudden increase in patronage. People who had never set foot inside the Do-Or-Diner had come because there was a spectacle on display in their town, a criminal who had the nerve to choose their own small hamlet as a place of residence, and they wanted to see what kind of man would be so daring, or so stupid. It seemed impossible that the news had spread so quickly from Wes to filter into this group of customers, but then Addie only had to look as far as herself to know that it had happened before. Rumor grew and morphed, until a man accused of assault might turn into a serial rapist, until a grieving mother was seen as a madwoman.

  The sad truth was, nothing was better for a small-town diner than gossip.

  So far, of course, they’d been denied a show. But even as Addie thought this, the door opened and Jack slipped inside, intent on making his way to the safety of the kitchen before anyone could speak to him. His appearance electrified the tiny room: Diners paused with their coffee mugs held in midair, their forks suspended with a bite of food while they stared at a man who had, overnight, transformed from “the dishwasher at the diner” into “the convicted rapist.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jack muttered.

  Addie planted herself directly in his path, unwilling to budge until he looked up at her. “What happened?”

  “Please, Addie. Could we just not talk about it now?”

  She nodded briskly. “Well, I need you out here to clear.”

  The thought of a task was a brass ring, and Jack grabbed on with both hands. “Just let me get my apron.” Slowly, the diner thawed into activity as Jack disappeared behind the swinging doors, the two sides snapping together in an overbite.

  Jack reappeared with an empty busing bin. She watched him approach a family that had finished eating: a mother, a father, a little boy. “Mommy,” the child said in a stage whisper, “is that the bad man?”

  Addie was at his side in a moment. “I’ll take over.” Her voice jolted Jack out of his surprise. With a nod, he crossed the room to bus the counter.

  Stuart winked. “Guess Addie sent you here because we’re safe. Not a perky set of hooters between the two of us.”

  Flushing deeply, Jack reached for their dirty silverware.

  “Don’t blame you, anyhow. You ever watch that MTV station? Heck, you’d have to be six feet under to keep from noticing that Britney Spears gal.” Stuart grinned. “Reckon she might have given me a stroke I wouldn’t have minded, if you know what I mean.”

  “Them girls,” Wallace agreed. “They’re asking for it.”

  Jack’s hands tightened on the busboy’s bin. “They don’t ask for it.”

  “You’re right,” Stuart said, and chuckled. “They see a guy like you and they beg for it.”

  It happened so quickly that later, Jack couldn’t recall the exact moment he grabbed Stuart by the parchment folds of his neck, lifting him off the stool with a single hand. Or how Roy tried to wrestle Jack off the octogenarian. The collective attention of the diner was riveted on a performance beyond their wildest dreams.

  “Jack!” Addie cried, her voice cutting to the quick. “Jack, you have to stop.”

  He let go immediately, and Stuart rolled to his side, coughing. The blood that had been pounding in Jack’s head flowed evenly again, and he stared at his hands as if they’d grown from the ends of his wrists just moments before. “Mr. Hollings,” he stammered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “The doc was almost right,” Stuart wheezed. “It ain’t the coffee what’ll kill me, but the guy who cleans it up.” With Wallace’s support, he struggled to his feet. “Oh, you’re tough, Jack. It takes a real man to beat up a guy as old as me . . . and to fuck a child.”

  Jack’s hands twitched at his sides. “Stuart, Wallace,” Addie said. “I’m so sorry.” She took a step forward, smiling as graciously as she could. “Of course, breakfast is on the house. For everyone.”

  There was a cheer, and as Stuart and Wallace became immediate heroes again, the tension dissolved like fog. Addie turned to Jack. “Can I talk to you? In private?”

  She led him into the women’s bathroom, pretty and floral and smelling of potpourri. Jack didn’t let himself meet her eyes; he just shuffled and waited for the storm to break.

  “Thank you,” Addie said, winding her arms around his neck as delicately as ivy.

  A moment later, the taste of her still on his lips, Jack spoke. “Why aren’t you angry at me?”

  “I admit, I wish it hadn’t been Stuart. And I wish it hadn’t been in front of so many people, who came here looking for just this. But sooner or later, they’re going to wonder why a rapist would have taken the victim’s side.” She pulled him closer, so that his grateful face was buried against the curve of her neck, and his breath fell between the buttons of her blouse. “Come over tonight?” she whispered. And she felt his smile against her skin.

  In one corner of the Salem Falls High School cafeteria, a makeshift altar had been erected. It overflowed with carnation bouquets and teddy bears and handmade cards that wished Hailey McCourt a speedy recuperation following surgery to remove a brain tumor. “I heard,” Whitney said, “that it was the size of a grapefruit.”

  Gillian took a sip of her iced tea. “That’s ridiculous. It would have been pushing out the side of her head.”

  Meg shuddered. “Hailey was horrible and all, but I don’t wish that on anyone.”

  Amused, Gilly said, “You don’t wish that on anyone?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Meg, you’re the very reason it happened! Don’t you find it just the slightest bit coincidental that we cast a spell on her, and the next day she started falling down?”

  “Jesus, Gill, do you have to tell the whole school?” Meg glanced nervously