The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “I imagine that’s hard when you’re all under house arrest.”

  “It’s pretty sad when the high point of my day is walking to the end of the driveway to get the mail.” Leaning down, she sets a plate in front of me.

  There’s a block of white fish, creamy white mashed potatoes, and a tiny hill of white rice.

  “Meringues for dessert?” I guess.

  “Angel food cake.”

  I poke at the food with my fork.

  She frowns. “Is the fish undercooked?”

  “No, no—it’s great. I’ve just, um, never seen anyone color-coordinate a meal before.”

  “Oh, it’s February first,” she says, as if that explains everything. “The first of every month is a White Food Day. I’ve been doing it so long I forget it’s not normal.”

  I taste the potatoes; they’re out of this world. “What do you do on the thirty-first? Burn everything to a black crisp?”

  “Don’t give Jacob any ideas,” Emma says. “Would you like some milk?”

  She pours me a glass, and I reach for it. “I don’t get it. Why does the color of his food matter?”

  “Why does the texture of velvet send him into a panic? Why can’t he stand the hum of an espresso machine? There are a million questions I don’t have answers for,” Emma replies, “so the easiest thing to do is just roll with the punches and keep him from having a meltdown.”

  “Like he did in court,” I say. “And jail.”

  “Exactly. So Monday’s food is green, Tuesday’s is red, Wednesday’s is yellow . . . you get the idea.”

  I think for a moment. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it seems like sometimes Jacob’s more adult than you or me—and other times, he gets totally overwhelmed.”

  “That’s him. I truly think he’s smarter than anyone I’ve ever met, but he’s also more inflexible. And he takes every little thing that happens to heart, because he’s the center of his universe.”

  “And yours,” I point out. “He’s the center of your universe, too.”

  She ducks her head. “I guess.”

  Maybe my Scandinavian parents knew what they were doing, because maybe it’s the fish and maybe it’s the way she looks in that moment—surprised, and a little flustered—but to my shock I realize I’d like to kiss her. However, I can’t because she’s my client’s mother, and because she would probably knock me flat on my ass.

  “I assume you have a plan of attack,” she says.

  My eyes widen—is she thinking the same thing about me? I tamp down an image of me pinning her to the table.

  “The quicker the better,” Emma says, and my pulse triples. She glances over her shoulder to the living room, where Jacob is slowly shoveling rice into his mouth. “I just want this whole nightmare to be over.”

  And with those words, I come crashing back to my sad little reality. I clear my throat, totally professional. “The most damaging discovery is the confession Jacob made. We need to try to get rid of it.”

  “I thought I was going to be able to sit with Jacob in the interrogation room. If I’d been there, it would never have gotten this far, I just know it. They had to be asking him questions he didn’t understand, or firing them at him too fast.”

  “We have a transcript. The questions were pretty straightforward, I think. Did you tell Matson that Jacob had Asperger’s before they started talking?”

  “Yes, when he came to interview Jacob the first time.”

  “First time?”

  Emma nods. “He was going through Jess’s appointment book, and Jacob’s social skills lesson was on it, so the detective asked him a few questions.”

  “Were you there to help translate?”

  “Right here at the kitchen table,” Emma says. “Matson acted like he completely understood Jacob’s issues. That’s why, when he told me to bring Jacob to the station, I assumed it was going to be the same sort of interview and that I could be part of it.”

  “That’s good, actually,” I tell her. “We can probably file a motion to suppress.”

  “What’s that?”

  Before I can answer, Jacob comes into the kitchen with his empty plate. He sets it in the sink and then pours himself a glass of Coca-Cola. “Under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, you have a right to remain silent, unless you waive that right, and in certain circumstances if the police don’t read you your Miranda rights or properly ask you to waive them, anything you say can be used against you. A defense attorney can file a motion to suppress in order to prevent that evidence from coming before the jury.” Then he walks back to the living room.

  “That’s just plain wrong,” I mutter.

  “It is?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “How come he gets to drink Coke on White Food Day?”

  It takes a moment, and then, for the very first time, I hear the music of Emma Hunt’s laugh.

  Emma

  I did not expect to feed Jacob’s lawyer lunch.

  I didn’t expect to enjoy his company so much, either. But when he makes a joke about White Food Day—which is, let’s face it, as ridiculous as everyone in the fairy tale pretending the emperor is beautifully clothed instead of stark naked—I can’t help myself. I start to giggle. And before I know it, I am laughing so hard I cannot catch my breath.

  Because when you get right down to it, it’s funny when I ask my son, How did you sleep? And he answers: On my stomach.

  It’s funny when I tell Jacob I’ll be there in a minute and he starts counting down from sixty.

  It’s funny that Jacob used to grab my collar every time I came home, his interpretation of “catch you later.”

  It’s funny when he begs for a forensics textbook on Amazon.com and I ask him to give me a ballpark figure and he says, Second base.

  And it’s funny when I move heaven and earth to give Jacob white food on the first of the month and he breezily pours himself a glass of Coke.

  It’s true what they say about Asperger’s affecting the whole family. I’ve been doing this for so long, I forgot to consider what an outsider would think of our pale rice and fish, our long-standing routines—just like Jacob has no capacity to put himself in the shoes of someone else he encounters. And, as Jacob has learned one rebuff at a time, what looks pitiful from one angle looks absolutely hilarious from another.

  “Life’s not fair,” I tell Oliver.

  “That’s the reason there are defense attorneys,” he replies. “And Jacob’s right about the legal jargon, by the way. I’m going to file a motion to suppress because the police were on notice that they weren’t dealing with someone mentally able to truly understand his Miranda rights—”

  “I know my Miranda rights!” Jacob yells from the other room. “You have the right to remain silent! Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—”

  “I’ve got it, Jacob, I’m good,” Oliver calls back. He stands up and puts his plate on the counter. “Thanks for lunch. I’ll let you know what happens with the hearing.”

  I walk him to the door and watch him unlock his car. Instead of getting into it, though, he reaches into the backseat and then walks toward me again, his face sober. “There’s just one more thing,” Oliver says. He reaches for my hand and presses a miniature-size Milky Way into it. “Just in case you want to sneak it in before Brown Thursday,” he whispers, and for the second time that day, he leaves me smiling.

  CASE 7: BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER

  Ernest Brendel’s sister didn’t believe her brother’s friend, who came to tell her, one fall day in 1991, that Ernest had been kidnapped—along with his wife, Alice, and young daughter, Emily—as part of a mafia scheme. But Christopher Hightower insisted that they needed ransom money, and as proof, he took her outside to Ernest’s Toyota, the car he’d driven there. He pointed to the backseat, which was soaked through with blood. There was more blood in the trunk. Eventually, police would match that blood evidence to Ernest Brendel. But they’d also prove that Hightower—not