The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  Nathaniel shakes his head and hands Patrick a card. “Is this for me?” Patrick asks, then reads the name and smiles broadly. “Mike Schmidt, rookie. I’m sure your dad will be thrilled you’ve been so generous.” He tucks it into his pocket and takes out a pad and pen at the same time. “Nathaniel, you think it would be all right if I asked you some questions?”

  Well. He is tired of questions. He is tired, period. But Patrick climbed all the way up here. Nathaniel jerks his head, yes.

  Patrick touches the boy’s knee, slowly, so slowly that it doesn’t even make Nathaniel jump, although these days everything does. “Will you tell me the truth, Weed?” he asks softly.

  Slower this time, Nathaniel nods.

  “Did your daddy hurt you?”

  Nathaniel looks at Patrick, then at his mother, and emphatically shakes his head. He feels something open up in his chest, making it easier to breathe.

  “Did somebody else hurt you?”

  Yes.

  “Do you know who it was?”

  Yes.

  Patrick’s gaze is locked with Nathaniel’s. He won’t let him turn away, no matter how badly Nathaniel wants to. “Was it a boy or a girl?”

  Nathaniel is trying to remember—how is it said again? He looks at his mother, but Patrick shakes his head, and he knows that, now, it is all up to him. Tentatively, his hand comes up to his head. He touches his brow, as if there is a baseball cap there. “Boy,” he hears his mother translate.

  “Was it a grown-up, or a kid?”

  Nathaniel blinks at him. He cannot sign those words.

  “Well, was he big like me, or little like you?”

  Nathaniel’s hand hovers between his own body, and Patrick’s. Then falls, deliberately, in the middle.

  That makes Patrick grin. “Okay, it was a medium guy, and it was someone you know?”

  Yes.

  “Can you tell me who?”

  Nathaniel feels his whole face tighten, muscles bunching. He squeezes his eyes shut. Please please please, he thinks. Let me. “Patrick,” his mother says, and she takes a step forward, but Patrick holds out a hand and she stops.

  “Nathaniel, if I brought you a bunch of pictures”—he points to the baseball cards—“like these . . . do you think you could show me who this person was?”

  Nathaniel’s hands flutter over the piles, bumblebees choosing a place to light. He looks from one card to the other. He cannot read, he cannot speak, but he knows that Rollie Fingers had a handlebar moustache, Al Hrabosky looked like a grizzly bear. Once something sticks in his head, it stays there; it’s just a matter of getting it back out again.

  Nathaniel looks up at Patrick; and he nods. This, this he can do.

  • • •

  Monica has been in accommodations far worse than the efficiency suite where she finds Caleb Frost, but this is almost more jarring, and she thinks it is because she has seen the sort of home where he is supposed to be. The minute Caleb recognizes her face through the keyhole of the door, he throws it open. “What’s the matter with Nathaniel?” he asks, true fear washing over his features.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. He’s made another disclosure. A new ID.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It means you’re no longer a suspect, Mr. Frost,” Monica says quietly.

  Questions rise in him like a bonfire. “Who,” Caleb manages, the word tasting of ash.

  “I think you should go home and speak to your wife about it,” she answers, then turns briskly and walks away, her purse tucked primly beneath her arm.

  “Wait,” Caleb calls out. He takes a deep breath. “Is . . . is Nina okay with that?”

  Monica smiles, lets the light reach her eyes. “Who do you think asked me to come?”

  • • •

  Peter agrees to meet me at the district court, where I’m going to have the restraining order vacated. The process takes all of ten minutes, a rubber stamp, with the judge asking only one question: How is Nathaniel?

  By the time I come into the lobby, Peter is racing through the front door. He immediately comes toward me, concern drawing down the corners of his mouth. “I got here as soon as I could,” he says breathlessly. His eyes dart to Nathaniel, holding my hand.

  He thinks I need him to twist the letter of the law for me, squeeze blood from the stone heart of a judge, do something to stack the scales of justice in my favor. Suddenly I am embarrassed by the reason I called him.

  “What is it?” Peter demands. “Anything, Nina.”

  I slip my hands in my coat pockets. “I really just wanted to get a cup of coffee,” I admit. “I wanted to feel, for five minutes, like everything was back the way it used to be.”

  Peter’s gaze is a spotlight; it sees down to my soul. “I can do that too,” he says, and loops his arm through mine.

  • • •

  Although there are no seats left at the bar at Tequila Mockingbird by the time Patrick arrives, the bartender takes one look at him and hints strongly to a visiting businessman that he take his drink to a booth in the back. Patrick wraps his black mood around him like a parka, hops onto the vacant stool, and signals to Stuyvesant. The bartender comes over pouring his usual, Glenfiddich. But he hands Patrick the bottle, and keeps the glass of scotch behind the bar. “Just in case someone else here wants a shot,” Stuyv explains.

  Patrick looks at the bottle, at the bartender. He tosses his car keys on the counter, a fair trade, and takes a long swig of the liquor.

  By now, Nina has been to the court and back. Maybe Caleb has made it home in time for dinner. Maybe they’ve gotten Nathaniel to bed early, and are even now lying in the dark next to each other.

  Patrick picks up his bottle again. He has been in their bedroom before. Big king-size bed. If he was married to her, they’d sleep on a narrow cot, that’s how close to her he would be.

  He’d been married himself for three years, because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of fillers that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.

  Patrick pitches forward as a blond woman hits him hard on the shoulder. “You pervert!”

  “What the hell?”

  She narrows her eyes. They are green, and caked with too much mascara. “Did you just touch my ass?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly, she grins, insinuating herself between Patrick and the elderly man on his right. “Well, damn. How many times will I have to walk by before you do?”

  Sliding her drink beside Patrick’s bottle, she holds out her hand. Manicured. He hates manicured hands. “I’m Xenia. And you are?”

  “Really not interested.” Patrick smiles tightly, turns back to the bar.

  “My mom didn’t raise a quitter,” Xenia says. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a funeral director.”

  “No, really.”

  Patrick sighs. “I’m on the vice squad.”

  “No, really.”

  He faces her again. “Really. I’m a police officer.”

  Her eyes widen. “Does that mean I’m busted?”

  “Depends. Did you break any laws?”

  Xenia’s gaze travels the length of his body. “Not yet.” Dipping a finger in her drink—something pink and frothy—she touches her shirt, and then his. “Wanna go to my place and get out of these wet clothes?”

  He blushes, then tries to pretend it didn’t happen. “Don’t think so.”

  She props her chin on her fist. “Guess you better just buy me a drink.”

  He starts to turn her down again, then hesitates. “All right. What are you having?”

  “An Orgasm.”

  “Of course,” Patrick says, hiding a smile. It would be so easy—to go home with this girl, waste a condom and a few hours’ sleep, get the itch out of his blood. Chances are, he could fuck her without ever telling her his name. And in return, for just a few hours, he would feel like someone