Jodi Picoult: House Rules

© 2010

I have so many people to thank, as always:

My brilliant legal team: Jennifer Sternick and Lise Iwon; as well as Jennifer Sargent, Rory Malone, and Seth Lipschutz.

The CSIs who let me tag along: Cpl. Claire Demarais, Betty Martin, Beth Anne Zielinski, Jim Knoll, Lt. Dennis Pincince, Lt. Arthur Kershaw, Sgt. Richard Altimari, Lt. John Blessing, Detective John Grassel, Ms. Robin Smith, Dr. Thomas Gilson, Dr. Peter Gillespie, Detective Patricia Cornell-Providence Police, Ret. Trooper Robert Hathaway-Connecticut State Police, Ret. Lt. Ed Downing-Providence Police, Amy Duhaime, and Kim Freeland.

Katherine Yanis and her son Jacob, whose generous donation to Autism Speaks UK inspired the name of my fictional Jacob.

Jim Taylor, who provided the computer lingo for Henry, and who keeps my website the best one I’ve ever seen for an author.

Chief Nick Giaccone, for police procedure.

Julia Cooper, for her banking expertise.

My publishing team: Carolyn Reidy, Judith Curr, Kathleen Schmidt, Mellony Torres, Sarah Branham, Laura Stern, Gary Urda, Lisa Keim, Christine Duplessis, Michael Selleck, the sales force, and everyone else who somehow keeps finding readers who haven’t heard of me and bullying them into getting on the bandwagon.

My editor, Emily Bestler, who actually makes me forget that this is supposed to be work, and not fun.

My publicist, Camille McDuffie, who still gets just as excited as I do over the good press.

My agent, Laura Gross, who may lose belts and BlackBerries (and provides excellent comic relief during stressful tours) but who has never lost sight of the fact that we make a phenomenal team.

My mom. We don’t get to pick our parents, but if we did, I still would have chosen her.

My dad. Because I’ve never thanked him formally for being so proud of me.

I spoke with numerous people who have personal experience with Asperger’s syndrome: Linda Zicko and her son Rich, Laura Bagnall and her son Alex Linden, Jan McAdams and her son Matthew, Deb Smith and her son Dylan, Mike Norbury and his son Chris, Kathleen Kirby and her son David, Kelly Meeder and her sons Brett and Derek, Catherine McMaster, Charlotte Scott and her son James, Dr. Boyd Haley, Lesley Dexter and her son Ethan, Sue Gerber and her daughter Liza, Nancy Albinini and her son Alec, Stella Chin and her son Scott Leung, Michelle Snail, Katie Lescarbeau, Stephanie Loo, Gina Crane and Bill Kolar and their son Anthony, Becky Pekar, Suzanne Harlow and her son Brad.

A special thanks to Ronna Hochbein, a mighty fine author in her own right, who works with autistic kids and not only was a font of information for me regarding vaccines and autism but also arranged for multiple face-to-face interviews with children and their parents.

Thanks aren’t really enough for Jess Watsky. She needs something much larger-gratitude, humility, slavish devotion. As a teen with Asperger’s, she not only allowed me to pick through her life and her mind and steal specific memories and incidents for fiction; but she also read every word of this book with lightning speed, told me what made her laugh and what needed to be fixed. She’s the heart of this novel; I could not have created a character like Jacob without her.

And last (but never least): to Tim, Kyle, Jake, and Sammy. If you four were all I had to call my own, I’d be the richest woman on the planet.

At first glance, she looked like a saint: Dorothea Puente rented out rooms to the elderly and disabled in Sacramento, California, in the 1980s. But then, her boarders started to vanish. Seven bodies were found buried in the garden, and traces of prescription sleeping pills were found in the remains, through forensic toxicology analysis. Puente was charged with killing her boarders so that she could take their pension checks and get herself plastic surgery and expensive clothing, in order to maintain her image as a doyenne of Sacramento society. She was charged with nine murders and convicted of three.

In 1998, while serving two consecutive life sentences, Puente began corresponding with a writer named Shane Bugbee and sending him recipes, which were subsequently published in a book called Cooking with a Serial Killer.

Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t touch that food with a ten-foot pole.

Everywhere I look, there are signs of a struggle. The mail has been scattered all over the kitchen floor; the stools are overturned. The phone has been knocked off its pedestal, its battery pack hanging loose from an umbilicus of wires. There’s one single faint footprint at the threshold of the living room, pointing toward the dead body of my son, Jacob.

He is sprawled like a starfish in front of the fireplace. Blood covers his temple and his hands. For a moment, I can’t move, can’t breathe.

Suddenly, he sits up. “Mom,” Jacob says, “you’re not even trying. ”

This is not real, I remind myself, and I watch him lie back down in the exact same position-on his back, his legs twisted to the left.

“Um, there was a fight,” I say.

Jacob’s mouth barely moves. “And…?”

“You were hit in the head.” I get down on my knees, like he’s told me to do a hundred times, and notice the crystal clock that usually sits on the mantel now peeking out from beneath the couch. I gingerly pick it up and see blood on the corner. With my pinkie, I touch the liquid and then taste it. “Oh, Jacob, don’t tell me you used up all my corn syrup again-”

“Mom! Focus!”

I sink down on the couch, cradling the clock in my hands. “Robbers came in, and you fought them off.”

Jacob sits up and sighs. The food dye and corn syrup mixture has matted his dark hair; his eyes are shining, even though they won’t meet mine. “Do you honestly believe I’d execute the same crime scene twice?” He unfolds a fist, and for the first time I see a tuft of corn silk hair. Jacob’s father is a towhead-or at least he was when he walked out on us fifteen years ago, leaving me with Jacob and Theo, his brand-new, blond baby brother.

“ Theo killed you?”

“Seriously, Mom, a kindergartner could have solved this case,” Jacob says, jumping to his feet. Fake blood drips down the side of his face, but he doesn’t notice; when he is intensely focused on crime scene analysis, I think a nuclear bomb could detonate beside him and he’d never flinch. He walks toward the footprint at the edge of the carpet and points. Now, at second glance, I notice the waffle tread of the Vans skateboarding sneakers that Theo saved up to buy for months, and the latter half of the company logo-NS-burned into the rubber sole. “There was a confrontation in the kitchen,” Jacob explains. “It ended with the phone being thrown in defense, and me being chased into the living room, where Theo clocked me.”

At that, I have to smile a little. “Where did you hear that term?”

“ CrimeBusters, episode forty-three.”

“Well, just so you know-it means to punch someone. Not hit them with an actual clock.”

Jacob blinks at me, expressionless. He lives in a literal world; it’s one of the hallmarks of his diagnosis. Years ago, when we were moving to Vermont, he asked what it was like. Lots of green, I said, and rolling hills. At that, he burst into tears. Won’t they hurt us? he said.