Jodi Picoult - House Rules

That turned out to be Theo, during thunderstorms, when he was afraid. Or Jacob when he was sick and I wanted to keep an eye on him. I told myself that I liked the extra space anyway. That I deserved to spread out if I wanted to, even though I have always slept curled on my side like a fiddlehead fern.

Which is why, I suppose, it feels perfect when the pink fingers of the morning stroke the sheet that Oliver’s tossed over us sometime in the night, and I realize that he’s curled around me: a comma, his knees tucked up behind mine and his arm tight around my waist.

I shift, but instead of letting go of me, Oliver tightens his grasp. “What time is it?” he murmurs.

“Five-thirty.”

I turn in his embrace, so that I am facing him. There’s stubble on his cheeks and his chin. “Oliver, listen.”

His eyes squint open. “No.”

“No, you’re not going to listen? Or no, you’re not Oliver?”

“I’m not going to listen,” he replies. “It wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t just a onetime, what-the-hell night. And if you keep fighting me on this, I’ll make you read the fine print on the retainer you signed, which very clearly states that the attorney’s sexual services are included in the fee.”

“I was going to tell you to come over for breakfast,” I say drily.

Oliver blinks at me. “Oh.”

“It’s Thursday. Brown day. Gluten-free bagels?”

“I prefer Everything,” he answers, and then he blushes. “But I guess I made that fairly obvious last night.”

I used to wake up in the morning and lie in bed for thirty seconds, when whatever I had dreamed might still be possible, before I remembered that I had to get up and make whatever breakfast fit the color code and wonder whether we would survive the day without some schedule change or noise or social conundrum triggering a meltdown. I had thirty seconds when the future was something I anticipated, not feared.

I wrap my arms around Oliver’s neck and kiss him. Even knowing that, in four and a half hours, this trial will start again; even knowing that I have to hurry home before Jacob realizes I am missing; even knowing that I have likely made a mess of things by doing what I’ve done… I have figured out a way to stretch those thirty seconds of bliss into one long, lovely moment.

Three letters: a place where hope was found.

Joy.

Him.

Yes.

If this happened… well, maybe anything can.

He puts his hands on my shoulders and gently pushes me away. “You have no idea how much it’s killing me to say no,” Oliver says, “but I’ve got an opening argument to write, and my client’s mother is, well, incredibly demanding.”

“No kidding,” I say.

He sits up and pulls my camisole out from under his head, helps me stretch it over my head. “This isn’t nearly as much fun in reverse,” he points out.

We both dress, and then Oliver frees Thor from his banishment and hooks a leash onto his collar, offering to walk me partway home. We are the only people on the streets at this hour. “I feel like an idiot,” I say, glancing down at my slippers and my pajama bottoms.

“You look like a college student.”

I roll my eyes. “You are such a liar.”

“You mean lawyer.”

“Is there a difference?”

I stop walking and look up at him. “This,” I say. “Not in front of Jacob.”

Oliver doesn’t pretend to misunderstand me. He keeps walking, tugging at Thor’s leash. “All right,” he says.

We part ways at the skateboarding park, and I walk quickly with my head ducked against the wind-and the view of drivers in passing cars. Every now and then, a smile bubbles up from inside me, rising to the surface. The closer I get to home, the more inappropriate that feels. As if I am cheating somehow, as if I have the audacity to be someone other than the mother I am expected to be.

By 6:15 I am turning the corner of my street, relieved. Jacob wakes up like clockwork at 6:30; he’ll be none the wiser.

But as I get closer, I see that the lights are on in the house, and my heart skips a beat. I start running, panicked. What if something happened to Jacob in the middle of the night? How stupid have I been, leaving him? I hadn’t scribbled a note, I hadn’t taken my cell phone, and as I throw open the front door, I am nearly bent double by the weight of what might have gone wrong.

Jacob stands at the kitchen counter, already making his own brown breakfast. There are two place settings. “Mom,” he blurts, excited, “you’ll never guess who’s here.”

Before I can, though, I hear the downstairs toilet flush, and the running of the faucet, and the footsteps of the guest, who enters the kitchen with an uncomfortable smile.

“Henry?” I say.

GET AWAY WITH MURDER?

On November 19, 1986, Helle Crafts, a Pan Am flight attendant from Connecticut, disappeared. Her husband was suspected shortly after she vanished: Richard Crafts told authorities that he hadn’t left the house on November 19, but credit card records showed that he’d purchased new bedding. Shortly before his wife disappeared, he also had bought a large freezer and rented a wood chipper.

When a witness recalled seeing a wood chipper near the Housatonic River, police searched the Crafts home. Blood found on the mattress matched Helle’s. A letter addressed to Helle was found near the Housatonic, and divers recovered a chain saw and cutting bar, which still had human hair and tissue in its jaws. Based on this, a more thorough evidence search was begun.

Here’s what they found:

2660 hairs.

One fingernail.

One toenail.

One tooth cap.

Five droplets of blood.

(A fingernail in a U-Haul rented by Crafts chemically matched nail polish in Helle’s bathroom, too, but it was thrown out of court because of the lack of a search warrant.)

From this evidence, in 1989, Crafts was found guilty of his wife’s murder and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.

This case made Dr. Henry Lee famous. Leave it to him, a forensic hero, to secure a murder conviction… even without a body.

For just a moment, I am certain that I’m hallucinating. My ex-husband is not standing in my kitchen, is not coming forward to awkwardly kiss my cheek.

“What are you doing here?” I demand.

He looks at Jacob, who is pouring chocolate soy milk into a glass. “For once in my life, I wanted to do the right thing,” Henry says.

I fold my arms. “Don’t flatter yourself, Henry. This has less to do with Jacob than it does with your own guilt.”

“Wow,” he says. “Some things never change.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No one’s allowed to be a better parent than you are. You have to be the gold standard, and if you’re not, you’ll cut everyone else down to make sure of it.”

“That’s pretty funny, coming from a man who hasn’t seen his son in years.”

“Three years, six months, and four days,” Jacob says. I had forgotten he was still in the room. “We went out to dinner in Boston because you flew in for work. You ate beef tenderloin, and you sent it back because it was too rare at first.”

Henry and I look at each other. “Jacob,” I say, “why don’t you go upstairs and take the first shower?”

“What about breakfast-”

“You can eat it when you come back down.”

Jacob hustles upstairs, leaving me alone with Henry. “You have got to be kidding,” I say, furious. “You think you can just show up here like some white knight and save the day?”