The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  I wasn’t even allowed to visit you during the long lunch recess, when Mom went to the hospital. I guess I had become, officially, A Bad Influence.

  So I have to admit I was a little surprised when my mother showed up with a chocolate milk shake for me before court reconvened. I was sitting in this totally airless conference room, where my father had left me while he went over his testimony with some stupid lawyer. How my mother even found me in this building was a mystery, but when she stepped through the door, I was actually happy to see her.

  “How’s Willow?” I asked, because (a) I knew she expected it, and (b) I really did want to know.

  “She’s doing okay. The doctor says we might be able to take her home tomorrow.”

  “You kind of lucked out on the free babysitting,” I said.

  My mother’s eyes flashed, hurt. “You don’t really believe I think that way, do you?”

  I shrugged.

  “I brought you this,” she said, and she passed over the milk shake.

  I used to have a thing for chocolate Fribbles at Friendly’s. I’d beg my mom to get one, even though they were three times more expensive than kiddie cones. Sometimes, she said yes, and we’d split one and rhapsodize about chocolate ice cream, something you and Dad never really understood, having the rare misfortune to be born loving vanilla as you both were.

  “You want to share?” I asked quietly.

  She shook her head. “That one’s just for you. Provided it doesn’t come back up again.”

  I flicked my eyes toward her and then back down at the lid of the shake, but I didn’t say anything.

  “I think I understand,” my mother said. “I know what it’s like to start something and have it suddenly grow out of control. And you want to get rid of it, because it’s hurting you and everyone else around you, but every time you try to do that, it consumes you again.”

  I stared at her, dumbfounded. That was exactly what I felt like, every day of my life.

  “You asked me not too long ago what the world would be like without Willow in it,” my mother said. “So here’s what I think: if Willow had never been born, I’d still look for her in the aisles of the grocery store, or at the bank, or in the bowling alley. I’d stare at every individual face in a crowd, trying to find hers. There’s this weird part about having kids—you know when your family is finished, and when it’s not. If Willow hadn’t been born, that’s how the world would be for me—unfinished.”

  I slurped on the straw, on purpose, and tried not to blink, because then maybe the tears would reabsorb through osmosis.

  “The thing is, Amelia,” my mother continued, “if you weren’t here . . . I’d feel the same exact way.”

  I was afraid to look at her. I was afraid I had heard her wrong. Was this her way of saying that she didn’t just love me, which was a given for a mother, but she liked me? I imagined her making me open the lid of the shake to be sure I’d drunk it all. I would grumble, but deep down, I’d like that she was insisting. It meant she cared; it meant she wasn’t going to let me go that easily.

  “I did a little research today, at the hospital,” my mother said. “There’s a place just outside of Boston that takes care of kids with eating disorders. They have an inpatient program, and when you’re ready, you get to move to a residential program with other girls who are going through the same issues.”

  My head snapped up. “Inpatient? Like, as in, live there?”

  “Just until they can help you get this under control—”

  “You’re sending me away?” I said, panicking. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. My mother knew what it felt like; so why didn’t she understand that cutting me off was just like saying I’d never be good enough for this family? “How come Willow can break a thousand bones and she’s still perfect and gets to live at home, and I make one little mistake and get shipped off?”

  “Your father and I aren’t shipping you off,” my mother said. “We’re doing this to help you—”

  “He knows about it?” I felt my nose running. I had hoped that my father could be my last appeal; now, I found out he was a conspirator. The whole world hated me.

  Suddenly Marin Gates stuck her head into the room. “We’re ready to rock and roll,” she said.

  “I just need a minute—”

  “Well, Judge Gellar needs you now.”

  My mother looked at me, her eyes begging me to cut her a break. “You have to sit inside the courtroom now. Your dad’s testifying, and I can’t stay here and watch over you.”

  “Go to hell,” I said. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  Marin, who was watching all this, whistled long and low. “Actually, she can,” she said. “Because you’re a minor, and she’s your mother.”

  I wanted to hurt my mother as bad as she’d hurt me, so I turned to the lawyer. “I don’t think you’re allowed to keep that title if you try to get rid of all of your kids.”

  I could see my mother flinch. She was bleeding, even if you couldn’t see the cut, and she knew, like me, that she deserved it. As Marin unceremoniously deposited me in the gallery next to a man wearing a red flannel shirt and suspenders who smelled like tuna fish, I made myself a promise: if my mother was going to ruin my life, there was absolutely no reason I couldn’t ruin hers.

  Sean

  On our wedding day, Charlotte made me forget all the vows I’d written and diligently memorized. There she was, walking down the aisle of the church, and those sentences were like fishing nets; they couldn’t possibly hold all the feelings I wanted to present to her. Now, as I sat across from my wife in a courtroom, I hoped my words would transform one more time. Into feathers, clouds, steam—anything that did not have the power to land a solid blow.

  “Lieutenant O’Keefe,” said Guy Booker, “weren’t you originally a plaintiff in this case?”

  He’d promised me that he’d make it short and sweet, that I would be off the stand so quickly I barely felt it. I didn’t trust him. It was his job to lie, cheat, and twist the truth into something the jury could believe.

  Something I sorely hoped he’d be successful at, this time around.

  “I was, at first,” I replied. “My wife had convinced me that this lawsuit was in Willow’s best interests, but I started to realize I didn’t feel that way at all.”

  “How so?”

  “I think this lawsuit’s broken our family apart. Our dirty laundry is running on the six o’clock news. I’ve started divorce proceedings. And Willow, she knows what’s going on. There was no hiding it, once it became public knowledge.”

  “You realize that wrongful birth suggests your daughter should never have been born. Do you wish that, Lieutenant O’Keefe?”

  I shook my head. “Willow may not be perfect, but—well—neither am I. Neither are you. She may not be perfect,” I repeated, “but she’s one hundred percent right.”

  “Your witness,” Booker said, and as Marin Gates got to her feet, I took a deep breath to galvanize myself, the same way I did before I ran into a building with the SWAT team.

  “You say that this lawsuit has broken your family apart,” she said. “But the same could be said of the divorce proceedings you initiated, isn’t that true?”

  I looked at Guy Booker. He’d anticipated this question; we’d practiced an answer. I was supposed to say something about how my actions had been a measure to protect the girls—not to drag them through the mud. But instead of saying that, I found myself looking at Charlotte. At that plaintiff’s table, she seemed so tiny. She was staring down at the wood grain, as if she didn’t trust herself to look me in the eye.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “It is.”

  Booker stood up, and then figured he couldn’t object to his own witness, I guess, because he sat back down.

  I turned to the judge. “Sir? Do you mind if I talk directly to my wife?”

  Judge Gellar raised his brows. “It’s the jury that needs to hear you, son.”

  “With all due r