The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  Caleb has succeeded; he’s stopped me from doing what I so badly want to.

  Because he knows if I do walk out that door now, I won’t go after Arthur Gwynne at all. I’ll be searching for my son.

  • • •

  Three days later Caleb has not called me. I have tried every hotel and motel in the area, but if he is staying at one, it’s not under his own name. It’s Christmas Eve, though, and surely they will come back. Caleb is a big one for having holiday traditions, and to this end I have wrapped all of Nathaniel’s Christmas presents—ones I’ve stored in the attic all year. From the dwindling supply of food in the refrigerator I have cooked a chicken and made celery soup; I have set the table with our fancy wedding china.

  I have cleaned up, too, because I want Caleb to notice that the moment he walks through the door. Maybe if he sees a difference on the outside, he will understand that I’m different within, too. My hair is coiled into a French twist, and I’m wearing black velvet pants and a red blouse. In my ears are the present Nathaniel gave me last Christmas—little snowman earrings made from Sculpy clay.

  And yet, this is all just a surface glaze. My eyes are ringed with circles—I have not slept since they left, as if this is some kind of cosmic punishment for dozing away the days when we were all together. I walk the halls at night, trying to find the spots in the carpet that have been worn down by Nathaniel’s running feet. I stare at old photographs. I haunt my own home.

  We have no tree, because I wasn’t able to go out to chop one down. It’s a tradition for us to walk our property the Saturday before Christmas and pick one out as a family. But then, we have not been much of a family this holiday season.

  By four P.M. I’ve lit candles and put on a Christmas CD. I sit with my hands folded in my lap and wait.

  It’s something I’m working on.

  At four-thirty, it begins to snow. I rearrange all of Nathaniel’s presents in size order. I wonder if there will be enough of an accumulation for him to sled down the back hill on the Flexible Flyer that stands propped against the wall, festooned with a bow.

  Ten minutes later, I hear the heavy chug of a truck coming down the driveway. I leap to my feet, take one last nervous look around, and throw open the door with a bright smile. The UPS man, weary and dusted with snowflakes, stands on my porch with a package. “Nina Frost?” he asks in a monotone.

  I take the parcel as he wishes me a Merry Christmas. Inside, on the couch, I tear it open. A leather-bound desk calendar for the year 2002, stamped on the inner cover with the name of Fisher’s law office. HAPPY HOLIDAYS from Carrington, Whitcomb, Horoby, and Platt, Esqs. “This will come in so handy,” I say aloud, “after I’m sentenced.”

  When the stars shyly push through the night sky, I turn off the stereo. I look out the window, watch the driveway get erased by snow.

  • • •

  Even before Patrick got his divorce, he’d sign up to work on Christmas. Sometimes, he even does double shifts. The calls most often bring him to the homes of the elderly, reporting a strange bump or a suspicious car that’s disappeared by the time Patrick arrives. What these people want is the company on a night when no one else is alone.

  “Merry Christmas,” he says, backing away from the home of Maisie Jenkins, eighty-two years old, a recent widow.

  “God bless,” she calls back, and goes into a home as empty as the one that Patrick is about to return to.

  He could go visit Nina, but surely Caleb has brought Nathaniel back for the night. No, Patrick wouldn’t interrupt that. Instead he gets into his car and drives down the slick streets of Biddeford. Christmas lights glitter like jewels on porches, inside windows, as if the world has been strewn with an embarrassment of riches. Cruising slowly, he imagines children asleep. What the hell are sugar plums, anyway?

  Suddenly, a bright blur barrels across the range of Patrick’s headlights, and he brakes hard. He steers into the skid and avoids hitting the person who’s run across the road. Getting out of the car, he rushes to the side of the fallen man. “Sir,” Patrick asks, “are you all right?”

  The man rolls over. He is dressed in a Santa suit, and alcohol fumes rise from his phony cotton beard. “St. Nick, to you, boyo. Get it straight.”

  Patrick helps him sit up. “Did you hurt anything?”

  “Lay off.” Santa struggles away from him. “I could sue you.”

  “For not hitting you? I doubt it.”

  “Reckless operation of a vehicle. You’re probably drunk.”

  At that, Patrick laughs. “As opposed to you?”

  “I haven’t had a drop!”

  “Okay, Santa.” Patrick hauls him to his feet. “You got somewhere to call home?”

  “I gotta get my sleigh.”

  “Sure you do.” With a bracing arm, he steers the man toward his cruiser.

  “The reindeer, they chew up the shingles if I leave them too long.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not getting in there. I’m not finished yet, you know.”

  Patrick opens the rear door. “I’ll take the chance, Pop. Go on. I’ll take you down to a nice warm bunk to sleep this off.”

  Santa shakes his head. “My old lady’ll kill me.”

  “Mrs. Claus will get over it.”

  His smile fades as he looks at Patrick. “C’mon, officer. Cut me a little slack. You know what it’s like to go home to a woman you love, who just wishes you’d stay the hell away?”

  Patrick ducks him into the car, with maybe a little too much force. No, he doesn’t know what it’s like. He can’t get past the first part of that sentence: You know what it’s like to go home to a woman you love?

  By the time he gets to the station, Santa is unconscious, and has to be hauled into the building by Patrick and the desk officer. Patrick punches out on the clock, gets into his own truck. But instead of driving home, he heads in the opposite direction, past Nina’s house. Just to make sure everything’s all right. It is something he has not done with regularity since the year he returned to Biddeford, when Nina and Caleb were already married. He would drive by on the graveyard shift and see all the lights out, save the one in their bedroom. An extra dose of security, or so he told himself back then.

  Years later, he still doesn’t believe it.

  • • •

  It is supposed to be a big deal, Nathaniel knows. Not only does he get to stay up extra late on Christmas Eve, but he can open as many presents as he wants, which is all of them. And they’re staying in a real live old castle, in a whole new country called Canada.

  Their room at this castle-hotel has a fireplace in it, and a bird that looks real but is dead. Stuffed, that’s what his father called it, and maybe it did look like it had eaten too much, although Nathaniel doesn’t think you can die from that. There are two huge beds and the kinds of pillows that squinch when you lie on them, instead of popping right back.

  Everyone talks a different language, one Nathaniel doesn’t understand, and that makes him think of his mother.

  He has opened a remote-control truck, a stuffed kangaroo, a helicopter. Matchbox cars in so many colors it makes him dizzy. Two computer games and a tiny pinball machine he can hold in his hand. The room is littered with wrapping paper, which his father is busy feeding into the mouth of the fire.

  “That’s some haul,” he muses, smiling at Nathaniel.

  His father has been letting Nathaniel call the shots. To that end, they got to play at a fort the whole day, and ride up and down a cable car, the funsomething, Nathaniel forgets. They went to a restaurant with a big moose head mounted outside and Nathaniel got to order five desserts. They went back to the room and opened their presents, saving their stockings for tomorrow. They have done everything Nathaniel has asked, which never happens when he is at home.

  “So,” his father says. “What’s next?”

  But all Nathaniel wants to do is make it the way it used to be.

  • • •

  The doorbell rings at eleve