Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

The judge nods. “Sustained.”

“Is it your testimony today that you have no pecuniary interest in your father’s death because you’re not a beneficiary of his life insurance policy?”

“I only learned about his life insurance policy ten days ago,” I reply.

“Plenty of time to concoct a murder because you’re angry that he left you off the insurance policy-” Zirconia muses.

Joe gets to his feet. “Objection!”

“Sustained,” the judge murmurs.

Undeterred, the lawyer moves closer, her arms folded. “Your father also has no will, which means, if he died intestate today, you’d be an heir to his estate and entitled to half of everything he owns.”

This is news to me. “Really?”

“So theoretically, you do benefit from your father’s demise,” she points out.

“I doubt there will be much left of my father’s estate after we pay the hospital bills.”

“So you’re saying that the sooner he dies, the more money there will be?”

“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t even know until two seconds ago that I would receive anything from his estate…”

“That’s right. Your father’s been dead to you for years, after all. So why not make it legitimate?”

Joe had warned me that Zirconia Notch would try to get me riled, would try to make me look like someone who might be able to commit murder. I take a deep breath, trying to keep so much heat from rushing to my face. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with my father.”

“On the contrary, Edward. I know that your actions here are motivated by anger and resentment-”

“No…”

“I know that you’re angry that you were cut out of his life insurance policy. I know you’re angry because your father never came after you when you left. You’re angry because your sister had the relationship with your father you still secretly wish you had-”

A vein starts throbbing in my neck. “You’re wrong.”

“Admit it: you’re not doing this out of love, Edward-you’re doing this out of hate.”

I shake my head.

“You hate your father for turning you away when you told him you were gay. You hated him so much for that you tore apart your family-”

“He tore it apart first,” I burst out. “Fine. I did hate my father. But I never even told him I was gay. I never had the chance.” I look around the gallery, until I find one frozen face. “Because when I got to the trailer that night, I found him cheating on my mother.”

During the recess, Joe sequesters me in a conference room. He goes off to find me a glass of water I won’t be able to drink because my hands are still shaking so badly. This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.

The door opens, and to my surprise, it’s not Joe returning-but my mother. She sits down across from me. “Edward,” she says, and that one word is a canvas for me upon which to paint a missing history.

She looks small and shaken, but I guess that’s what happens when you learn that the story you’ve told yourself all these years isn’t true. And for that, at least, I owe her an explanation. “I went to Redmond’s to come out to him, but he didn’t answer when I knocked. The trailer door was open, so I went inside. The lights were on, there was a radio playing. Dad wasn’t in the main room, so I headed toward the bedroom.”

It is still as vivid, six years later, as it was back then-the silver limbs in a Gordian knot, the puddles of clothing on the linoleum floor, the few seconds it took for me to realize what I was actually seeing. “He was fucking this college intern named Sparrow or Wren or something-a girl who was two goddamned years older than me.” I look up at my mother. “I couldn’t tell you. So when you assumed that the reason I came home upset was because the conversation between us hadn’t gone well, I just let you keep assuming it.”

She crosses her arms tightly, still silent.

“He owed us those two years he was gone,” I say. “He was supposed to come back and be a father. A husband. Instead he came back thinking and acting like one of the stupid wolves he lived with. He was the alpha and we were his pack, and wolves always put family first-how many times did he tell us that? But the whole time, he was lying through his teeth. He didn’t give a shit about our family. He was screwing around behind your back; he was ignoring his own kids. He wasn’t a wolf. He was just a hypocrite.”

My mother’s jaw looks like it is made of glass. As if turning her head, even incrementally, might make her shatter. “Then why did you leave?”

“He begged me not to say anything to you. He said it was a onetime thing, a mistake.” I look into my lap. “I didn’t want you or Cara to get hurt. After all, you waited two years for him, like Penelope and Odysseus. And Cara-well, she always saw him as a hero, and I didn’t want to be the one to rip off the rose-colored glasses. But I knew I couldn’t lie for him. Eventually I’d slip up, and it would break apart our whole family.” I bury my face in my hands. “So instead of risking that, I left.”

“I knew,” my mother murmurs.

I suck in my breath. “What?”

“I couldn’t have told you which girl it was, but I assumed. ” She squeezes my hand. “Things deteriorated between us, after your father came back from Canada. He moved out, staying in the trailer or with his wolves. And then he started hiring these young girls, zoology grad students, who treated him as if he was Jesus Christ. Your father, he never said anything specific, but he didn’t have to. After a while, these girls stopped looking me in the eye if I happened to show up at Redmond’s. I’d sit in the trailer to wait for Luke, and I’d find an extra toothbrush. A pink sweatshirt.” My mother looks up at me. “If I’d known that was the reason you went away, I would have swum to Thailand to get you myself,” she confesses. “I should have been the one protecting you, Edward. Not the other way around. I’m so sorry.”

There is a soft knock on the door, and Joe enters. When my mother sees him, she flies into his arms. “It’s okay, baby,” he says, stroking her back, her hair.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says against his shoulder. “It was forever ago.”

She isn’t crying, but I figure that’s only a matter of time. Scars are just a treasure map for pain you’ve buried too deep to remember.

My mother and Joe have a lovers’ shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.

“He never deserved you,” I tell my mother. “He never deserved any of us.”

She turns to me, still holding Joe’s hand. “Do you want him to die, Edward,” she asks, “or do you want him dead?”

There’s a difference, I realize. I can tell myself I’m here to disprove the theory of the prodigal son; I can say I want to carry out my father’s wishes until I am blue in the face. But you can call a horse a duck, yet it won’t sprout feathers and grow a bill. You can tell yourself your family is the picture of happiness, but that’s because loneliness and dissatisfaction don’t always show up on camera.

It turns out there’s a very fine line between mercy and revenge.

So fine, in fact, that I may have lost sight of it.

The anchor I had to the human world-my family-was different. My little girl, the one who had still been afraid of the dark when I left, was now wearing braces and hugging me around the neck and showing me her new goldfish, her favorite chapter book, a picture of herself at a swim meet. She acted as if two minutes had passed, instead of two years. My wife was more reserved. She would follow me around, certain if she took her eyes off me I might disappear again. Her mouth was always pressed tightly shut, because of all the things I knew she wanted to say to me but was afraid to let loose. After our first encounter at the police station in Canada, she had been afraid to come too close, physically. Instead, she smothered me with creature comfort: the softest sweatpants in my new, reduced size; simple home-cooked foods that my stomach had to relearn; a down comforter to keep me warm. I couldn’t turn around without Georgie trying to do something for me.