The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “Mind of its own is more like it,” she said, shaking out her hair before she bent down to rinse out her mouth. When she straightened back up again, I kissed her.

  “Minty fresh,” I said.

  She laughed. “Did I miss something? Are we filming a Crest commercial?”

  In the mirror, our eyes met. I’ve always wondered whether she sees what I do when I look at her. Or for that matter, whether she notices the fact that my hair’s gotten thinner on the top. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “How do you know I want something?”

  “Because I’ve been married to you for seven years?”

  I followed her into the bedroom and watched as she dropped the towel and pulled on an oversize T-shirt to sleep in. I know you wouldn’t want to hear this—what kid does?—but that was another thing that I loved about your mother. Even after seven years, she still sort of ducked when she changed in front of me, as if I did not know every inch of her by heart.

  “I need you and Willow to come somewhere with me tomorrow,” I said. “A lawyer’s office.”

  Charlotte sank onto the mattress. “For what?”

  I struggled to put into words the feelings that were my explanation. “The way we were treated. The arrest. I can’t just let them get away with it.”

  She stared at me. “I thought you were the one who wanted to just get home and get on with our lives.”

  “Yeah, and you know what that meant for me today? The whole department thinks I’m some huge joke. I’m always going to be the cop who managed to get arrested. All I’ve got in my job is my reputation. And they ruined that.” I sat down beside Charlotte, hesitating. I championed the truth every day, but I didn’t always like speaking it, especially when it meant saying something that left me bare. “They took my family away. I was in that cell, thinking about you and Amelia and Willow, and all I wanted to do was hurt someone. All I wanted to do was turn into the person they already thought I was.”

  Charlotte lifted her gaze to mine. “Who’s ’they’?”

  I threaded my fingers through hers. “Well,” I said, “that’s what I hope the lawyer will tell us.”

  • • •

  The waiting room walls of the law offices of Robert Ramirez were papered with the canceled settlement checks that he’d won for former clients. I paced with my hands clasped behind my back, leaning in to read a few. “Pay to the Order of $350,000.” “$1.2 million.” “$890,000.” Amelia was hovering over the coffee machine, a nifty little thing that let you put in a single cup and push a button to get the flavor you wanted. “Mom,” she asked, “can I have some?”

  “No,” Charlotte said. She was sitting next to you on the couch, trying to keep your cast from sliding off the stiff leather.

  “But they have tea. And cocoa.”

  “No means no, Amelia!”

  The secretary stood up behind her desk. “Mr. Ramirez is ready to see you now.”

  I pulled you onto my hip, and we all followed the secretary down the hall to a conference room enclosed by walls of frosted glass. The secretary held the door open, but even so, I had to tilt you sideways to get your legs through the clearing. I kept my eyes on Ramirez; I wanted to watch his reaction when he saw you. “Mr. O’Keefe,” he said, and he held out a hand.

  I shook it. “This is my wife, Charlotte, and my girls, Amelia and Willow.”

  “Ladies,” Ramirez said, and then he turned to his secretary. “Briony, why don’t you get the crayons and a couple of coloring books?”

  From behind me, I heard Amelia snort—I knew she was thinking that this guy didn’t have a clue, that coloring books were for little kids, not ones who were already wearing training bras.

  “The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Periwinkle Blue,” you said.

  Ramirez raised his brows. “Good to know,” he replied, and then he gestured toward a woman standing nearby. “I’d like to introduce you to my associate, Marin Gates.”

  She looked the part. With black hair pulled back in a clip and a navy suit, she could have been pretty, but there was something off about her. Her mouth, I decided. She looked like she’d just spit out something that tasted awful.

  “I’ve invited Marin to sit in on this meeting,” Ramirez said. “Please, take a seat.”

  Before we could, though, the secretary reappeared with the coloring books. She handed them to Charlotte, black-and-white pamphlets that said ROBERT RAMIREZ, ESQUIRE across the top in block letters. “Oh, look,” your mother said, shooting a withering glance in my direction. “Who knew they’d invented personal injury coloring books?”

  Ramirez grinned. “The Internet is a wondrous place.”

  The seats in the conference room were too narrow to accommodate your spica cast. After three abortive attempts to sit you down, I finally hauled you back onto my hip again and faced the lawyer.

  “How can we help you, Mr. O’Keefe?” he asked.

  “It’s Sergeant O’Keefe, actually,” I corrected. “I work on the Bankton, New Hampshire, police force; I have for the past nineteen years. My family and I just got back from Disney World, and that’s what brought me here today. I’ve never been treated so poorly in my whole life. I mean, what’s more normal than a trip to Disney World, right? But no, instead, my wife and I wind up arrested, my kids are taken away from me and put into protective custody, my youngest daughter is alone by herself in a hospital, scared out of her mind . . .” I drew in my breath. “Privacy’s a fundamental right, and the privacy of my family was violated beyond belief.”

  Marin Gates cleared her throat. “I can see that you’re still very upset, Officer O’Keefe. We’re going to try to help you . . . but we need you to back up a bit and slow down. Why did you go to Disney World?”

  So I told her. I told her about your OI, and the ice cream, and how you fell. I told her about the men in black suits who led us out of the theme park and arranged for the ambulance, as if the sooner they got rid of us the better. I told her about the woman who’d taken Amelia away from us, about the interrogations that went on for hours at the police station, about the way no one there believed me. I told her about the jokes that had been made about me at my own station.

  “I want names,” I said. “I want to sue, and I want to do it fast. I want to go after someone at Disney World, someone at the hospital, and someone at DCF. I want people’s jobs, and I want money out of this to make up for the hell we went through.”

  By the time I finished, my face felt hot. I couldn’t look at your mother; I didn’t want to see her face after what I’d said.

  Ramirez nodded. “The type of case you’re suggesting is very expensive, Sergeant O’Keefe. Any lawyer that takes it on would do a cost-benefit analysis first, and I can tell you right away that, even though you’re seeking a money judgment, you’re not going to get one.”

  “But those checks in the waiting room . . .”

  “Were for cases where the plaintiff had a valid complaint. From what you’ve described to us, the people who worked at Disney World and the hospital and DCF were just doing their jobs. Doctors have a legal responsibility to report suspicions of child abuse. Without the letter from your hometown doctor, the police had probable cause to make the arrest in the state of Florida. DCF has an obligation to protect children, particularly when the child in question is too young to give a detailed account of her own health issues. As an officer of the law, I’m sure if you step back and remove the emotion from the facts here, you’ll see that, once the health-care information was received from New Hampshire, your kids were immediately turned over to you; you and your wife were released . . . sure, it made you feel awful. But embarrassment isn’t a just cause of action.”

  “What about emotional damages?” I blustered. “Do you have any idea what that was like for me? For my kids?”

  “I’m sure it was nothing compared to the emotional burden of living day in and day out with a child who has these particular health problems,” Ramirez said, and beside me, Char