The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “Mr. Urqhart,” a reporter said, as twenty microphones were held up to his face, a bouquet of black roses. “Do you have any comment?”

  I stepped back, watching Rufus in the limelight. I wished I could just vanish on the spot. I knew that Rufus didn’t mean to use Shay as a pawn here, that he was only doing his job as the head of the ACLU—and yet, how did that make him different from Warden Coyne?

  “Shay Bourne is dead,” Rufus said soberly. “The first execution in this state in sixty-nine years . . . in the only first world country to still have death penalty legislation on the books.”

  He looked out over the crowd. “Some people say that the reason we have a death penalty in this country is because we need to punish certain inmates. It’s said to be a deterrent—but in fact, murder rates are higher in death penalty jurisdictions than in those without it. It’s said to be cheaper to execute a man than to keep him in prison for life—but in fact, when you factor in the cost of eleven years of appeals, paid for with public funds, it costs about a third more to execute a prisoner than to sentence him to life in prison. Some people say that the death penalty exists for the sake of the victims’ family—that it offers closure, so that they can deal, finally and completely, with their grief. But does knowing that the death toll has risen above and beyond their family member really offer justice? And how do we explain the fact that a murder in a rural setting is more likely to lead to a death sentence than one that occurs in the city? Or that the murder of a white victim leads to the death penalty three and a half times more often than the murder of a black victim? Or that women are sentenced to death only two-thirds as often as men?”

  Before I realized what I was doing, I had stepped into the tiny circle of space that the media had afforded to Rufus. “Maggie,” he whispered, covering the mikes, “I’m working this here.”

  A reporter gave me my invitation. “Hey, weren’t you his lawyer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Which I hope means I’m qualified to tell you what I’m going to. I work for the ACLU. I can spout out all the same statistics that Mr. Urqhart just did. But you know what that speech leaves out? That I am truly sorry for June Nealon’s loss, after all this time. And that today, I lost someone I cared about. Someone who’d made some serious mistakes—someone who was a hard nut to crack—but someone I’d made a place for in my life.”

  “Maggie,” Rufus hissed, pulling at my sleeve. “Save the true confessional for your diary.”

  I ignored him. “You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don’t want to say it out loud—for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there’s a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together—huddle and circle our wagons—and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? Who decides what crime is so awful that the only answer is death? And what if, God forbid, they get it wrong?”

  The crowd was murmuring; the cameras were rolling. “I don’t have children. I can’t say I’d feel the same way if one of them was killed. And I don’t have the answers—believe me, if I did, I’d be a lot richer—but you know, I’m starting to think that’s okay. Maybe instead of looking for answers, we ought to be asking some questions instead. Like: What’s the lesson we’re teaching here? What if it’s different every time? What if justice isn’t equal to due process? Because at the end of the day, this is what we’re left with: a victim, who’s become a file to be dealt with, instead of a little girl, or a husband. An inmate who doesn’t want to know the name of a correctional officer’s child because that makes the relationship too personal. A warden who carries out executions even if he doesn’t think they should happen in principle. And an ACLU lawyer who’s supposed to go to the office, close the case, and move on. What we’re left with is death, with the humanity removed from it.” I hesitated a moment. “So you tell me . . . did this execution really make you feel safer? Did it bring us all closer together? Or did it drive us farther apart?”

  I pushed past the cameras, whose heavy heads swung like bulls to follow my path, and into the crowd, which carved a canyon for me to walk through. And I cried.

  God, I cried.

  * * *

  I turned on my windshield wipers on the way home, even though it was not raining. But I was falling apart at the seams, and sobbing, and I couldn’t see; somehow I thought this would help. I had upstaged my boss on what was arguably the most important legal outcome for the New Hampshire ACLU in the past fifty years; even worse—I didn’t particularly care.

  I would have liked to talk to Christian, but he was at the hospital by now, supervising the harvest of Shay’s heart and other organs. He’d said he’d come over as soon as he could, as soon as he had word that the transplant was going to be a success.

  Which meant that I was going home to a house with a rabbit in it, and not much else.

  I turned the corner to my street and immediately saw the car in my driveway. My mother was waiting for me at the front door. I wanted to ask her why she was here, instead of at work. I wanted to ask her how she’d known I’d need her.

  But when she wordlessly held out a blanket that I usually kept on the couch, one with fuzzy fleece inside, I stepped into it and forgot all my questions. Instead, I buried my face against her neck. “Oh, Mags,” she soothed. “It’s going to be all right.”

  I shook my head. “It was awful. Every time I blink, I can see it, like it’s still happening.” I drew in a shuddering breath. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? Up till the last minute, I was expecting a miracle. Like in the courtroom. That he’d slip out of the noose, or—I don’t know—fly away or something.”

  “Here, sit down,” my mother said, leading me into the kitchen. “Real life doesn’t work that way. It’s like you said, to the reporters—”

  “You saw me?” I glanced up.

  “On television. Every channel, Maggie. Even CNN.” Her face glowed. “Four people already called me to say you were brilliant.”

  I suddenly remembered sitting in my parents’ kitchen when I was in college, unable to decide on a career. My mother had sat down, propped her elbows on the table. What do you love to do? she had asked.

  Read, I’d told her. And argue.

  She had smiled broadly. Maggie, my love, you were meant to become a lawyer.

  I buried my face in my hands. “I was an idiot. Rufus is going to fire me.”

  “Why? Because you said what nobody has the guts to say? The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It’s always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place.”

  She turned to me, holding out a steaming, fragrant bowl. I could smell rosemary, pepper, celery. “I made you soup. From scratch.”

  “You made me soup from scratch?”

  My mother rolled her eyes. “Okay, I bought soup someone else made from scratch.”

  When I smiled a little, she touched my cheek. “Maggie,” she said, “eat.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, while my mother did the dishes and cleaned up in my kitchen, and with Oliver curled up at my side, I fell asleep on the living room couch. I dreamed that I was walking in the dark in my favorite Stuart Weitzman heels, but they were hurting me. I glanced down to discover I was not walking on grass, but on a ground that looked like tempered glass after it’s been shattered, like the cracked, parched landscape of a desert. My heels kept getting stuck in the crevasses, and finally I had to stop to pull one free.

  When I did, a clod of earth overturned, and beneath it was light, the purest, most liquid lava form of it. I kicked at another piece of the ground with my heel, and more beams spilled outward and upward. I poked holes, and rays shined up. I danced, and the world became illuminated, so bright that I had to shade my eyes; so bright that I could not keep them from filling with tears.

  June

  This, I had told