Jodi Picoult - House Rules

Well, he’s on trial for murder, I think. But other than that, he’s doing swell.

I have a brief flash of myself sitting on Jacob’s chest so that I can button his shirt, of him sprinting down the divided highway. “Never better, Your Honor,” I say.

“Are there any other problems we need to be made aware of?” the judge asks.

I shake my head, heartened by the fact that the judge seems to truly care about Jacob’s welfare.

“Good. Because a lot of people are watching this trial, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be made to look like a fool,” he snaps.

So much for human charity.

“And you, Ms. Sharp? You’re prepared?”

“One hundred percent, Your Honor,” Helen says.

The judge nods. “Then let’s begin with the prosecution’s opening argument.”

Emma offers me a brave smile as I sit down on Jacob’s other side. She turns around to locate Theo, who is tucked in the back of the gallery, and then faces forward as Helen begins to speak.

“Four months ago, Jess Ogilvy was a bright, beautiful girl full of hopes and dreams. A graduate student at the University of Vermont, she was working toward a master’s in child psychology. She balanced her studies with part-time jobs-like her recent position as caretaker for a professor’s home at sixty-seven, Serendipity Way, Townsend… and student teaching, and tutoring special needs kids. One of her pupils was a young man with Asperger’s syndrome-the same young man, Jacob Hunt, who sits before you as a defendant today. Jess helped Jacob specifically with social skills-teaching him how to engage others in conversation, how to make friends, and how to interact in public-all tasks that were difficult for him. Jess and Jacob met twice a week, on Sundays and on Tuesdays. But on Tuesday, January twelfth, Jess Ogilvy did not tutor Jacob Hunt. Instead, that young man-the same one she had treated with kindness and compassion-murdered her in a brutal and vicious attack inside her own residence.”

Behind the prosecutor’s table, a woman starts weeping quietly. The mother; I don’t have to turn around to see that. But Jacob does, and his face twists as he registers something familiar about her-maybe the same line of jaw her daughter had, or the color of the hair.

“Two days before her death, Jess took Jacob out for pizza on Main Street in Townsend. You’ll hear evidence from Calista Spatakopoulous, the owner of the restaurant, that Jacob and Jess got into a heated argument that ended with Jess telling Jacob to ‘just get lost.’ You’ll hear from Mark Maguire, Jess’s boyfriend, that when he saw her later that night and on Monday, she was fine-but that she’d disappeared by Tuesday afternoon. You’ll hear from Detective Rich Matson of the Townsend Police Department, who will tell you how officers searched for any sign of Jess for five days to see if she’d been abducted, and finally tracked a GPS signal on her cell phone to find her bruised and battered body lying lifeless in a culvert several hundred yards from her home. You’ll hear the medical examiner testify that Jess Ogilvy had abrasions on her back, choke marks around her neck, a broken nose and bruises on her face, a broken tooth… and that her underwear was on backward.”

I scan the faces of the jurors, each of whom is thinking, What kind of animal would do that to a girl? and then glancing furtively at Jacob.

“And, ladies and gentlemen, you will get to see the quilt that Jess Ogilvy’s body was found wrapped in. A quilt that belonged to Jacob Hunt.”

Beside me, Jacob’s started to shake. Emma puts her hand on his arm, but he knocks it off. With a finger, I push the Post-it pad I’ve set in front of him a little closer. I uncap the pen I’ve given him, willing him to take out his frustration in writing instead of having an outburst.

“The evidence we present will clearly show that Jacob Hunt murdered Jess Ogilvy with premeditation. And at the end of this trial, when the judge instructs you to decide who’s responsible, we are confident that you will find that Jacob Hunt killed Jess Ogilvy-a vibrant young woman who considered herself his teacher, mentor, and friend-and then…” She walks to the prosecutor’s table and rips the top piece of paper off her legal pad.

Suddenly, I realize what she’s about to do.

Helen Sharp crumples the paper in one fist and lets it drop to the floor. “He threw her away like trash,” she says, but by that time, Jacob’s started to scream.

The minute the prosecutor reaches for the legal pad, I can finish the end of her sentence. I start to rise from my seat, but it’s too late; Jacob’s out of control, and the judge-who has no gavel-is pounding his fist. “Your Honor, can we have a brief recess?” Oliver yells, struggling to be heard over Jacob’s shrieks. “No… wire hangers… ever!” Jacob screams.

“We’ll take ten minutes,” the judge says, and suddenly one bailiff is moving toward the jury to escort them out of the courtroom and another one is coming toward us to take us to the sensory break room. “Counsel, I want to see you at the bench.”

The bailiff is taller than Jacob and is shaped like a bell, heavy in his hips. He wraps one beefy hand around Jacob’s arm. “Let’s go, buddy,” he says, and Jacob tries to jerk away from him, and then starts thrashing. He clips the bailiff hard enough to cause him to grunt, and then suddenly Jacob goes boneless, all 185 pounds of him, and falls heavily to the floor.

The bailiff reaches down for him, but I throw myself on top of Jacob instead. “Don’t touch him,” I say, well aware that the jury is straining to see what’s going on even as they’re being shooed away, certain that every one of those cameramen has his lens trained on me.

Jacob’s crying into my shoulder, making small snuffling sounds as he tries to catch his breath. “Okay, baby,” I murmur into his ear. “You and I, we’re going to do this together.” I tug until he starts to sit up, and then I wrap my arms around him, struggling to bear the brunt of his weight as we get to our feet. The bailiff opens the gate of the bar for us and leads us down the gallery aisle to the sensory break room. As we pass, the entire courtroom falls dead silent until we are ensconced within the black curtains and all I can hear outside is the tidal swell of a murmur of sound: What was that? … Never seen anything like it… The judge won’t stand for stunts… A ploy to get sympathy, I’ll bet…

Jacob buries himself beneath a weighted blanket. “Mom,” he says from beneath it. “She crumpled paper.”

“I know.”

“We have to fix the paper.”

“It’s not our paper. It’s the prosecutor’s paper. You have to let it go.”

“She crumpled the paper,” Jacob repeats. “We have to fix it.”

I think of the woman on the jury who looked at me with abject pity on her face the moment before she was hustled out of the courtroom. That’s a good thing, Oliver would say, but he is not me. I have never wanted to be pitied for having a child like Jacob. I’ve pitied other mothers, who could slip by on loving their children maybe only 80 percent of the time, or less, instead of giving it their all every minute of every day.

But I have a son who is on trial for murder. A son who behaved the same way the afternoon of Jess Ogilvy’s death as he did minutes ago when a piece of paper was torn apart.

If Jacob is a murderer, I will still love him. But I will hate the woman he’s turned me into-one whom others talk about when her back is turned, one whom people feel sorry for. Because although I’d never feel that way about a mother whose child has Asperger’s, I would feel that way about a mother whose child took the life of another mother’s child.