The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  12. When Oliver goes to save Marble, the whale tangled in nets in Gloucester, it seems that he is temporarily calling off his search for his wife and daughter. How did you react to his decision? Do you think that Oliver was motivated only by a desire to get on camera and to make a public plea for Jane and Rebecca, or did you think that he may have been reverting to his old ways?

  13. At the end of the novel, Jane abandons her love for Sam, choosing instead to honor her responsibilities to her husband and her daughter. How did you react to that choice? Did you find it surprising? Frustrating? What clues did Picoult provide throughout the novel to signal that Jane would eventually make this choice?

  14. Jane comments, “You can take dead trees in an orchard, and bring them back to life.” Discuss the final moments of the novel. In what ways have Jane, Rebecca, and Oliver changed? Do you think that the conclusion of the novel is ultimately hopeful about the family’s future? Why or why not?

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dr. Roger Payne’s name is used by courtesy of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society USA, 191 Weston Road, Lincoln MA 01773

  Oliver’s article for The Journal of Mammology has been excerpted from an actual article in the Journal: “Humpback Whale Songs on a North Atlantic Feeding Ground,” written by David K. Mattila, Linda N. Guinee and Charles A. Mayo. It is reprinted by courtesy of the American Society of Mammologists.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1992 by Jodi Picoult

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Washington Square Press, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-3101-9

  ISBN-10: 0-7434-3101-4

  ISBN: 978-0-7434-3984-8 (eBook)

  First Pocket Books trade paperback printing October 2001

  ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Interior design by Nancy Singer Olaguera

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part II

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  10th Anniversary Letter

  Author’s Note

  For my dad, Myron Picoult, who taught me to be an original.

  There are not many men in the world who can sneeze like a duck, spy hales of bay, make very bad puns . . . and cherish their daughters so completely.

  I love you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again, I find myself indebted to so many people: Dr. Joel Umlas, Dr. James Umlas, and Dr. David Toub for their medical expertise; Dr. Tia Horner and Dr. Stuart Anfang for their explanations of forensic psychiatry and clinical interviews; Dr. Catherine Lewis and Dr. Neil Kaye for helping me understand neonaticide; my father-in-law, Karl van Leer, who never once blinked when I called and asked about inseminating cows; Kyle van Leer, who saw a “cookie moon” and let me borrow it; Teresa Farina for the fast transcriptions; Dr. Elizabeth Martin for finding listeria and leading me through autopsies; Steve Marshall, who took me ghost hunting; Brian Laird for the troll story; Allegra Lubrano for finding obscure legal statutes whenever I called frantically to ask “a quick question”; Kiki Keating, attorney extraordinaire, for making the time to come with me to Lancaster and spending all those nights hunched over the tape recorder, brainstorming testimony; and Tim van Leer for everything. Thanks also to Jane Picoult, who wanted her own sentence this time, for her insight and guiding comments. Thanks to Laura Gross for the same, and for possibly being the only person in the publishing business who wants me to write faster. To Emily Bestler and Kip Hakala—here’s to the start of a beautiful relationship. And to Camille McDuffie—the third time’s a charm. I am indebted to the works of John Hostetler and Donald Kraybill, and to the people I met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, without whom this book could not have been written: Maribel Kraybill, Lt. Renee Schuler, and especially Louise Stoltzfus, a wonderful writer herself, whose contributions here were invaluable. Finally, many thanks to the Amish men, women, and children I met, who graciously opened their homes and their hearts and let me into their world for a little while.

  I.

  I must be a Christian child

  Gentle, patient, meek and mild;

  Must be honest, simple, true

  In my words and actions too. . .

  Must remember, God can view

  All I think, and all I do.

  —Amish school verse

  ONE

  She had often dreamed of her little sister floating dead beneath the surface of the ice, but tonight, for the first time, she envisioned Hannah clawing to get out. She could see Hannah’s eyes, wide and milky; could feel Hannah’s nails scraping. Then, with a start, she woke. It was not winter—it was July. There was no ice beneath her palms, just the tangled sheets of her bed. But once again, there was someone on the other side, fighting to be free.

  As the fist in her belly pulled tighter, she bit her bottom lip. Ignoring the pain that rippled and receded, she tiptoed barefoot into the night.

  The barn cat yowled when she stepped inside. She was panting by now, her legs shaking like willow twigs. Lowering herself to the hay in the far corner of the calving pen, she drew up her knees. The swollen cows rolled their blue moon eyes in her direction, then turned away quickly, as if they knew better than to bear witness.

  She concentrated on the hides of the Holsteins until their black spots shimmied and swam. She sank her teeth into the rolled hem of her nightgown. There was a funnel of pressure, as if she were being turned inside out; and she remembered how she and Hannah used to squeeze through the hole in the barbed wire fence by the creek’s edge, pushing and angled, all knees and grunts and elbows, until by some miracle they’d tumble through.

  It was over as suddenly as it had begun. And lying on the matted, stained hay between her legs was a baby.

  * * *

  Aaron Fisher rolled over beneath the bright quilt to stare at the clock beside the bed. There had been nothing, no sound to wake him, but after forty-five years of farming and milking, the smallest things could pull him out of sleep: a footfall in the corn, a change in the pattern of the wind, the rasp of a mother’s tongue roughing a newborn calf.

  He felt the mattress give as Sarah came up on an elbow behind him, the long braid of her hair curling over her shoulder like a seaman’s rope. “Was ist letz?” What’s the matter?

  It was not the animals; there was a full month before the first cow was due to deliver. It was not a robber; there was too little noise. He felt his wife’s arm slip around him, hugging his back to her front. “Nix,” he murmured. Nothing. But he did not know if he was trying to convince Sarah, or himself.

  * * *

  She knew enough to cut the cord that spiraled purple to the baby’s belly. Hands shaking, she managed to reach the old scissors that hung on a peg near the pen’s door. They were rusty and coated with bits of hay. The cord severed in two thick snips, and then began spurting blood. Horrified, she pressed her fingers to the ends, pinching it shut, wildly looking around for something to tie it off.

  She rummaged in the hay and came up with a small l