Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

Nicholas has already come for Max. He has a twenty-four-hour shift coming up and wanted to get to sleep early, according to Astrid. Usually during dinner, Max sits in a high chair next to Robert, who feeds him pieces of Parker House rolls.

“Nicholas hasn’t told us very much about your trip,” Robert says, making it sound as if I’ve been on the QE2 for a holiday.

I swallow hard and wonder how much I can say without incriminating myself. After all, these are Nicholas’s parents, however nice they are being. “I don’t know if Nicholas ever told you,” I say hesitantly. “I grew up without my mother. She left us when I was five, and somehow, when I wasn’t doing a very good job taking care of Max, I figured if I could find her I’d automatically know how to do it all right.”

Astrid clucks. “You did a fine job,” she says. “In fact, you did all the hard work. You nursed, didn’t you? Yes, I remember Nicholas found that out the hard way when Max was weaned in a day. We never bothered when you all were children. In our circles, nursing wasn’t the proper thing to do.”

Robert turns away and picks up the thread of the conversation. “Ignore Astrid,” he says, smiling. “She sometimes spends weeks and months in huts without any other humans. She has a lot of practice talking only to herself.”

“And sometimes,” Astrid says pleasantly from the other end of the table, “I go away and I can’t tell the difference between talking to myself and dinner conversation with you.” She stands and walks toward Robert. She leans over him until he turns toward her. “Have I told you today that I love you?” she says, kissing his forehead.

“No, as a matter of fact,” Robert says.

“Ah.” Astrid pats his cheek. “So you have been listening.” She looks up at me and grins. “I’m going to see what’s happened to our steak.”

It turns out that Robert Prescott actually knows of Donegal, my mother’s horse. Well, not really of Donegal, but of his sire, the one with bloodlines to Seattle Slew. “She does this all by herself?” he asks.

“She rents space from a larger farm, and she has some kid come in to help her muck stalls,” I say. “It’s a beautiful place. So much green, and there are the mountains right behind her-it’s a nice place to live.”

“But you er Á€†didn’t stay,” Robert points out.

“No,” I say. “I didn’t.”

At that moment, when the conversation is starting to fit a little too tightly around me, Astrid comes back through the swinging door to the kitchen. “Another five minutes,” she says. “Would you believe that after twenty years of living with us, Imelda still doesn’t know that you like your steak burned to a crisp?”

“Well done,” Robert says.

“Yes,” Astrid says, laughing. “I am good, aren’t I?”

Watching them, I feel my stomach tighten. I would never have expected this kind of warmth to exist between Nicholas’s parents, and it makes me realize what I missed as a child. My father wouldn’t remember how my mother prefers her steak; my mother couldn’t tell you my father’s favorite color or breakfast cereal. I had never seen my mother stand behind my father in the kitchen to kiss him upside down. I had never seen the jigsaw puzzle their hands made when they fit together, like Robert’s and Astrid’s, as if they’d been cut for each other.

The night that Nicholas asked me to marry him at Mercy, I did not really know him at all. I knew that I wanted his attention. I knew that he commanded respect wherever he went. I knew that he had eyes that took my breath away, the shifting color of the sea. I said yes because I thought he’d be able to help me forget, about Jake, and the baby, and my mother, and Chicago. And in the long run I had blamed him because he lived up to all my expectations, making me forget about my old self so well that I panicked and ran again.

I said yes to Nicholas, but I did not know that I really wanted to marry him until the night we ran out of his parents’ house after the argument about the marriage. That was the first time I noticed that in addition to my needing Nicholas, Nicholas needed me. Somehow I’d always just pictured him as the hero, the accessory to my plan. But that night, Nicholas had wavered beneath his father’s words and turned his back on his family. Suddenly the man who had the world wrapped around his little finger found himself in absolutely unfamiliar territory. And to my surprise, it turned out to be a road I had traveled. For the first time in my life, someone needed my experience. It made me feel the way nothing ever had before.

That wasn’t something that went away easily.

As I watch Astrid and Robert for the remainder of the meal, I think of all the things I know about Nicholas. I know that he absolutely will not eat squid or snails or mussels or apricot jam. I know that he sleeps on the right side of the bed and that no matter what precautions I take, the top sheet always becomes untucked on his side. I know that he won’t come within a mile of a martini. I know that he folds his boxer shorts in half to fit into his dresser. I know that he can smell the rain a day before it comes, that he can sense snow by the color of the sky. I know that nobody else will ever know him as I do.

I also know that there are many facts Nicholas can list about me and still the most important truths will be missing.

Bless me, Nicholas, for I have sinned. The words run through my mind with every footstep that leads me out of the Prescotts’ house. I drive down the streets of Brookline and make familiar turns to our own house. For the last half mile I turn off the headlights and let the moon cut my path, wishing not to be seen.

I have not been to confession in eight and a half years. This makes me smile-how many rosaries would Father Draher pin on me to absolve me of my sins if it were him I was turning to instead of Nicholas?

My first confession was in fourth grade. We had been coached by the nuns, and we waited in line, saying our act of contrition before going into the confessional. The chamber was tiny and brown and gave me the sinking sense that the walls were coming in around me. I could hear the breathing of Father Draher, coming through the latticed metal that separated us. That first time, I said that I had taken the Lord’s name in vain and that I had fought with Mary Margaret Riordan over who would get the last chocolate milk in the cafeteria. But when Father Draher didn’t say anything, I began to make up sins: I had cheated on a spelling quiz; I had lied to my father; I had had an impure thought. At that last one Father Draher coughed, and I did not know why at the time, since I hadn’t any idea what an impure thought was-it was a phrase I’d heard in a TV movie. “For your penance,” he said, “say one Our Father and three Hail Marys.” And that was that; I was starting with a clean slate.

How many years has it been since I have had to make up sins? How many years since I realized that an endless number of rosaries can’t take away the guilt?

The lights are all off at the house, even in Nicholas’s study. Then I remember what Astrid said. He is trying to get a good night’s sleep. I feel a pang of conscience: maybe this would be better done some other time. But I don’t want to put it off anymore.

I stub my toe on Max’s walker, which is stuffed into the corner of the hallway. Soundlessly I move up the stairs and tiptoe past the nursery to the door of our bedroom. It is ajar: Nicholas will be able to hear Max if he cries.

This is what I have planned: I will sit on the edge of the bed and fold my hands in my lap and poke Nicholas so that he wakes up. I will tell him everything he should have known from the start, and I will say that I couldn’t let it go any longer and that I’ll leave him now to think about it. And I’ll pray for kindness the whole way home.