The Tenth Circle Read online

  In the small holding cell where Laura had been for the past four hours, there was nothing soft, only cement and steel, and right angles. She’d found herself dozing off, dreaming of rain and cirrus clouds, of angel food cake and snowflakes-things that gave way the moment you touched them.

  She wondered how Trixie was, where they’d sent her. She wondered if Daniel was on the other side of this thick wall, if they had come to question him as they had questioned her.

  When Daniel came into the room, on the heels of a policeman, Laura stood up. She pressed herself against the bars and reached out to him. He waited until the policeman left, then walked up to the bars and reached inside to Laura. “Are you okay?”

  “They let you go,” she breathed.

  He nodded and rested his forehead against hers.

  “What about Trixie?”

  “They’ve got her at a juvenile center down the road.”

  Laura let go of him. “You didn’t need to cover for Trixie,” she said.

  “I don’t think either one of us was about to let her get sent to jail.”

  “She won’t be,” Laura said. “Because I’m the one who killed Jason.”

  Daniel stared at her, all the breath leaving his body. “What?”

  She sank onto the metal bench in the cell and wiped her eyes. “The night of the Winterfest, when Trixie disappeared, we said that I’d go home and wait there, in case she turned up. But when I headed back to my car, I saw someone on the bridge. I called out her name, and Jason turned around.”

  She was crying in earnest now. “He was drunk. He said…he said that my bitch of a daughter was ruining his life. Ruining his life. He stood up and started coming toward me, and I…I got scared and pushed him away. But he lost his balance, and he went over the railing.”

  Laura unconsciously brought her hand up to her ear as she spoke, and Daniel noticed that the small gold hoop earring she usually wore was gone. The blood. The red hair on the watchband. The boot prints in the snow. “It caught on his sweater. He ripped it out when he fell,” she said, following Daniel’s gaze. “He was hanging on to the railing with one hand and reaching up with the other. Looking down-I was so dizzy. He kept yelling for me to help. I started to reach for his hand…and then…” Laura closed her eyes. “Then I let him go.”

  It was no coincidence that fear could move a person to extremes, just as seamlessly as love. They were the conjoined twins of emotion: If you didn’t know what was at stake to lose, you had nothing to fight for.

  “I went home, and I waited for you and Trixie. I was sure the police were going to find me before you got there. I was going to tell you…”

  “But you didn’t,” Daniel said.

  “I tried.”

  Daniel remembered bringing Trixie home from the Winterfest, how Laura had been so shaken. Oh, Daniel, she had said. Something happened. He’d thought at the time that his wife was just as frantic about Trixie’s disappearance as he had been. He thought Laura had been asking him a question when, in fact, she’d been trying to give him an answer.

  She hugged her arms across her middle. “At first, they said it was a suicide, and I thought maybe I’d only dreamed it, that it hadn’t happened the way I thought at all. But then Trixie ran away.”

  And made herself look guilty, Daniel thought. Even to me.

  “You should have told me, Laura. I could have-”

  “Hated me.” She shook her head. “You used to stare at me like I’d hung the stars in the sky, Daniel. But after you found out about…you know, that I’d been with someone else…it was different. You couldn’t even look me in the eye.”

  When a Yup’ik Eskimo met another person, he averted his glance. It wasn’t out of disrespect, but rather, the opposite. Sight was something to be conserved for the moments when you really needed it-when you were hunting, when you needed strength. It was only when you looked away from a person that you had the truest vision.

  “I just wanted you to look at me like you used to,” Laura said, her voice breaking. “I just wanted it to be the way it used to be. That’s why I couldn’t tell you, no matter how many times I tried. I’d already been unfaithful to you. What would you have done if I’d told you I’d killed someone?”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Daniel said. “You didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  Laura shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together, as if she was afraid to speak out loud. And he understood, because he’d felt this himself: Sometimes what we wish for actually comes true. And sometimes that’s the very worst thing that can happen.

  She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know what I meant and what I didn’t. It’s all mixed up. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

  Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you, nothing else really mattered. You became each other’s constant.

  “I do,” Daniel said.

  It was possible, he decided, that even in today’s day and age-even thousands of miles away from the Yup’ik villages-people could still turn into animals, and vice versa. Just because you chose to leave a place did not mean you could escape taking it with you. A man and a woman who lived together long enough might swap traits, until they found parts of themselves in each other. Jettison a personality and you just might find it taking up residence in the heart of the person you loved most.

  Laura lifted her face to his. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  He did not know the answer to that. He wasn’t even certain he knew the right questions. But he would get Trixie, and they would go home. He’d find the best lawyer he could. And sooner or later, when Laura came back to them, they’d reinvent themselves. They might not be able to start over, but they could certainly start again.

  Just then, a raven flew past the police station, soaring in the courtyard, imitating the sound of running water. Daniel watched carefully, the way he had learned to a lifetime ago. A raven could be many things-creator, trickster-depending on what form it felt like taking. But when it looped in a half circle and turned upside down, it could mean only one thing: It was dumping luck off its back-anyone’s for the taking, if you happened to see where it landed.

 

 

 

 

 

  Dear Reader:

  In The Tenth Circle, Daniel Stone-a comic book penciler-woos his future wife, Laura, by drawing a sketch of her and including a hidden message in the background: letters that spell out a place to meet. In this spirit, I’ve included a hidden message for you to find in the artwork in this novel. Beginning on page 10, each page of art has several letters hidden in the background-two or three per page, eighty-six letters in all. The letters spell out a quotation that sums up the theme of The Tenth Circle, and the name of the quotation’s author. Readers can go to my website, www.jodipicoult.com, to see if they’re right. (If you’re eagle-eyed enough to be successful, please don’t spoil the fun for someone else…keep the answer a secret!)

  Jodi Picoult

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  2/12/2008