The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  From my vantage point on the bottom bunk, I look up and see the steel tray holding the upper mattress. I look at the tack welds and wonder how much weight they can support.

  “Sticks, he one tough cracker, man. He thinks he own this pod.” Concise shakes his head. “We all wonderin’ who the hell you are.”

  I close my eyes and think of all the people I have been in my lifetime: a boy who fell in love with a broken girl a thousand years ago; a father holding a newborn and thinking that nothing could ever make him let her go; a man starving for one more moment with his little girl; a fugitive on the run; a liar; a cheat; a felon. Maybe the habit that is always waiting to jump me on the other side of the fence is revival. Maybe I will do absolutely anything to wipe the slate clean, to start over.

  “Call me Andrew,” I say.

  Eric

  The law offices of Hamilton, Hamilton and Hamilton-Thorpe are located in downtown Phoenix, in a mirrored building that scares the hell out of me when I walk up close and see that ghost of myself coming forward. Chris, the second Hamilton in the name lineup, went to law school with me in Vermont, knowing all along he had a nice cushy job waiting at his father’s firm (the first Hamilton in the name lineup). The newest partner (the hyphenated one) is Chris’s little sister, recently graduated from Harvard Law.

  In order to try a case pro hac vice in a different state, you need a sponsoring local attorney. Actually, it’s similar to AA, where someone older and wiser mentors you in the hopes that you do nothing to embarrass yourself. Chris is a former diver with the face of a choirboy who used to be able to charm professors into extensions without breaking a sweat. When I called and asked him to be my Arizona counsel, he didn’t even hesitate before agreeing.

  “I ought to tell you about the case,” I had said.

  “Who cares?” Chris answered. “It’s an excuse to go out and have a few beers.”

  I didn’t tell him I no longer do that.

  He was in court yesterday when I arrived at the law office in a mad rush, trying to contact the New Hampshire Bar Association. His sister, Serena, graciously ceded me the conference room at Hamilton, Hamilton and Hamilton-Thorpe; a vast expanse of paneled wood and barrister bookcases and brass-studded leather chairs.

  No one is in the office this morning when I let myself in with my newly minted key, but then, it is only 6:45 A.M. After yesterday’s debacle with my nonexistent Bar card, I am determined to read up on Arizona case law before visiting hours begin at the jail.

  I find myself staring at the legalese, all those blocks of type and tiny letters morphing into one another, until all I can make out on a page is the shape of a man holding out his hand, and a little girl reaching to grab it.

  * * *

  I was ten years old, and in serious training for the CIA. I had a walkie-talkie, a black-stocking balaclava, a flashlight, and a cheat sheet for Morse code. To practice, I was going to spy on my mother in the living room, although I was supposed to still be outside catching June bugs in old Jif peanut butter jars.

  She was on the phone when I crept in on cat feet and flattened myself behind the couch with my tape recorder. “He’s a son of a bitch is all,” she said. “Well, you know what? She can have him. She can have his pyramid schemes and his big promises and all his Casanova bullshit.”

  I turned on the tape recorder and realized too late that I had hit play, and, worse, that the Halloween screams of a dozen humpback whales were filling the room. My mother jumped and peeked over the back of the couch, narrowing her eyes in a death laser. “Andrea, I have to call you back,” she said.

  A good CIA agent would unspool the tape and eat the evidence, I thought. A good CIA agent would pull a cyanide pill from the folds of his suit and go down as a hero for his mission.

  My mother yanked me up by the ear. “You liar,” she said, those long vowels a boozy breeze across my face. “You’re just like him.” She slapped me so hard across the head that I actually saw stars, and for a minute I was amazed that this could actually happen, that it wasn’t just something you saw in a cartoon. I cowered, hating myself for that, hating her.

  And then, just as suddenly, she was behind the couch with me, her octopus hands smoothing my hair and kissing my face and rocking me. “Baby, I didn’t mean to,” she said. “You forgive me, don’t you? You know I’d never hurt you. You and me, we’re in this together, aren’t we?”

  I stood up and backed away from her. “I got invited next door for dinner,” I said, and a red flare went off in my head. I was a liar.

  “Well, you go then,” she replied, and she smiled her loose smile, the one that she used when she was embarrassed—not to be confused with the bright smile, the one she wore when she was completely lit; or the fake smile, the one that made my stomach feel like a cello strung too tight.

  Outside, the neighborhood was painted like a hand-colored photo; nearly too dark to make out the reds of the peeling shutters or the snowflake blue of the hydrangeas. I headed for Delia’s house but stopped as I came around the corner. Their kitchen window burned buttery as a candle, and inside I could see Delia and her father eating dinner. Fried chicken. Her father had both of the drumsticks in his hands, and he was making them do a can-can across the platter toward Delia.

  I sat down on the lawn. I didn’t really want to interrupt them, I realized. I just wanted to know that somewhere, in a household, this was going on.

  * * *

  “Eric, man, if you keep working this hard you’re going to get me disinherited,” Chris laughs, and I jump awake with a start, my heart leaping like a fish pulled through six leagues of sea. I smooth my rumpled tie and rub my hand down my face. There is a crease in my cheek, the result of lying on top of an open book.

  Chris does not look much different from how he did years ago in law school: the same relaxed posture; the same sandy blond hair; the same comfortable expression of a man who knows the world will always go his way. “So, welcome to the family business,” he says. “My sister said she got you settled yesterday. Sorry I couldn’t be the one.”

  “Serena was great,” I reply, clearing my throat. “And the office is terrific.”

  Chris sits down across the table from me. “Must be a pain in the ass having to become fluent overnight in Arizona law.”

  “I didn’t think you had law down here. Isn’t it still ten paces, turn, and draw your weapon?”

  Chris laughs. “Only half the time. You’re forgetting the posses.” He takes a sip of coffee; just the smell of it makes me salivate. But I gave up caffeine with booze; the blood rush was too similar and I didn’t want to tempt my body with the feel of a high. These days, I will not even take an aspirin for a garden-variety headache.

  Chris lifts his mug toward me. “There’s more if you want some. Just brewed.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t drink coffee.”

  “That’s inhuman, you know.” He sits forward, his elbows on the table. “So I suppose you should tell me about this case, if I have to be second chair. Must be a pretty important client, if he convinced you to haul your butt to Arizona to fight some charge.”

  “He is pretty important,” I answer. “He’s my fiancée’s father. He got indicted for kidnapping her during a custody visit in 1977.”

  Chris’s eyes widen. “I am never going to complain about my in-laws again.”

  I leave out the part about how Andrew as good as confessed to me at the Wexton PD. How he expressed the desire to plead guilty, and how I swore to Delia that I wouldn’t let that happen. To try a case in another state, your professional conduct must be impeccable; I have already failed on two counts. “Delia asked me to represent him. I haven’t even seen Andrew since he was extradited. I spent the whole afternoon yesterday trying to convince the staff at the Madison Street Jail that I’m really a lawyer, and don’t just play one on TV.”

  The secretary sticks her head into the conference room. “Oh, good, Mr. Talcott, you’re awake,” she says, and a flush of embarrassment spreads over