The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  The first time he speaks, I expect his voice to crack. “You were a prosecutor in York County, weren’t you, Ms. Frost?”

  I have to think before I answer. How crazy is crazy? Should I seem to have trouble understanding him, should I start gnawing the collar of my shirt? It will be easy to deceive a shrink as inexperienced as Storrow . . . but that is no longer the issue. Now, I need to make sure that the insanity is temporary. That I get, as we call it, acquitted without being committed. So I smile at him. “Call me Nina,” I offer. “And yes.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Storrow says. “I have this questionnaire, um, to fill out, and give to the court.” He takes out a piece of paper I have seen a thousand times, fill-in-the-blanks, and begins to read. “Did you take any medication before you came here today?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been charged with a crime before?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been to court before?”

  “Every day,” I say. “For the past ten years.”

  “Oh . . .” Dr. Storrow blinks at me, as if he’s just remembered who he is talking to. “Oh, that’s right. Well, I still need to ask you these questions, if that’s okay.” He clears his throat. “Do you understand what the role of the judge is in a trial?”

  I raise one eyebrow.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes,” Dr. Storrow scribbles on his form. “Do you know what the role of the prosecutor is?”

  “Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea.”

  Do you know what the defense attorney does? Do you understand that the state is trying to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? The questions come, silly as cream pies thrown at the face of a clown. Fisher and I will use this ridiculous rubber stamp interview to our advantage. On paper, without the inflection of my voice, my answers will not look absurd—they will only seem a little evasive, a little strange. And Dr. Storrow is too inexperienced to communicate on the stand that all along I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “What should you do if something happens in court that you don’t understand?”

  I shrug. “I’d have my attorney ask what legal precedent they were following, so that I could look it up.”

  “Do you understand that anything you say to your lawyer, he can’t repeat?”

  “Really?”

  Dr. Storrow puts down the form. With a perfectly straight face, he says, “I think we can move on.” He looks at my purse, from which I once pulled a gun. “Have you ever been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been on any medication for psychiatric problems?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a history of emotional breakdown triggered by stress?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever owned a gun before?”

  I shake my head.

  “Have you ever been to counseling of any kind?”

  That question gives me pause. “Yes,” I admit, thinking back to the confessional at St. Anne’s. “It was the worst mistake of my life.”

  “Why?”

  “When I found out my son had been sexually abused, I went to confession at my church. I talked to my priest about it. And then I found out that he was the bastard who did it.”

  My language makes a blush rise above the collar of his button-down shirt. “Ms. Frost—Nina—I need to ask you some questions about the day that . . . that everything happened.”

  I start to pull at the sleeves of my turtleneck. Not a lot, just so that fabric covers my hands. I look into my lap. “I had to do it,” I whisper.

  I am getting so good at this.

  “How were you feeling that day?” Dr. Storrow asks. Doubt ices his voice; just moments ago, I was perfectly lucid.

  “I had to do it . . . you understand. I’ve seen this happen too many times. I couldn’t lose him to this.” I close my eyes, thinking of every successful insanity defense I’ve ever heard proposed to a court. “I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t have stopped myself . . . it was like I was watching someone else do it, someone else reacting.”

  “But you knew what you were doing,” Dr. Storrow replies, and I have to catch myself before my head snaps up. “You’ve prosecuted people who’ve done horrible things.”

  “I didn’t do a horrible thing. I saved my son. Isn’t that what mothers are supposed to do?”

  “What do you think mothers are supposed to do?” he asks.

  Stay awake all night when an infant has a cold, as if she might be able to breathe for him. Learn how to speak Pig Latin, and make a pact to talk that way for an entire day. Bake at least one cake with every ingredient in the pantry, just to see how it will taste.

  Fall in love with your son a little more every day.

  “Nina?” Dr. Storrow says. “Are you all right?”

  I look up and nod through my tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” He leans forward. “Are you truly sorry?”

  We are not talking about the same thing anymore. I imagine Father Szyszynski, on his way to Hell. I think of all the ways to interpret those words, and then I meet Dr. Storrow’s gaze. “Was he?”

  • • •

  Nina has always tasted better than any other woman, Caleb thinks, as his lips slip down the slope of one shoulder. Like honey and sun and caramel—from the roof of her mouth to the hollow behind her knee. There are times Caleb believes he could feast on his wife and never feel that he is getting enough.

  Her hands come up to clutch his shoulder, and in the half dark her head falls back, making the line of her throat a landscape. Caleb buries his face there, and tries to navigate by touch. Here, in this bed, she is the woman he fell in love with a lifetime ago. He knows when she is going to touch him, and where. He can predict each of her moves.

  Her legs fall open to either side of him, and Caleb presses himself against her. He arches his back. He imagines the moment he will be inside her, how the pressure will build and build and explode like a bullet.

  At that moment Nina’s hand slips between their bodies to cup him, and just like that, Caleb goes soft. He tries grinding against her. Nina’s fingers play over him like a flutist’s, but nothing happens.

  Caleb feels her hand come up to his shoulder again, feels the cold air of its absence on his balls. “Well,” Nina says, as he rolls to his back beside her. “That’s never happened before.”

  He stares at the ceiling, at anything but this stranger beside him. It’s not the only thing, he thinks.

  • • •

  On Friday afternoon, Nathaniel and I go grocery shopping. The P&C is a gastronomic fest for my son: I move from the deli counter, where Nathaniel gets a free slice of cheese; to the cookie aisle, where we pick up the box of Animal Crackers; to the breads, where Nathaniel works his way through a plain bagel. “What do you think, Nathaniel?” I ask, handing him a few grapes from the bunch I’ve just put in the cart. “Should I pay $4.99 for a honeydew?”

  I pick up the melon and sniff at the bottom. In truth, I have never been a good judge of fruit. I know it’s all about softness and scent, but in my opinion some with the sweetest insides have been hard as a rock on the surface.

  Suddenly, the bagel Nathaniel’s been eating falls into my hand. “Peter!” he yells, waving from his harness in the shopping cart. “Peter! Hey, Peter!”

  I look up to find Peter Eberhardt walking down the produce aisle, holding a bag of chips and a bottle of Chardonnay. Peter, whom I have not seen since the day I had my restraining order against Caleb vacated. There is so much I want to say to him—to ask him, now that I am not in the office to find out myself—but the judge has specifically prohibited me from speaking to my own colleagues as a condition of bail.

  Nathaniel, of course, doesn’t know that. He just understands that Peter—a man who keeps Charms lollipops on his desk, who can do the best impression of a duck sneezing, whom he hasn’t seen in weeks—is suddenly standing six feet away. “Peter,” Nathaniel calls ag