The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  Her shoulder was cut and blood stained her shirt, but her face, it was heart-shaped and smooth-skinned and stunning. Her French braid had unraveled, the impact loosening whatever she’d used to secure the bottom. It fanned over her chest like a silk shawl. “Aimee,” he murmured. “God.”

  He sat down and pulled her into his lap, crying as the full force of his memories hit him in the gut. He brushed her hair away from her face, as the rain matted it together. “I won’t let you go. I won’t leave.”

  Aimee blinked at him. “Ross,” she said, looking past his shoulder. “You have to.”

  In all of these years he had not recalled those words, that directive from Aimee that freed him from the blame of not being by her side when she died. He closed his arms more tightly around her and bent forward, but suddenly there was someone standing behind him, trying to get him to stand up just as hard as he was trying to stay.

  He turned, furious, and found himself staring at Lia.

  With Aimee in his arms, and Lia behind him, Ross went absolutely still. This was hell, a nightmare played out in his mind. Both women needed him; each held a half of his heart. Which one do I go to? he thought, And which one do I lose?

  Lia tugged him upright, toward the other passenger car that had crashed and now lay sideways against a highway barrier. Ross tried to break away from her, to get back to Aimee, certain that this was a test, the one thing he had to get right.

  But by then he couldn’t even see Aimee, because the other car was between them. Frustrated, Ross tore away from Lia’s firm hold and yanked open the door of the totaled green Honda. A body lay crumpled into a heap behind the steering wheel, canted onto its side. Ross smelled gas; he knew the vehicle was going to blow at any minute.

  He fumbled for the seat belt, which was stuck. “Aimee,” he yelled over his shoulder. “I’m coming. You hang on.” Another push of the button, and this time it sprang free. Ross reached in at an awkward angle with both hands and hauled the unconscious driver from the wreckage. He dragged the body a distance away, to the lip of the woods. There was a burst of light and heat, and the car torched into flame.

  A fleet of sirens approached, a spray of water from a fire hose showered the car. As a paramedic ran up, Ross grabbed him. “There’s a woman at the other car who needs help,” he cried.

  “Someone’s already taking care of her.” The EMT knelt down beside Ross. “What’s this one’s name?”

  Ross did not know; it was a stranger. He glanced down at the body before him illuminated by the blaze, as he had done nine years ago. Just like then, there was a gash across the driver’s hairline, and blood covering her face and her black dress. But this time, he saw her face—really saw her face—and everything was different. My God. “Her name,” Ross said hoarsely, “is Meredith.”

  F. Juniper Smugg had been a resident for exactly twenty-seven days at Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington. He was doing a rotation in emergency medicine, but he really wanted dermatology or plastic surgery, something that wasn’t a life-or-death specialty where he could go into private practice and not have to deal with all the surprises of a county medical center. Still, he was perfectly willing to pay his dues, which was why he didn’t mind taking the body down to the morgue. It beat what they’d been doing to the guy when he arrived—shocking him and intubating him when any premed could have told you he was dead as a doornail upon arrival.

  He was alone in the elevator. He pushed the button, waited till the doors closed, and turned to the mirrored wall so that he could watch himself rock out as he sang Smash Mouth vocals. He’d just gotten to the chorus of “All-Star” when a hand grabbed his arm.

  The dead man on the stretcher sat up. “Shut the hell up,” he said huskily.

  When the doors opened into the morgue, the dead man was standing, and the medical resident was slumped over the narrow stretcher. “Can someone help me?” Ross asked the shocked staff. “This guy’s out cold.”

  Once Az Thompson’s body washed up on the shore of Lake Champlain, it was readied for burial within twenty-four hours, in keeping with native traditions. Winks Champigny, acting as a spokesperson for the Abenaki, recommended laying Az Thompson’s remains to rest on the newly acquired property at the junction of Otter Creek Pass and Montgomery Road. He was interred facing east, on his side, to better see the sunrise.

  In the months that followed, a seasonless garden that had never been planted would bloom around the grave—blackberries that did not dry up in winter, calla lilies that kept their heads above the snow line, holly and ivy that thrived in July. The site became a trysting spot for lovers, who valued its privacy and the scent of roses even in December, and who would come to catch sight of the black-haired boy and the blond girl often spied chasing each other through the wildflowers, feeding each other berries until their lips and fingers were stained red as blood.

  Eli almost didn’t come home that night. It was a hell of paperwork and arbitration with the owners of the quarry, and all he wanted was to collapse next to Shelby and not wake up for the next millennium.

  Except that he wasn’t sure if Shelby was ready to see him, or anyone right now.

  He had held her while she cried at the hospital, until she hiked up her chin and said she needed to go home to make arrangements. For the funeral, Eli presumed, but he’d felt her putting up that wall and refusing to let anyone take care of her, and it annoyed the hell out of him. He was going to shower and head over there, whether she liked it or not.

  He went to set his key in the door and realized it was open. As it swung forward, he mustered his defenses, ready for anything. But there was no thief in his kitchen. Just Shelby, her hands buried in a bowl of flour.

  “I broke in,” she said, her voice shaking. “To a cop’s house.”

  Eli wrapped her close, kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry.”

  She was crying, and when she wiped her face with her finger she left a white streak behind. “I couldn’t be at my house. I couldn’t make any calls to . . . to funeral homes. Reporters, they kept calling, and I couldn’t even listen to their messages. The doctors at the hospital gave Ethan and Lucy something to make them sleep, so I gave it to them here and put them in your bed. I made soup. And bread. The phone rang once, but I didn’t . . . I fed the dog for you.”

  She was making no sense whatsoever, and yet Eli understood every word that came out of her mouth. He rocked her in his embrace and imagined her small white handprints on the back of his suit jacket, as ghostly as the ones that had risen in the mirror at the old Pike place. Shelby wiped her nose on his shirt. “I’ll go if you want.”

  “Don’t,” he whispered. “Ever.”

  Meredith looked nothing like Lia. Ross didn’t know how he had ever even seen a resemblance, now. Her eyes were set farther apart, her hair was a completely different texture. Her skin, it looked to be as soft, but he did not want to touch her to find out, in case he’d disturb her sleep.

  She was in traction. Her leg had been pinned and hoisted and set. Her bloodstream was pumped full of painkillers. Ross had been allowed into her room only because no one at the hospital seemed prepared to deny a man who had been dead just hours earlier.

  He had tried to find Shelby first, or Ethan, but they had been released. Lucy had gone with them. Yet when Ross tried to call her house, there had been no answer, and the message machine had been turned off. He would have called Eli, but he could not seem to remember his home phone number, if he’d ever known it in the first place. The neurologist who had examined Ross after his head contusions had been stitched up said his memory might be like that—full of gaps and spots that might or might not come back. For example, he had no recollection of what he’d been doing before he found Meredith frantically searching for the kids at Shelby’s. He could not remember how he’d gotten the fine white spiderweb scars on his wrists.

  What he did recall was Lia’s face, something he would have died to see again—and had, apparently. He could c