Jodi Picoult - House Rules

“An Olympic sport,” Jacob adds.

Oliver tosses his remote to Theo. “Take over for me,” he instructs, and he walks me into the kitchen. “So how was your errand?”

“It was…” I start to answer but become distracted by the state of the kitchen. I missed it when I first ran through, trying to find the source of the moans and groans I was hearing, but now I see that pots and pans are crammed into the sink, and nearly every mixing bowl we own is stacked on the counter. A pan still sits on the range. “What happened here?”

“I’m going to clean up,” Oliver promises. “I just got distracted playing with Theo and Jake.”

“Jacob,” I correct automatically. “He doesn’t like nicknames.”

“He didn’t seem to mind when I called him that,” Oliver says. He crosses in front of me to the oven and punches buttons to turn it off before grabbing a rainbow pot holder that Theo made me once for Christmas when he was small. “Have a seat. I saved you some lunch.”

I sink into a chair-not because he told me to but because I honestly cannot remember the last time someone cooked for me, instead of the other way around. He transfers the warmed food to a plate he removes from the refrigerator. When Oliver leans forward to set it in front of me, I can smell his shampoo-like fresh-cut grass and pine trees.

There is an omelet with Swiss cheese. Pineapple. Corn bread. And on a separate plate, yellow cake.

I look up at him. “What is this?”

“It’s from one of your mixes,” he says. “Gluten-free. But the icing Jake and I made from scratch.”

“I wasn’t talking about the cake.”

Oliver sits down at the kitchen table and reaches across to snag a piece of pineapple off the plate. “It’s Yellow Wednesday, right?” he says, matter-of-fact. “Now eat it, before the omelet gets cold.”

I take a bite, and then another. I eat the whole block of corn bread before I realize how hungry I am. Oliver watches me, grinning, and then bounces up just like his avatar did on the television screen after Jacob decked him. He opens the refrigerator. “Lemonade?” he asks.

I set down my fork. “Oliver, listen.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he answers. “Really. This was way more fun for me than reading discovery.”

“There’s something I have to tell you.” I wait for him to sit down again. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay you.”

“Don’t worry. My babysitting fees are pretty cheap.”

“I’m not talking about that.”

He looks away from me. “We’ll figure something out.”

“How?” I demand.

“I don’t know. Let’s just get through the trial and then we can sort it out-”

“No.” My voice falls like an ax. “I don’t want your charity.”

“Good, because I can’t afford to give it,” Oliver says. “Maybe you can do some paralegal work for me or editing or something.”

“I don’t know anything about law.”

“That makes two of us,” he replies, and then he grins. “Kidding.”

“I’m serious. I’m not going to let you try this case if we can’t work out some kind of payment schedule.”

“There is one thing you could help me out with,” Oliver admits. He looks like a cat that’s devoured the whole carton of half-and-half. Like a guy waiting under the covers, watching a woman undress.

Where the hell did that thought come from?

Suddenly, my cheeks are burning. “I hope you aren’t about to suggest that we-”

“Play a game of virtual tennis?” Oliver interrupts, and he holds up a small electronic game cartridge he’s taken from his pocket. He widens his eyes, all innocence. “What did you think I was going to say?”

“Just so you know,” I say, grabbing the cartridge out of his hand, “I have a wicked serve.”

At the police station, Jacob admitted that chipping Jess Ogilvy’s tooth was an accident. That he moved her body and set up a crime scene around it.

Any juror who hears that is going to make the very simple and logical leap that he’s confessed to murder. After all, it’s not like dead bodies are lying around all over the place to feed the passions of autistic kids who are obsessed with criminology.

Which is why my best hope of keeping Jacob out of prison for life is to strike that entire police interview before it can be admitted as evidence. In order to do this, we have to have a suppression hearing, which means that-once again-Emma and Jacob and I have to face the judge.

The only problem is that the last time I had Jacob in a courtroom, things didn’t exactly go swimmingly.

This is why I’m wound tight as a spring beside my client as we watch Helen Sharp lead the detective through a direct examination. “When did you first become involved with this case?” she asks.

“On the morning of Wednesday, January thirteenth, I received information that there was a missing person from Jess Ogilvy’s boyfriend, Mark Maguire. I investigated, and on January eighteenth, after an extensive search, Ms. Ogilvy’s body was found in a culvert. She had died of internal bleeding as the result of a head trauma, had multiple contusions and abrasions, and was wrapped in the defendant’s quilt.”

Jacob furiously writes something down on the pad I’ve placed in front of him and tips it toward me. He’s wrong.

I take the pad from him, suddenly hopeful. An oversight like this bit of mistaken evidence would be just the kind of detail Jacob might have neglected to mention to anyone. It wasn’t your quilt?

It’s not technically internal bleeding, he scrawls. It’s blood pooling between the dura that covers the brain and the arachnoid, which is the middle layer of the meninges.

I roll my eyes. Thanks, Dr. Hunt, I write.

Jacob frowns. I’m not a doctor, he scribbles.

“Let’s back up a minute,” Helen says. “Did you speak to the defendant before finding Ms. Ogilvy’s body?”

“Yes. As we went through the victim’s calendar, I interviewed everyone who’d come in contact with her on the day she was last seen, and the ones who were supposed to meet with her. Jacob Hunt was due to have a tutoring session with Ms. Ogilvy at 2:35 P.M. on the afternoon of her disappearance. I met with him to inquire whether or not that meeting had taken place.”

“Where did you meet?”

“At the defendant’s home.”

“Who was present when you got to the house that day?” Helen asks.

“Jacob Hunt and his mother. I believe his younger brother was upstairs.”

“Had you ever met Jacob before this day?”

“Once,” the detective says. “He showed up at a crime scene I was working several days earlier.”

“Did you think he might be a suspect?”

“No. Other officers had seen him on-site before, too. He liked to show up and offer unsolicited advice about crime scene analysis.” He shrugs. “I figured he was just a kid who wanted to play cop.”

“When you first met with Jacob, did anyone tell you he had Asperger’s syndrome?”

“Yes,” Matson says. “His mother. She said Jacob had a very hard time communicating and that a lot of his behaviors which might look like guilty behavior to an outside observer were actually the symptoms of his autism.”

“Did she ever tell you that you couldn’t speak with her son?”

“No,” Matson says.

“Did the defendant tell you that he didn’t want to speak with you?”

“No.”

“Did he give you any indication on that first day you met that he didn’t understand what you were saying, or who you were?”

“He knew exactly who I was,” Matson replies. “He wanted to talk about forensics.”