The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  You’d think I’ve run a mile, I’m panting that hard. I lean against the wall outside the bathroom and listen to Caleb slam cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. Think like Nathaniel, I tell myself. Where would I be if I were five?

  I would be climbing rainbows. I would be lifting rocks to find crickets sleeping underneath; I would be sorting the gravel in the driveway by weight and color. But these are all the things Nathaniel used to do, things that fill the mind of a child before he has to grow up. Overnight.

  There is a thin drip coming from the bathroom. The sink; Nathaniel routinely leaves it on when he brushes his teeth. I suddenly want to see that trickle of water, because it will be the most normal thing I’ve witnessed all day. But inside, the sink is dry as a bone. I turn to the source of the noise, pull back the brightly patterned shower curtain.

  And scream.

  • • •

  The only thing he can hear underwater is his heart. Is it like this for dolphins, too? Nathaniel wonders, or can they hear sounds the rest of us can’t—coral blooming, fish breathing, sharks thinking. His eyes are wide open, and through the wet the ceiling is runny. Bubbles tickle his nostrils, and the fish drawn onto the shower curtain make it real.

  But suddenly his mother is there, here in the ocean where she shouldn’t be, and her face is as wide as the sky coming closer. Nathaniel forgets to hold his breath as she yanks him out of the water by his shirt. He coughs, he sneezes sea. He hears her crying, and that reminds him that he has to come back to this world, after all.

  • • •

  Oh, my God, he isn’t breathing—he isn’t breathing—and then Nathaniel takes a great gulp of air. He is twice his weight in his soaked clothes, but I wrestle him out of the tub so that he lies dripping on the bathmat. Caleb’s feet pound up the stairs. “Did you find him?”

  “Nathaniel,” I say as close to his face as I can, “what were you doing?”

  His golden hair is matted to his scalp, his eyes are huge. His lips twist, reaching for a word that doesn’t come.

  Can five-year-olds be suicidal? What other reason can there be for finding my son, fully dressed, submerged in a tub full of water?

  Caleb crowds into the bathroom. He takes one look at Nathaniel, dripping, and the draining tub. “What the hell?”

  “Let’s get you out of these clothes,” I say, as if I find Nathaniel in this situation on a daily basis. My hands go to the buttons of his flannel shirt, but he twists away from me, curls into a ball.

  Caleb looks at me. “Buddy,” he tries, “you’re gonna get sick if you stay like this.”

  When Caleb gathers him onto his lap, Nathaniel goes completely boneless. He’s wide-awake, he’s looking right at me, yet I would swear that he isn’t here at all.

  Caleb’s hands begin to unbutton Nathaniel’s shirt. But instead, I grab a towel and wrap it around him. I hold it close at Nathaniel’s neck and lean forward, so that my words fall onto his upturned face. “Who did this to you?” I demand. “Tell me, honey. Tell me so that I can make it better.”

  “Nina.”

  “Tell me. If you don’t tell me, I can’t do anything about it.” My voice hitches at the middle like a rusting train. My face is as wet as Nathaniel’s.

  He’s trying; oh, he’s trying. His cheeks are red with the effort. He opens his mouth, pours forth a strangled knot of air.

  I nod at him, encouraging. “You can do this, Nathaniel. Come on.”

  The muscles in his throat tighten. He sounds like he is drowning again.

  “Did someone touch you, Nathaniel?”

  “Jesus!” Caleb wrenches Nathaniel away from me. “Leave him alone, Nina!”

  “But he was going to say something.” I get to my feet, jockeying to face Nathaniel again. “Weren’t you, baby?”

  Caleb hefts Nathaniel higher in his arms. He walks out of the bathroom without saying another word, cradling our son close to his chest. He leaves me standing in a puddle, to clean up the mess that’s been left behind.

  • • •

  Ironically, in Maine’s Bureau of Children, Youth and Family Services, an investigation into child abuse is not an investigation at all. By the time a caseworker can officially open a case, he or she will already have psychiatric or physical evidence of abuse in the child, as well as the name of a suspected perpetrator. There will be no guesswork involved—all the research will have been completed by that point. It is the role of the BCYF caseworker to simply go along for the ride, so that if by some miracle it reaches the trial stage, everything has been done the way the government likes.

  Monica LaFlamme has worked in the Child Abuse Action Network of the BCYF for three years now, and she is tired of coming in during the second act. She looks out the window of her office, a squat gray cube like every other government office in the complex, to a deserted playground. It is a metal swing set resting on a concrete slab. Leave it to the BCYF to have the one play structure left in the region that doesn’t meet updated safety standards.

  She yawns, pinches her finger and thumb to the bridge of her nose. Monica is exhausted. Not just from staying up for Letterman last night, but in general, as if the gray walls and commercial carpet in her office have somehow seeped into her through osmosis. She is tired of filling out reports on cases that go nowhere. She is tired of seeing forty-year-old eyes in the faces of ten-year-old children. What she needs is a vacation to the Caribbean, where there is so much color exploding—blue surf, white sand, scarlet flowers—that it renders her blind to her daily work.

  When the phone rings, Monica jumps in her chair. “This is Monica LaFlamme,” she says, crisply opening the manila folder on her desk, as if the person on the other end of the line has seen her daydreaming.

  “Yes, hello. This is Dr. Christine Robichaud. I’m a psychiatrist up at Maine Medical Center.” A hesitation, and that is all Monica needed to know what is coming next. “I need to report a possible case of sexual abuse against a five-year-old male.”

  She takes notes as Dr. Robichaud describes behaviors she’s seen over and over. She scrawls the name of the patient, the names of his parents. Something nicks the corner of her mind, but she pushes it aside to concentrate on what the psychiatrist is saying.

  “Are there any police reports you can fax me?” Monica asks.

  “The police haven’t been involved. The boy hasn’t identified the abuser yet.”

  At that, Monica puts down her pen. “Doctor, you know I can’t open an investigation until there’s someone to investigate.”

  “It’s only a matter of time. Nathaniel is experiencing a somatoform disorder, which basically renders him mute without any physical cause. It’s my belief that within a few weeks or so, he’ll be able to tell us who did this to him.”

  “What are the parents saying?”

  The psychiatrist pauses. “This is all new behavior.”

  Monica taps her pen on her desk. In her experience, when the parents claim to be completely surprised by the speech or actions of a child who has been abused, it often ends up that one parent or both is the abuser.

  Dr. Robichaud is well aware of this, too. “I thought that you might want to get in at the ground level, Ms. LaFlamme. I referred the Frosts to a pediatrician trained in child sexual abuse cases, for a detailed medical examination of their son. He should be faxing you a report.”

  Monica takes down the information; hangs up the phone. Then she looks over what she’s written, in preparation for beginning yet another case that will most likely fizzle before a conviction is secured.

  Frost, she thinks, rewriting the name. Surely it must be someone else.

  • • •

  We lay in the dark, not touching, a foot of space between us.

  “Miss Lydia?” I whisper, and feel Caleb shake his head. “Who, then?

  Who’s alone with him, other than the two of us?”

  Caleb is so quiet I think he’s fallen asleep. “Patrick watched him for a whole weekend when we went to your cousin’s wedding