The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “Then that’s where we’ll start.” Jack closed his eyes and leaned forward. “Kiss me.”

  “I don’t think this is the time or—”

  His eyes opened a crack. “I want to prove to you I’m who I say I am. I want to show you there is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, that’s going to make me attack you.”

  “But you said—”

  “Addie,” Jack murmured, “let’s do this for both of us.”

  He spread his arms wide, and after a second, Addie leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. “Oh, come on. That’s not your best shot.” She trailed her mouth from his neck to his jaw. A filament of sensation sizzled between them, like a thin string of kerosene that, for the love of a match, could turn into a wall of fire.

  This wickedness, this wanting . . . it was like seeing color for the first time and stuffing her pockets full of bright violets, rich oranges, sizzling yellows, afraid she was going to be caught for stealing something that wasn’t hers, but certain that if she took no souvenir, she would never remember it as clearly.

  She was ready. She wanted. Addie lifted his hands to the top button of her uniform—only to have Jack move his arms back to his sides.

  He won’t do it. He wants me to.

  In her life, she had never undressed for a man. Her own father had not seen her naked since she was ten. Shy and fumbling, she fudged the button through its hole, then moved down to the next one. Shelled in the thin pink silk of her bra, her breasts blushed under Jack’s gaze. She unclasped the catch and drew Jack’s head down to map her skin.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  In response, she kissed a trail down his chest and belly, stopping at the spot where Jack’s jeans tented. Her hands unbuttoned the fly so that the plum-purple weight of him rose into her outstretched hands.

  In that moment, she had never felt so safe in her life.

  “Let’s do this for both of us,” Addie repeated. In tandem, they reached between his legs, pulled aside her underwear, and gently fit themselves together. He fills me, Addie realized with wonder; at the same moment that Jack thought: So this is what has been missing.

  July 1999

  Loyal,

  New Hampshire

  “Jack,” the police officer said, “you need to come down to the station.”

  Jack tucked the portable phone against his shoulder to finish stuffing papers into his briefcase. “Can’t. I’ve got a meeting this afternoon. But let’s meet at the gym for a game at seven.” Since moving to Loyal and taking a job as the town’s sole detective, Jay Kavanaugh had been Jack’s frequent buddy and a hell of a racquetball partner—they’d whip each other’s asses on alternating days and then go lament the lack of single women in the town over a beer.

  “Jack, I need you here now.”

  He snorted. “Well, sweetheart, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Shut up,” Jay said, and for the first time Jack noticed the edge in his voice. “Look. I don’t really want to go into this over the phone, all right? I’ll explain when you get here.”

  “But—”

  A dial tone. “Shit,” Jack muttered. “This’d better be worth it.”

  He had met Jay when the detective came to the school to talk about safety on Halloween. Immediately, Jay became the big brother that Jack had never had. On the steaming, laziest days of the summer, they went out in the Westonbrook crew launch to catch largemouth bass. Rods balanced in their hands, they’d drink beer and come up with outrageous scenarios to lure Heather Locklear to the small burg of Loyal.

  “Think you’ll ever settle down?” Jack had asked once.

  Jay had laughed. “I am so settled already, I’m growing roots. Nothing ever happens in Loyal.”

  Jay stood up the moment Jack entered his office. He looked at the bookshelf, the carpet, Jack’s coat . . . anywhere but at Jack himself. “You want to tell me what was so damn important that it couldn’t wait?”

  “Why don’t we take a walk?”

  “What’s the matter with right here?”

  Jay’s face twisted. “Just humor me, will you?” He led Jack into a conference room. There was nothing inside but a table, three chairs, and a tape recorder.

  Jack grinned. “Do I get to play cop?” He folded his arms over his chest. “You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney . . .” His voice trailed off as Jay closed his eyes and turned away. “Hey,” Jack said quietly. “What the hell?”

  When Jay looked at him again, his face was completely impassive. “Catherine Marsh said the two of you have been having an affair.”

  “Catherine Marsh said what?” Jack took a second look at the spare room, the tape recorder, and Jay’s expression. “Am I . . . you’re not arresting me, are you?”

  “No. We’re just talking now. I want to hear your side of the story.”

  “You couldn’t possibly think . . . for God’s sake, Jay . . . she’s—she’s a student. I swear—I’ve never touched her. I don’t know where she’d get an idea like this.” In spite of himself, his heart was racing.

  “On the basis of the evidence we have, we’ll be bringing charges against you,” Jay said stiffly. Then his voice softened. “You may want to get yourself a lawyer, Jack.”

  A curtain of rage ripped across Jack’s vision. “Why did you want me to come in here to talk if you’re going to arrest me anyway?” The accusation hung between them, and Jack suddenly realized exactly why Jay had asked for his side of the story—it had nothing to do with their friendship and everything to do with catching Jack in a confession that could be used against him in court.

  Loyal was a picture-perfect town, complete with a general store, a requisite wooden bridge, and a row of white clapboard buildings that flanked the town green, mirroring the architecture of Westonbrook Academy. Jack’s home was a little cape. From his front porch, he could see the house where Catherine Marsh and her father, the Right Reverend Ellidor Marsh, lived.

  What Jack had liked best about the town was that he could not walk through it without saying hello to someone he knew. If not a student, then the woman who ran the general store. The postmaster. The elderly twin brothers who had never married but served as bank tellers at side-by-side windows.

  Today, though, he walked with his head ducked, afraid of seeing someone familiar. He passed kids and felt their heads crane to watch him walk by. He veered around the broom of a shopkeeper, his face lighting with embarrassment as she paused in her sweeping and stared. I am innocent, he wanted to scream, but even that would not make a difference. It wasn’t truth that held their interest; it was the fact that rotten luck might be catching.

  Catherine Marsh’s house was gaily laced with pink roses that grew skyward on a trellis. He rapped sharply on the door, falling back a step when Catherine answered.

  She was young and pretty, with skin that seemed lit from the inside. In that first moment, Jack saw all the times he’d hugged her after a particularly fine goal on the field, all the times he’d noticed her jersey straining against her sports bra. A wide smile spread across her face. “Coach!”

  He opened up his mouth to speak, to accuse her, to ask her why, but all the questions jammed. A face appeared behind hers: Ellidor Marsh, in all his fundamentalist fury.

  “Reverend,” Jack began.

  It was all Ellidor needed. His face revealed an internal war for the briefest moment, and then his fist shot out and clipped Jack in the jaw.

  Catherine cried out as Jack tumbled down the steps, landing in a tangle of rosebushes. Thorns cut into the summer-weight wool of his trousers. He spat out blood, then wiped his hand across his mouth.

  Catherine was trying to get to him, but her father had pushed her behind his own body. Jack narrowed his eyes at the chaplain. “Did the good Lord tell you to do that?”

  “Go,” Ellidor said precisely, “to hell.”

  A few weeks before, Jack had been teaching t