The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  “Amen,” I answer.

  When I turn my gaze falls on the front left pew, where a woman in black is bent over at the waist, sobbing so hard she cannot catch her breath. Her iron-gray curls wilt beneath her black cloche hat; her hands are knotted so tightly around the edge of the pew I think she may splinter the wood. The priest who has given me Communion whispers to another clergyman, who takes over as he goes to comfort her. And that is when it hits me:

  Father Szyszynski was someone’s son, too.

  My chest fills with lead and my legs melt beneath me. I can tell myself that I have gotten retribution for Nathaniel; I can say that I was morally right—but I cannot take away the truth that another mother has lost her child because of me.

  Is it right to close one cycle of pain if it only opens up another one?

  The church starts to spin, and the flowers are reaching for my ankles. A face as wide as the moon looms in front of me, speaking words that I cannot hear. If I faint, they will know who I am. They will crucify me. I summon all the strength I have left to shove aside the people in my way, to lurch down the aisle, to push open the double doors of St. Anne’s and break free.

  • • •

  Mason, the golden retriever, has been called Nathaniel’s dog for as long as Nathaniel can remember, although he was part of the family for ten months before Nathaniel was even born. And the strange thing is, if it had been the other way around—if Nathaniel had gotten here first—he would have told his parents that he really wanted a cat. He likes the way you can drape a kitten over your arm, the same way you’d carry a coat if you got too hot. He likes the sound they make against his ear, how it makes his skin hum, too. He likes the way they don’t take baths; he likes the fact that they can fall from a great height, but land on their feet.

  He asked for a kitten one Christmas, and although Santa had brought him everything else, the cat didn’t happen. It was Mason, he knew. The dog had a habit of bringing in gifts—the skull of a mouse he’d chewed clean, the body of a thrashed snake found at the end of the drive, a toad caught in the bowl of his mouth. God knows, Nathaniel’s mother said, what he’d do to a kitten.

  So that day when he wandered in the basement of the church, the day he’d been looking at the dragon painting in Father Glen’s office, the first thing Nathaniel noticed was the cat. She was black, with three white paws, as if she’d stepped into paint and realized, partway through, that it wasn’t such a good idea. Her tail twitched like a snake charmer’s cobra. Her face was no bigger than Nathaniel’s palm.

  “Ah,” the priest said. “You like Esme.” He reached down and scratched between the cat’s ears. “That’s my girl.” Scooping the cat into his arms, he sat down on the couch beneath the painting of the dragon. Nathaniel thought he was very brave. Had it been him, he’d be worried about the monster coming to life, eating him whole. “Would you like to pet her?”

  Nathaniel nodded, his throat so full of his good fortune that he couldn’t even speak. He came closer to the couch, to the small ball of fur in the priest’s lap. He placed his hand on the kitten’s back, feeling the heat and the bones and the heart of her. “Hi,” he whispered. “Hi, Esme.”

  Her tail tickled Nathaniel under the chin, and he laughed. The priest laughed too, and put his hand on the back of Nathaniel’s neck. It was the same spot where Nathaniel was petting the cat, and for a moment he saw something like the endless mirror in a carnival’s fun house—him touching the cat, and the priest touching him, and maybe even the big invisible hand of God touching the priest. Nathaniel lifted his palm, took a step back.

  “She likes you,” the priest said.

  “For real?”

  “Oh, yes. She doesn’t act this way around most of the children.”

  That made Nathaniel feel tall all over. He scratched the cat’s ears again, and he would have sworn she smiled.

  “That’s it,” the priest encouraged. “Don’t stop.”

  • • •

  Quentin Brown sits at Nina’s desk in the district attorney’s office, wondering what’s missing. For lack of space, he has been given her office as a base of operations, and the irony has not been lost on him that he will be planning the conviction of this woman from the very seat in which she once sat. What he has learned, from observation, is that Nina Frost is a neat-freak—her paper clips, for the love of God, are sorted by size in small dishes. Her files are alphabetized. There is not a clue to be found—no crumpled Post-it with the name of a gun dealer; not even a doodle of Father Szyszynski’s face on the blotter. This could be anyone’s workspace, Quentin thinks, and therein lies the problem.

  What kind of woman doesn’t keep a picture of her kid or her husband on her desk?

  He mulls over what this might or might not mean for a moment, then takes out his wallet. From the folds he pulls a worn baby photo of Gideon. They’d had it taken at Sears. To get that smile on the boy’s face, Quentin had pretended to hit Tanya on the head with a Nerf football, and he’d inadvertently knocked out her contact lens. He sets the photograph square, now, in the corner of Nina Frost’s blotter, as the door opens.

  Two Biddeford detectives enter—Evan Chao and Patrick Ducharme, if Quentin recalls correctly. “Come in,” he says, gesturing to the seats across from him. “Take a seat.”

  They form a solid block, their shoulders nearly touching. Quentin lifts a remote control and turns on a television/VCR on the shelf behind them. He has already watched the tape a thousand times himself, and imagines that the two detectives have seen it as well. Hell, most of New England has seen it by now; it was run on all the CBS news affiliates. Chao and Ducharme turn, mesmerized by the sight of Nina Frost on the small screen, walking with a preternatural grace toward the railing of the gallery and lifting a handgun. In this version, the unedited one, you can see the right side of Glen Szyszynski’s head exploding.

  “Jesus,” Chao murmurs.

  Quentin lets the tape run. This time, he isn’t watching it—he’s watching the reactions of the detectives. He doesn’t know Chao or Ducharme from a hole in the wall, but he can tell you this—they’ve worked with Nina Frost for seven years; they’ve worked with Quentin for twenty-four hours. As the camera tilts wildly, coming to rest on the scuffle between Nina and the bailiffs, Chao looks into his lap. Ducharme stares resolutely at the screen, but there is no emotion on his face.

  With one click, Quentin shuts off the TV. “I’ve read the witness statements, all 124 of them. And, naturally, it doesn’t hurt to have the entire fiasco in living color.” He leans forward, his elbows on Nina’s desk. “The evidence is solid here. The only question is whether she is or isn’t guilty by reason of insanity. She’ll either run with that, or extreme anger.” Turning to Chao, he asks, “Did you go to the autopsy?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “And?”

  “They already released the body to the funeral home, but they won’t give me a report until the victim’s medical records arrive.”

  Quentin rolls his eyes. “Like there’s a question here about the cause of death?”

  “It’s not that,” Ducharme interrupts. “They like to have all the medical records attached. It’s the office protocol.”

  “Well, tell them to hurry up,” Quentin says. “I don’t care if Szyszynski had full-blown AIDS . . . that isn’t what he died of.” He opens a file on his desk and waves a paper at Patrick Ducharme. “What the hell was this?”

  He lets the detective read his own report about the interrogation of Caleb Frost, under suspicion for molesting his own son. “The boy was mute,” Patrick explains. “He was taught basic sign language, and when we pressed him to ID the perp, he kept making the sign for father.” Patrick hands back the paper. “We went to Caleb Frost first.”

  “What did she do?” Quentin asks. There is no need to spell out to whom he’s referring.

  Patrick rubs a hand over his face, muttering into his hand.

  “I didn’t quite catch that, Detective,” Quentin says.