Jodi Picoult - House Rules

“Of course,” I say, but inside, I’m doing handsprings. Because all of these little quirks and concessions are greater than the sum of their parts: the jury cannot help but see that Jacob’s different from your average defendant, from the rest of us.

And should be judged accordingly.

I wake up sneezing.

When I open my eyes, I’m in a pink room and there are feathers tickling my nose. I jackknife upright in the narrow little bed and remember where I am-one of the girls’ rooms. There are mobiles with glittery stars and piles of stuffed animals and a pink camouflage rug.

I sneeze again, and that’s when I realize I’m wearing a pink feather boa.

“What the fuck,” I say, unspooling it from my neck, and then I hear giggling. I lean over the side of the bed and find my father’s younger kid-I think her name is Grace-hiding under the bed.

“You said a bad word,” she tells me.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she asks. “This is my room.”

I flop back down on the mattress. Between the time my flight arrived and the Talk, I probably got all of four hours of sleep. No wonder I feel like shit.

She slips out from underneath the bed and sits down beside me. She’s really little-I’m not good with kid ages, though. She has purple nail polish on her toes, and she’s wearing a plastic tiara.

“How come you’re not in school?”

“Because it’s Friday, silly,” Grace says, although this doesn’t make any sense to me. “You have really big feet. They’re bigger than Leon.”

I’m wondering who Leon is, but then she takes a stuffed pig and holds it up against the bare sole of my foot.

My watch is on the nightstand, next to a book about a mouse too shy to tell anyone her name. I read it last night before I went to bed. It’s only 6:42 A.M., but we are leaving early. We’ve got a plane to catch.

“Are you my brother?” Grace asks.

I look at her. I try really hard, but I can’t see a single feature we have in common. And that’s really weird, because my mom has always told me I remind her of my dad. (For the record, now that I’ve seen for myself, it’s not true. I’m just blond, that’s all, and everyone else in my household has dark hair.) “I guess you could say that,” I tell her.

“Then how come you don’t live here?”

I look around at the princess poster on the wall, the china tea set on a table in the corner. “I don’t know,” I say, when the real answer is Because you have another brother, too.

This is what happened last night:

I got off the plane and found my parents-both of them-waiting for me outside airport security. “What the hell?” I blurted out.

“My thoughts exactly, Theo,” my mother said curtly. And then, before she could tear me a new one, my father said we were going to his house to discuss this.

He made stupid conversation for the twenty-minute drive, while I felt my mother’s eyes boring holes into the back of my skull. When we reached his home, I got a glimpse of a really pretty woman who had to be his wife before he led me into the library.

It was very modern, and totally unlike our house. There were windows that made up one entire wall, and the couch was black leather and full of right angles. It looked like the kind of room you see in magazines at doctors’ offices, and not anywhere you’d want to live. Our couch was made of some red, stain-proof fabric, and yet there was a stain on the arm from where I spilled grape juice once. The zippers on two of the pillows were broken. But when you wanted to flop down and watch TV, it fit you perfectly.

“So,” my father said, gesturing to a seat. “This is a little awkward.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I don’t really have much of a right to tell you that running away was a stupid thing to do. And that you scared your mother to death. And I’m not going to tell you that she’s out for blood-”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

He clasps his hands between his knees. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m not going to tell you any of those things.” He looks at me. “I figured you came all the way out here so that I would listen. ”

I hesitate. He seems so familiar to me, but that’s crazy-given that I talk to him twice a year, on Christmas and my birthday. And yet, maybe that’s what being related to someone does for you. Maybe it lets you pick up where you left off, even if that was fifteen years ago.

I want to tell him why I’m there-the story of Jacob’s arrest, the truth behind my own breaking and entering, the phone message I never gave my mother from the bank, denying her the second mortgage loan-but all the words jam in my throat. I choke on the sentences until I cannot breathe, until tears spring to my eyes, and what comes out finally is none of these things.

“Why didn’t I matter?” I say.

This is not what I wanted. I wanted him to see me as the responsible young man I’ve become, trying to save my family, and I wanted him to shake his head and think, I sure fucked up. I should have stayed with him, gotten to know him. He turned out so well. Instead, I’m a blubbering mess, with my nose running and my hair in my eyes and I’m so tired; I’m suddenly so freaking tired.

When you expect something, you’re sure to be disappointed. I learned that a long time ago. But if this had been my mother sitting next to me, her arms would have wrapped around me in an instant. She would have rubbed my back and told me to relax, and I would have let myself melt against her until I felt better.

My father cleared his throat, and didn’t touch me at all.

“I’m, uh, not very good at this kind of thing,” he said. He shifted, and I wiped my eyes, thinking he was trying to reach out to me, but instead he took his wallet out of his back pocket. “Here,” he says, holding out a few twenties. “Why don’t you take this?”

I look at him, and before I know it, a laugh has snorted its way out of me. My brother is about to be tried for murder, my mother wants my head on a silver platter, my future’s so dim I might as well be buried in a coal mine-and my father can’t even pat me on the back and tell me I’m going to be okay. Instead, he thinks sixty bucks is going to make everything better.

“I’m sorry,” I say, laughing in earnest now. “I’m really sorry.”

It strikes me that I’m not the one who should be saying that.

I don’t know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there’s just the long, messy climb out of the pit you’ve dug yourself.

“I think maybe you should go get Mom,” I say.

I’m sure my father thinks I’m crazy, laughing my ass off like this when a minute before I was sobbing. And as he gets up-relieved to get the hell away from me, I’m sure-I realize why my father seems familiar. It’s not because we have anything in common, much less share a genetic code. It’s because, with his obvious discomfort and the way he won’t look at me now and the fact that he doesn’t want physical contact, he reminds me so much of my brother.

I don’t speak to my mom the whole time my father is driving us to the airport. I don’t say a word when my father gives her a check, and she looks at the number written on it, and cannot speak. “Just take it,” he says. “I wish… I wish I could be there for him.”

He doesn’t mean it. What he really wishes is that he was capable of being there for Jacob, but my mother seems to understand this, and whatever money he’s given her helps, too. She gives him a quick good-bye hug. Me, I hold out my hand. I don’t make the same mistake twice.