The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  She looks at me, surprised. The last thing she would expect from me right now is this tone of voice, this mockery. “I think it would be hard to forget something like that,” she says.

  “Maybe,” I say coolly. “Then again, you don’t remember being kidnapped, do you.” I turn away from Delia before I can see how much more damage I’ve done.

  * * *

  As it happens, Emma is the one who needs a hiatus; the prosecutor’s water breaks about five minutes later during a recess. She is taken to the hospital by ambulance, and court is adjourned for five days.

  I find Delia and Fitz taking refuge in a conference room upstairs, away from the frenzied sea of media that has doubled in size, it seems, since this morning. She still looks unsteady, but by now, she is angry, too. “How could you do this to me?” she accuses. “You made this all up.”

  Shaking my head, I walk toward her. I am struck by the sense that although she looks just like Delia should look, she is a soap bubble, and if I get too close she will simply disappear. “I give you my word, Dee, this was not some defense ploy. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

  When she tilts her face up to mine, it breaks my heart. “Then why didn’t I know it ever had?”

  Because I am a coward, I choose not to answer. “I have to go to the jail,” I say gently. “I need to speak to your father now.” With a squeeze of support to Delia’s shoulders, I leave the conference room. I hurry across the street to the Madison Street Jail, and I ask to see Andrew.

  I should have hired an investigator to depose him instead of doing it myself, then I would have been able to impeach him with his own testimony and salvage this trial. I don’t say a single word, just wait for him to sit down and initiate conversation. “What happens now?” he asks finally.

  “Well,” I suggest, “how about you tell me what the hell that was all about?”

  He knots his hands on the scarred table, his thumb tracing the graffiti that reads TUPAC 4EVA. “What kind of man goes after a woman who’s married, a woman who’s an obvious drunk, and who has a little girl? You do the math, Eric.”

  “Andrew,” I explain, frustrated, “you can’t throw a smoking gun down at the end of a trial. Why didn’t you mention this before? It would have been a perfect defense.”

  “I managed to keep this from her all these years, so that she could have a normal life.”

  I scrub my hands through my hair. “Andrew, there’s no evidence here. Delia doesn’t even remember it happening.”

  But even as I say it, I’m remembering the smallest of details, the clues that I should have picked up on. Like when we first talked about Victor and the assault charge: I saw him, Andrew had said, I watched him kiss her.

  Elise? I had asked, and he’d hesitated for a half-second before he nodded.

  Or the medical records Delia and I had read together: Focused on the fact of the scorpion sting, I never really considered the physician’s comment about the patient fighting when her clothes were being removed for treatment. Or the fact that a four-year-old girl had a urinary tract infection.

  “What happens now?” Andrew repeats.

  What happens now is that Emma will come back from her labor and delivery and file a motion to get Andrew’s revelation excluded. The judge will be inclined to agree. The jurors—already dubious, because who drops a bomb like this one at the last minute but a liar?—will be asked to disregard the testimony. And Andrew, who literally confessed to kidnapping on the stand, will be convicted.

  I don’t want him sitting here for five days, thinking about going to prison; I can protect him from his own future for at least that long. So I look him in the eye and lie to him. “I don’t know, Andrew.”

  It isn’t until I have left the jail that I realize I’m no better than he is.

  * * *

  By the time I get home, it is twilight. Delia sits on the steps of the trailer, stroking Greta. “Hey,” I say, kneeling down in front of her. “Are you okay?”

  “You tell me,” she says, brittle, brushing her hair away from her face. “Since I don’t seem to have any clue at all about myself.”

  As I sit down next to her, Greta gets up and moves away from us, as if she knows I’ve taken over the helm of support. “Where’s Sophie?”

  “Napping.”

  “And Fitz?”

  “I sent him home,” she says. She draws her knees up and wraps her arms tight around them. “Do you know how many people I’ve come across on a job, who tell me they didn’t even know they were off course until it was too late? Hikers who take a wrong turn, novice campers who misread a map—they all say they thought they were somewhere else.” She stares at me. “I never really believed them, until now.”

  “Sweetheart, listen—”

  “I don’t want to listen, Eric. I don’t want to be told anymore who I used to be. I want to fucking remember it myself.” Tears swim in her eyes. “What is wrong with me?”

  I reach out, intending to draw her into my arms, but as soon as my hands slide across her shoulder blades, she stiffens.

  He was scratching her back . . .

  His hands went underneath her skirt . . .

  She looks up at me with tears in her eyes. “Sophie,” she says. “She was with him, alone.”

  “You got there first,” I tell her, because I need to believe it myself. She ducks her head, lost in thought. “I’ll be inside if you need me.”

  She tucks her hair behind her ears and nods. But then, it’s never the finding part that’s been a problem for Delia. It’s coming to terms with being lost.

  * * *

  It’s choice that makes us human: I could put this bottle down at any time, or I could continue till it’s empty. I can tell myself I know exactly what I’m doing; I can convince myself that it will take much more than a few drinks to slide down to a pit I cannot climb out from.

  And, oh, God, the taste of it. The sooty smoke in the back of the throat; the burn on the flesh of my lips. The stream of it through the baleen of my teeth. After a day like this one, anyone would need to unwind a little.

  Tonight, the moon is jaundiced and scarred. It’s so close to the roof of Ruthann’s trailer that for a moment I imagine that the corner of the roof might prick it, send it flying like a pierced balloon.

  Why do they call it a mobile home, if it never goes anywhere?

  “Eric?” A sliver of light splinters my arm, then my leg, then half of my body as Delia opens the door. “Are you still out here?”

  I manage to slide the whiskey bottle behind my calf where she can’t see it.

  She sits down on the step behind me. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I know this isn’t your fault.”

  If I answer, she’ll smell the booze on my breath. So instead, I just hang my head, and hope she thinks I’m overwhelmed.

  “Come inside,” she says, reaching for my hand, and I’m so grateful for this that when I stand up I forget what I’ve been hiding, and the bottle rolls down the steps.

  “Did you drop something?” Delia asks, but as her eyes adjust to the darkness, she sees the label. “Oh, Eric,” she murmurs, a boatload of disillusion in those broken syllables.

  By the time I shake myself out of my stupor enough to follow her inside, she’s already hauled a sleeping Sophie into her arms. She whistles for Greta, and grabs her car keys from the counter.

  “For God’s sake, Delia, it was just a little nightcap. I’m not drunk, look at me. Listen to me. I can stop whenever I feel like it.”

  She turns around, our daughter caught between us. “So can I, Eric,” she says, and she walks out the front door.

  I don’t call her back when she gets into the Explorer. The taillights dance down the road, the sideways eyes of a demon. I sit down on the bottom step of the trailer and pick up the bottle of whiskey, which is lying on its side.

  It’s half full.

  Fitz

  It takes a while to get Sophie settled in my motel room, with Greta curled on the ed