Jodi Picoult - House Rules

She shakes her head. “Make yourself useful and set the table.”

There’s an intimacy to being in someone else’s kitchen that makes me homesick-not for my apartment over the pizza place but for my childhood home. I grew up as the youngest of a big family in Buffalo; sometimes even now I miss the sound of chaos. “My mom used to cook fish on Fridays,” I say as I open and close drawers, trying to find the silverware.

“Are you Catholic?”

“No-Norwegian. Fish is a Scandinavian aphrodisiac.”

Emma’s cheeks flush. “Did it work?”

“My parents had five kids,” I say, and I gesture at the sea bass. “Foreplay on a platter.”

“I guess I could go along with the metaphor,” Emma murmurs. “My ex’s cooking could be considered contraception.”

“Would it be rude to ask how long you’ve been a single parent?”

“Yes,” Emma says. “But the short answer is, since Jacob’s diagnosis.” She takes some milk out of the refrigerator and pours it into a pan, then begins to whip the contents with a hand mixer. “He’s not involved with Jacob or Theo, except for the monthly child support.”

“Well, you should be proud of doing it all on your own.”

“Yeah, I’m proud. I have a son accused of murder. What mother wouldn’t think of herself as a huge success after that?”

I look up at her. “Accused,” I repeat. “Not convicted.”

For a long moment she looks at me, as if she is afraid to believe there could be someone else who believes Jacob might not be guilty. Then she begins to make up individual plates. “Jacob, Theo!” she yells, and the boys file into the kitchen.

Jacob takes his and immediately returns to the living room and the television. Theo thunders down the stairs, takes one look at me sitting at the table, and frowns. “Shouldn’t he be buying us lunch?” he asks.

“It’s lovely to see you, too,” I answer.

He looks at me. “Whatever.”

As he shuffles back upstairs with his meal, Emma fixes plates for the two of us. “Usually we all sit down to dinner together,” she says, “but sometimes it’s nice to have a break from each other, too.”

“I imagine that’s hard when you’re all under house arrest.”

“It’s pretty sad when the high point of my day is walking to the end of the driveway to get the mail.” Leaning down, she sets a plate in front of me.

There’s a block of white fish, creamy white mashed potatoes, and a tiny hill of white rice.

“Meringues for dessert?” I guess.

“Angel food cake.”

I poke at the food with my fork.

She frowns. “Is the fish undercooked?”

“No, no-it’s great. I’ve just, um, never seen anyone color-coordinate a meal before.”

“Oh, it’s February first,” she says, as if that explains everything. “The first of every month is a White Food Day. I’ve been doing it so long I forget it’s not normal.”

I taste the potatoes; they’re out of this world. “What do you do on the thirty-first? Burn everything to a black crisp?”

“Don’t give Jacob any ideas,” Emma says. “Would you like some milk?”

She pours me a glass, and I reach for it. “I don’t get it. Why does the color of his food matter?”

“Why does the texture of velvet send him into a panic? Why can’t he stand the hum of an espresso machine? There are a million questions I don’t have answers for,” Emma replies, “so the easiest thing to do is just roll with the punches and keep him from having a meltdown.”

“Like he did in court,” I say. “And jail.”

“Exactly. So Monday’s food is green, Tuesday’s is red, Wednesday’s is yellow… you get the idea.”

I think for a moment. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it seems like sometimes Jacob’s more adult than you or me-and other times, he gets totally overwhelmed.”

“That’s him. I truly think he’s smarter than anyone I’ve ever met, but he’s also more inflexible. And he takes every little thing that happens to heart, because he’s the center of his universe.”

“And yours,” I point out. “He’s the center of your universe, too.”

She ducks her head. “I guess.”

Maybe my Scandinavian parents knew what they were doing, because maybe it’s the fish and maybe it’s the way she looks in that moment-surprised, and a little flustered-but to my shock I realize I’d like to kiss her. However, I can’t because she’s my client’s mother, and because she would probably knock me flat on my ass.

“I assume you have a plan of attack,” she says.

My eyes widen-is she thinking the same thing about me? I tamp down an image of me pinning her to the table.

“The quicker the better,” Emma says, and my pulse triples. She glances over her shoulder to the living room, where Jacob is slowly shoveling rice into his mouth. “I just want this whole nightmare to be over.”

And with those words, I come crashing back to my sad little reality. I clear my throat, totally professional. “The most damaging discovery is the confession Jacob made. We need to try to get rid of it.”

“I thought I was going to be able to sit with Jacob in the interrogation room. If I’d been there, it would never have gotten this far, I just know it. They had to be asking him questions he didn’t understand, or firing them at him too fast.”

“We have a transcript. The questions were pretty straightforward, I think. Did you tell Matson that Jacob had Asperger’s before they started talking?”

“Yes, when he came to interview Jacob the first time.”

“First time?”

Emma nods. “He was going through Jess’s appointment book, and Jacob’s social skills lesson was on it, so the detective asked him a few questions.”

“Were you there to help translate?”

“Right here at the kitchen table,” Emma says. “Matson acted like he completely understood Jacob’s issues. That’s why, when he told me to bring Jacob to the station, I assumed it was going to be the same sort of interview and that I could be part of it.”

“That’s good, actually,” I tell her. “We can probably file a motion to suppress.”

“What’s that?”

Before I can answer, Jacob comes into the kitchen with his empty plate. He sets it in the sink and then pours himself a glass of Coca-Cola. “Under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, you have a right to remain silent, unless you waive that right, and in certain circumstances if the police don’t read you your Miranda rights or properly ask you to waive them, anything you say can be used against you. A defense attorney can file a motion to suppress in order to prevent that evidence from coming before the jury.” Then he walks back to the living room.

“That’s just plain wrong,” I mutter.

“It is?”

“Yeah,” I say. “How come he gets to drink Coke on White Food Day?”

It takes a moment, and then, for the very first time, I hear the music of Emma Hunt’s laugh.

I did not expect to feed Jacob’s lawyer lunch.

I didn’t expect to enjoy his company so much, either. But when he makes a joke about White Food Day-which is, let’s face it, as ridiculous as everyone in the fairy tale pretending the emperor is beautifully clothed instead of stark naked-I can’t help myself. I start to giggle. And before I know it, I am laughing so hard I cannot catch my breath.

Because when you get right down to it, it’s funny when I ask my son, How did you sleep? And he answers: On my stomach.

It’s funny when I tell Jacob I’ll be there in a minute and he starts counting down from sixty.

It’s funny that Jacob used to grab my collar every time I came home, his interpretation of “catch you later.”