The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “But it came to me pretty quick that you would still say good-bye. And when you didn’t come, not that day, or the next . . . I went into town. No one there had seen you, either. And then, with the camp . . .”

  “What about it?”

  He looks at me. “There is no camp, anymore. After I was in town overnight, I came back to a ghost town. Empty tents, laundry hanging, toys scattered on the ground—like everyone had left in a hurry, right in the middle of everything.”

  “Why would they go without taking their things?”

  “Because someone made them,” Gray Wolf says flatly.

  I think about the old woman who smoked in front of her tent while weaving sweetgrass baskets. About the toddler who drew in the dirt with a stick, and cried when a puppy ruined her artwork. About the girls who giggled behind their hands at the smooth-chested boys. Had they been rounded up? Put into institutions and sterilized? Killed?

  “When you went missing . . . and then so did everyone else . . .” He squeezes my hand. “Well, a person’s got to have a lot of anger in him to do that much harm.”

  I realize what he is implying. “You’re wrong,” I tell Gray Wolf. “Spencer would never hurt anyone like that.”

  “Not even if he found out the truth?”

  We stare at each other, a stalemate, until a voice in the doorway breaks our concentration. “And what truth would that be?” Spencer asks softly.

  He stands with the gun from the pantry, pointed straight at Gray Wolf. “You son of a bitch,” he says. “I saw you break into the house. I thought you were here to steal something, and I was going to catch you red-handed.” He looks at our joined hands. “But you didn’t have to steal a goddamn thing, did you? It was handed to you on a silver platter.”

  “Spencer, stop!”

  Before I can get to my feet Gray Wolf has lunged for Spencer, knocking the gun out of his hand. Spencer wrestles him onto the ground, pinning him. He has the advantage of youth and rage; his fist pounds into Gray Wolf’s face until blood runs from his nose and mouth and his eyes roll up in his head.

  I pull at Spencer’s arm and he flings me away, so that I fall onto my side. A sharp pain runs beneath my belly and around my back; I wince. “Please! Let him go!”

  Spencer hauls Gray Wolf to his feet by the collar of his shirt. “The only reason I won’t kill you is because that would bring me down to your level,” he pants, dragging my real father down the stairs. I follow them, slipping on the blood, trying to ignore the pain shooting up my spine. When Spencer opens the door to toss Gray Wolf out Ruby is on the other side of it. She takes one look at the battered face and screams, dropping her sack of groceries on the porch.

  “Lia,” Gray Wolf twists in Spencer’s hold. “Come with me.”

  The baby seizes inside me, reminding me of the answer I have to give. “I can’t.”

  Spencer shoves him so that he flies off the porch, landing face-first on the ground. “If you are still in Comtosook tomorrow,” he vows, “I will make sure you spend the rest of your life at the State Prison. Say good-bye to your lover, Cissy.”

  “He’s not my lover!” I cry, but my voice splits apart on the words. Spencer turns just in time to see me double over, to watch my water break like a lake on the floor.

  The immediate need is to lessen the distress of body or mind in those about us. Common humanity calls for that. . . . [n]o hamlet is so small as to be exempt and every state and town has problems of its own concerning its unfortunate, its underprivileged, its handicapped. . . . How can a community, after caring to the best of its abilities for those who suffer from devastating ills, proceed to govern itself in such a way as to better its chances for the future?

  —H. F. Perkins, “Eugenic Aspects,” Vermont Commission on Country Life, Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future, 1931

  So this is how my mother died: cracked wide as a hinged jaw, pressing a century between her legs, unable to breathe for fear of what might come next. Fire races from my back to my belly, and my insides wring tighter with every contraction. Ruby, just as scared as I am, whimpers at the foot of the bed, hoping to catch a miracle in her outstretched hand.

  It is too early—for this baby to come, and for me to leave.

  I have been in labor for eleven hours. All this time, Ruby has been by my side. And Spencer has been in his study, drinking. I do not know if he called Dr. DuBois. I am afraid to hear the answer, either way.

  “Ruby,” I call out, and she comes to my side. “You listen to me. You promised me that you’d take care of this baby.”

  “You’ll be able to—”

  “I won’t.” I know it, too—my sight waffles gray at the edges; my arms are so weak I cannot move them. “Tell him about me. Tell him I loved—oh, God!” I break off as another contraction tightens its hold on my belly. Everything inside me spirals low, and I hike myself up to let it happen. “Ruby,” I whisper. “Now.”

  My vision goes crimson and the ocean beats in my ears. My body is a tide, and I am swept away in pain, in rapture. I open my eyes and expect to see my mother, waiting for me now that I am on the other side, but instead I find myself looking into the face of my baby.

  My baby daughter.

  I have spent so long certain that giving birth will be the death of me; I have been sure that this child I carried was a boy. Yet neither of these things has come to pass. In one breathless second, my entire world has been turned inside out.

  She cries, the sweetest sound I have ever heard. As Ruby delivers the placenta and cuts the cord, diapers and swaddles the baby, Spencer bursts into the room. His eyes are an unholy red; he reeks of whiskey. “You’re all right,” he says hoarsely. “Cissy, God, you’re all right.” Then he notices the tightly wrapped infant in Ruby’s arms.

  “Mr. Pike,” she says. “Come see your little girl.”

  “Girl?” He shakes his head; this cannot be.

  I hold out my arms and Ruby gives her over. I think of my mother, who did not feel the bliss of this. Now that I have felt this baby, heard her, it seems impossible to think I would have willingly ended my life without watching her live her own. There will be the moment she smiles for me, the moment she strikes out on unsteady legs, the first haircut, the first school day, the first kiss. How could I miss any of that?

  I tuck her into the crook of my arm. After eighteen years of struggling to find my place in this world, I realize that I’ve always belonged right here, holding fast to my daughter.

  “Her name is Lily,” I announce.

  Spencer comes closer and glances down at our baby. At her face—dark as a nut, round as the moon, with the flat features of her grandfather’s people.

  When Spencer looks at me, I realize that he has been hoping this baby would be a fresh start, instead of fuel for the fire. “Lily,” he repeats, and swallows.

  “Spencer, it’s not what you think. Gray Wolf—that man—he’s my father. You know how heredity works . . . you understand why she looks the way she does. But she’s yours, Spencer, you have to believe me.”

  Spencer shakes his head. “Dr. DuBois said you might be irrational after giving birth . . . We should call him, to come look after you.” He lifts the baby out of my arms and turns to Ruby, his eyes flat, his voice even. “Why don’t you take the car and find him, Ruby?”

  “Take the . . .?” She has never driven the Packard, but she knows better than to talk back to Spencer right now. “Yes, sir,” Ruby murmurs, and she sidles past him.

  Spencer starts to follow her, still carrying the baby.

  “No,” I call out. “Spencer, I want to hold her.”

  He stares at me for so long that I imagine he is seeing our history like a movie, looped to lead up to this point. His eyes shine with tears. But then he pulls up a chair beside the bed and sits in it, holding Lily so that I can see her face. He smiles a little, and for just a moment I let myself believe that Spencer might come to understand it is not blood that connects a family