The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  She stared uneasily at the computer. The last time she’d decided to check up on her son, she’d hacked into his e-mail account to discover that he’d acquired six pen pals—all kids around his own age, all from different parts of the world. At first, Shelby had found this encouraging. For Ethan to have found a way to make a connection to other children seemed healthy, if not downright inspiring. But then Shelby had started to read some of the mail, and realized that Ethan had not represented himself quite accurately. To Sonya in Denmark, he was a sixth-grade preppie on the math squad. To Tony in Indianapolis, he was a star batter for a little-league farm team. To Marco in Colorado, he was an avid mountain climber who trekked every weekend with his dad.

  In none of these letters did he mention his XP condition. In none of these letters did he seem any less than an average, athletic, normal American boy from a happy two-parent family.

  In short, Ethan had turned himself into everything he was not.

  With a sigh Shelby left Ethan’s room and started down the hall. Passing Ross’s door, she hesitated. She was eight years older than Ross; it seemed she had been taking care of him all her life—from diapering him as an infant to sitting by his side after his suicide attempt to worrying for his safety when he did not call her for months. Mothering had always come easily to her; when their parents had died years ago, she simply stepped into their shoes and took over.

  She believed that unadulterated devotion had its share of protective power, as if love were a steel girder the Fates could not snip through. She also believed that the moment you relaxed your guard, the moment you were anything less than ferocious in your keeping, that was the moment it all could be snatched away.

  Which brought her right back to wondering when Ross would bring Ethan home.

  She pushed open the door and began to clean in there, too. She made Ross’s bed. She lined up his toothbrush and his hairbrush on the dresser. She put his shampoo, nail clippers, and toothpaste into his toiletry kit and zipped it shut.

  The chair was piled high with her brother’s rumpled clothes. With a sigh she lifted one soft shirt and creased it neatly, set it on the edge of the bed. She balled together a pair of socks. She stacked boxers and tees and finally shook out a spare pair of jeans. As she began to fold them with military precision, something fell from the pocket. Shelby leaned down to pick up what had dropped: three pennies, dated 1932, which she set on the dresser where Ross would be sure to see them.

  Ross turned and waved up at Ethan in the window, then cautiously approached the spot in the woods where he’d last seen the flash of white. He had left Ethan with the Maglite, which meant Ross fully expected to plunge headfirst over an exposed root. Although he couldn’t see more than a foot in front of him, he could still hear the sounds of someone—or something—scrabbling around.

  Ross shivered; it was colder out here than he’d expected it to be, and he wished he’d brought his sweatshirt. He could suddenly smell wild roses, as if there were a field of them underfoot, and he knew from Curtis that this, too, was a way a ghost might make its presence known. Show yourself, he thought.

  But any hopes he had of encountering his first apparition died as he came upon a young woman, crouching as she tried to dig into the frozen earth.

  She was wearing a flowered dress, and her pale hair was wild around her face. The white flash Ross had seen was a lace collar. She was feverishly busy, intent on her task. And she was as real as the ground beneath his feet.

  Clearly, she had not heard him approach, or she would have realized she’d been caught in the act of . . . well, whatever she’d been doing. Ross found himself tongue-tied—not only wasn’t she the ghost he’d been hoping for, but she was young, and pretty, and uninvited. He seized on that, if only to have something to say. “What are you doing here?”

  She turned slowly, blinking, as if surprised to find herself in the middle of the forest. “I . . . I don’t know.” Glancing down at her hands, dirt caught beneath the nails, she frowned.

  “Did van Vleet send you?”

  “I don’t know Van Fleet . . .”

  “Vleet.” Ross frowned. Maybe it was only an unlikely coincidence that the night he began his investigation, an insomniac would come wandering onto the property. There were other homes in the vicinity, and stranger things had happened. He found himself wishing that he hadn’t started this conversation on the defensive. He found himself wishing she’d glance up at him again. “What are you looking for?” he asked, nodding toward the hole she’d been digging.

  The woman blushed, which lit her from the inside. When she shook her head, he could smell that floral perfume again. “I have no idea. The last time I sleepwalked, I wound up in a neighbor’s hayloft.”

  “With or without the neighbor?” Ross heard himself ask, and the woman looked so mortified that he immediately wished he could call back the words. He dug his hands into his pockets instead, trying to make amends. “I’m Ross Wakeman,” he said.

  She looked up, still discomfited. “I have to go.”

  “No, see, where I come from, the appropriate response is: Hello, I’m Susan. Or: Hey, Hannah’s the name. Or: Howdy, I’m Madonna.”

  “Madonna?”

  Ross grinned. “Whatever.”

  A tiny smile played at the corners of her mouth. “I’m Lia,” she said.

  “Just Lia?”

  She hesitated. “Beaumont. Lia Beaumont.”

  Every line of her body was poised for flight. Then again, coming across a stranger in the middle of the woods when you were sleepwalking was bound to be upsetting. If possible, she seemed even more unsure of herself around Ross than Ross felt around her. She nodded, still awkward, and started to walk off. Ross was filled with an unaccountable need to keep her from leaving, and tried to think of one thing to say that would keep her here, but all the words dammed up at the base of his throat.

  Suddenly, she turned back to him. “Were you sleepwalking?”

  “No, actually, I’m working.” Ross wound the thread of conversation tight around himself, an anchor.

  “Here? Now?”

  “Yeah. I’m a paranormal investigator.” He could tell the term didn’t ring a bell for her. “Ghosts,” he explained. “I look for ghosts. In fact, I came out here because I thought your collar was . . . well, anyway. You’re not quite what I was expecting.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  She tipped her head to one side, studying him. “You really believe people can come back after they die? Like Harry Houdini?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” She wore sorrow like a hangman’s hood; it shrouded her delicate features. “Who knows?” he teased. “We may even have company right now.”

  But his words made Lia glance behind her wildly. “If he finds me . . .”

  Who? Ross wanted to say, as he realized that this woman’s skittishness was not about being discovered by him, but being discovered by someone else. Before he could ask, an ear-splitting scream curled from the house. “Uncle Ross!” Ethan shrieked. “Uncle Ross, come back!”

  Ross looked up at the window, where there was no longer any residual light from either the flashlight or the video camera. The blood drained from his face as he imagined what Ethan might have seen. “I have to go,” he said to Lia, and without any further explanation, took off at a dead run.

  From the New York Times:

  THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT?

  by Kerrigan Klieg

  Comtosook, VT—The residents of Comtosook, a small town in the northwest corner of Vermont, are eager to tell tall tales. There are stories of maple sap running in the dry summer months, of flower petals falling from rain clouds and of ground freezing solid in the middle of August, of cars that suddenly can only move in reverse. Yet the strangest part of this gossip is that it happens to be true, and these odd occurrences are just the tip of the iceberg. Experts at the nearby University of Vermont in various fields have not been able to explain the numerous events, but re