The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “Then what did I do wrong?”

  The waiter sidled over with the bill, tucked into a leather folder. Christian reached for it. “My last steady girlfriend was a principal dancer for the Boston Ballet.”

  “Oh,” I said feebly. “She must have been . . .” Beautiful. Graceful. Skinny.

  Everything I wasn’t.

  “Every time we went out for a meal I felt like some sort of . . . glutton . . . because I had an appetite, and she never ate a damn thing. I suppose I thought—well, hoped—that you’d be different.”

  “But I love chocolate,” I blurted out. “And apple fritters and pumpkin pie and mousse and tiramisu and I probably would have eaten everything on this menu if I didn’t think it would make me look like a pig. I was trying to be . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “. . . what you thought I was looking for?”

  I focused my attention on the napkin on my lap. Leave it to me to ruin a date that wasn’t even really one.

  “What if all I was looking for,” Christian asked, “was you?”

  I lifted my head slowly as Christian summoned back our waiter. “Tell us about dessert,” he said.

  “We have a crème brûlée, a fresh blueberry tart, warm peach puff pastries with homemade ice cream and caramel sauce, and my personal favorite,” the waiter said. “Chocolate French toast with a thin pecan crust, served with mint ice cream, and our own raspberry sauce.”

  “What shall we try?” Christian asked.

  I turned to the waiter. “Maybe we could skip back to the main course first,” I said, and smiled.

  “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

  —HIS HOLINESS THE 14TH DALAI LAMA

  June

  As it turned out, in spite of the deathbed promises, I didn’t tell Claire about her potential new heart when she first awakened after the episode that had brought us back to this hospital. Instead, I made a hundred excuses: When she wasn’t running a temperature. When she had a little more energy. When we knew for sure that a judge was going to allow the donation to happen. The longer I put off the conversation, the more I was able to convince myself that Claire would have another hour, day, week with me in which to have it.

  And in the meantime, Claire was failing. Not just her body, but her spirit. Dr. Wu told me every day that she was stable, but I saw changes. She didn’t want me to read from Teen People. She didn’t want to watch television. She lay on her side, staring at a blank wall.

  “Claire,” I said one afternoon, “want to play cards?”

  “No.”

  “How about Scrabble.”

  “No thanks.” She turned away. “I’m tired.”

  I smoothed her hair back from her face. “I know, baby.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean I’m tired, Mom. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Well, we can take a walk—I mean, I can take a walk and push you in a wheelchair. You don’t have to stay in bed—”

  “I’m going to die in here. You and I both know it. Why can’t I just go home and do it there, instead of hooked up to all of this stuff?”

  I stared at her. Where was the child in that sentence, the one who had believed in fairies and ghosts and all sorts of impossible things? But we’re so close to fixing that, I started to say, and then I realized that if I did, I would have to tell her about the heart that might or might not be coming.

  And whose it was.

  “I want to sleep in my own bed,” Claire said, “instead of one with stupid plastic sheets and a pillow that crackles every time I move my head. I want to eat meat loaf, instead of chicken soup in a blue plastic cup and Jell-O—”

  “You hate when I serve meat loaf.”

  “I know, and I want to get mad at you for cooking it again.” She flopped onto her back and looked at me. “I want to drink from the orange juice container. I want to throw a tennis ball for my dog.”

  I hesitated. “Maybe I can talk to Dr. Wu,” I said. “We can get your own sheets and pillow, I bet . . .”

  Something in Claire’s eyes dimmed. “Just forget it,” she said, and that was how I realized she’d already begun to die, before I had a chance to save her.

  * * *

  As soon as Claire fell asleep that afternoon, I left her in the capable hands of the nursing staff and exited the hospital for the first time in a week. I was stunned to see how much the world had changed. There was a nip in the air that whispered of winter; the trees had begun to turn color, sugar maples first, their bright heads like torches that would light the rest of the woods on fire. My car felt unfamiliar, as if I were driving a rental. And most shocking—the road that led past the state prison had been rerouted with policemen on traffic detail. I inched through the cones, gaping at the crowds that had been cordoned off by police tape: SHAY BOURNE WILL BURN IN HELL, read one sign. Another banner said SATAN IS ALIVE AND KICKING ON I-TIER.

  Once, when Claire was tiny, she’d raised the blackout shade in her bedroom window when she woke up. At the sight of the sunrise, with its outstretched crimson fingers, she’d gasped. Did I do that?

  Now, looking at the signs, I had to wonder: Could you believe something so fiercely that it actually happened? Could your thoughts change the minds of others?

  Keeping my eyes on the road, I passed the prison gates and continued toward my house. But my car had other intentions—it turned right, and then left, and into the cemetery where Elizabeth and Kurt were buried.

  I parked and started walking to their shared grave. It was underneath an ash tree; in the light wind, the leaves shimmered like golden coins. I knelt on the grass and traced my finger over the lettering on the headstone:

  BELOVED DAUGHTER.

  TREASURED HUSBAND.

  Kurt had bought his plot after we’d been married for a year. That’s macabre, I had said, and he had just shrugged it off; he saw the business of death and dying every day. Here’s the thing, though, he had said. There’s room for you, if you want.

  He had not wanted to impose, because he didn’t know if I’d want to be buried near my first husband. Even that tiny bit of consideration—the fact that he wanted me to choose, instead of making an assumption—had made me realize why I loved him. I want to be with you, I had told him. I wanted to be where my heart was.

  After the murders, I would sleepwalk. I’d find myself the next morning in the gardening shed, holding a spade. In the garage, with my face pressed against the metal cheek of a shovel. In my subconscious, I was making plans to join them; it was only when I was awake and alert and felt Claire kicking me from within that I realized I had to stay.

  Would she be the next one I’d bury here? And once I did, what would keep me from carrying things through to their natural conclusion, from putting my family back together in one place?

  I lay down for a minute, prone on the grass. I pressed my face into the stubbled moss at the edge of the headstone and pretended I was cheek-to-cheek with my husband; I felt the dandelions twine through my fingers and pretended I was holding my daughter’s hand.

  * * *

  In the elevator of the hospital, the duffel bag started to move itself across the floor. I crouched down, unzipped the top of it. “Good boy,” I said, and patted the top of Dudley’s head. I’d retrieved him from my neighbor, who had been kind enough to play foster parent while Claire was sick. Dudley had fallen asleep in the car, but now he was alert and wondering why I had zipped him into a piece of luggage. The doors opened and I hoisted him up, approaching the nurse’s desk near Claire’s room. I tried to smile normally. “Everything all right?”

  “She’s been sleeping like a baby.”

  Just then, Dudley barked.

  The nurse’s eyes flew up to mine, and I pretended to sneeze. “Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “Is that pollen count something or what?”

  Before she could respond, I hurried into Claire’s room an