The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  The knocking on the door grew louder. “Ross? You in there? I thought I heard something fall down.”

  He dragged himself to his feet and unlocked the door, opened it just a crack. In the hall his sister stood dressed to the nines, trying to see over his shoulder. “I tripped,” he lied.

  “Oh. You’re okay?”

  “Great. Fantastic.” Ross nodded at her dress. “You look nice.”

  She blushed. “Thanks. The date. You said you’d watch Ethan.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Ross said, although he hadn’t. “Give me a minute.”

  He closed the door and reached for the jeans that he’d left on the floor before going to sleep. How could he not have fallen for Lia, a woman who—like Ross himself—would have given anything to change the circumstances of her existence . . . but could not figure out how?

  He could still taste her.

  He was about to leave when he turned back, walked to the puddle of linens on the floor, and shook them out onto the bed again. The sheets floated down, still fragrant with the scent of roses. But the petals themselves had vanished, disappearing without a visible trace.

  Sometimes, being a public servant paid off. Such as tonight, when Eli had wanted to do something special for Shelby—like providing her with a memorable date at approximately two in the morning, when most restaurants were closed. He unlocked the door to the Italian bistro and held it open so that she could step inside. She sniffed at the traces of oregano and garlic wafting from the kitchen. “You moonlight as a chef?”

  “No . . . I just know the right people.” He led Shelby to the table he’d set up earlier this evening. A bottle of red wine sat beside a single candle. A rose was draped over her plate.

  Eddie Montero had come to Eli a month ago, asking for his help in nailing an employee who was stealing from the cash register. A few surveillance cameras had done the trick—although Eli imagined that Eddie hadn’t had the heart to reprimand his mother, a part-time substitute waitress who also had kleptomaniac tendencies. Still, he’d been happy enough to loan Eli his establishment off-hours, and even went so far as to prepare a meal that was waiting in the warming oven for them. A heart-healthy meal, unfortunately, without any goddamned red meat.

  “You know,” Shelby said, as he pulled out her chair, “I could have come out at a normal hour.”

  “But then I wouldn’t have been the only guy staring at you.” In heels and a tight black dress, Shelby Wakeman looked nothing like the brown mouse she pretended to be at the library, or the harried mother she actually was. She’d tumbled her hair into a knot at the top of her head, which only made her eyes more luminous and her mouth seem softer. If Eli had felt some primal pull between them before, he was absolutely captivated by her now.

  He served the salad and antipasto, and poured the wine. “Eddie picked the vintage,” Eli admitted. “I can’t tell a Riesling from a Riunite.”

  “I’m pretty sure the Riunite is the one with the twist-off cap.”

  “Ah, right. I knew there was a clue.” Eli tipped his glass against Shelby’s, listening to the crystal sing. “To first dates,” he toasted.

  Shelby shook her head and put down her glass. “I can’t drink to that.”

  A sinking feeling started in Eli’s stomach. “You can’t?”

  “No. I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t really want to have a first date. By definition, they’re awful, aren’t they?”

  It took Eli a few moments to find an appropriate response. “What do you think we ought to do, then?”

  Shelby smiled. “I want to have a second date.”

  “By definition,” he repeated, “doesn’t that imply that we’ve had a first one?”

  “Well, it certainly suggests that we know all the bare facts about each other already.”

  “Which we don’t . . .”

  “We know enough to have gotten us here.”

  A smile stretched across Eli’s face as understanding dawned. “What did he do . . . throw up in your lap? Talk about how your eyes reminded him of his ex?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever it was that ruined first dates for you.”

  Shelby pleated her napkin. “Actually, this is my first date. I’m going strictly on hearsay.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Oh, I could tell you stories that would—”

  “No,” Eli interrupted. “I mean, I find it hard to believe that this is your first date.”

  “Well, I meant since having Ethan.”

  Eli feigned nonchalance. “What happened to Ethan’s dad?”

  “Last I heard, he was living in Seattle. We don’t really connect much.” Shelby moved her food around her plate. “He divorced me after Ethan was born. He couldn’t handle having a kid with XP.”

  “XP,” he repeated.

  “That’s the condition Ethan’s got—the one that means he can’t be out in the sunlight. It’s a genetic abnormality—and very rare.”

  Eli had talked with Ethan about it . . . but briefly. The only thing he remembered the kid saying was that he wasn’t going to live long. “Is he . . . is he going to be okay?”

  “No,” Shelby said softly. “He’s not.”

  Her chin came up, but she did not say anything else. Eli set down his fork. “There’s nothing doctors can do?”

  “The only thing they can do is tell you ahead of time. So you know what to expect, although I don’t think you’re ever ready for something like this. But most genetic counselors don’t even think to look for XP. I wouldn’t have even gone to one, if Thomas hadn’t had cystic fibrosis in his family.”

  “Didn’t the doctor flag it?”

  “She. And no, she didn’t. It turned out that my appointment was canceled. When I got down there, I was pretty annoyed, like most of the other patients who had been left high and dry. One of them had heard the receptionist talking on the phone—apparently the reason for the snafu was that the doctor had taken the day off to get an abortion herself.” Shelby’s hand crept to her abdomen unconsciously. “I thought about that, a lot. It was certainly her choice to do what she needed to do, and I have no idea what her reasons were. But I also realized that I wouldn’t give up on that baby inside me—not even if it had cystic fibrosis, or XP, or anything else. Nothing that geneticist was going to tell me would change my mind . . . so it didn’t make any sense to reschedule my appointment.”

  Eli and his wife had not had children before she ran off with another man. He wondered, now, what he would have done if she’d not only taken herself away, but also his baby. He imagined that no matter how it came about, losing a child was something that you kept coming back to, like the hole in your gum when you lost a tooth or a scar you’d worry with your fingertips—a disfigurement that you felt over and over. “Ethan seems like a great kid,” Eli said.

  “A handful of years with him still beats a lifetime with anyone else.” She smiled. “He had some advice for me about this date. So did Ross.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Ross told me never to trust a man who makes people confess for a living.”

  “And Ethan?”

  “I may just hang onto his pearl of wisdom for a while longer,” Shelby laughed.

  Eli leaned back in his seat. “Your brother, he’s interesting.”

  “That’s a nice way of saying it,” Shelby replied, buttering her bread. “More often, I hear terms like drifter and fuck-up.”

  “You don’t think of him like that.”

  “No. I think he’s lost. And that’s a circumstance that only lasts as long as it takes to be found by someone else.” A curl fell out of her topknot; she tucked it behind her ear. “Happiness comes easier to some people than others. Ross wants to be happy; he wants it more than anyone I’ve ever met. But asking him to actually find his way there . . . well, that’s like asking him to spread his arms and fly. He just can’t, is all.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “You take care of Ethan and you stand u