Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

“Waiting for marriage isn’t a crime,” Liddy said. “It’s the best gift you can give someone you love. Besides, I’m not the first girl to do it.”

But you may be the first one to actually carry through with it, I thought. “Have you ever lied?”

“Well. Yes. But only so I could keep Daddy’s birthday surprise party a secret.”

“Have you ever done anything you regretted later?”

“No,” she said, just like I expected.

I rested my wrist on the steering wheel and glanced at her profile. “Have you ever wanted to?”

We were stopped at a red light. Liddy looked at me, and, maybe for the first time, I really, really looked at her. Those blue eyes, which I’d thought were so empty and glassy, like those of a toy doll, were full of hunger. “Of course,” she whispered.

Behind us, a driver honked; the light had turned. I looked out the windshield and realized that it had started snowing; that meant my chauffeur services would take even longer. “Hold your horses,” I said to the driver under my breath, at the same time that Liddy realized the weather had turned.

“Oh my,” she cried (who in this millennium says Oh my?), and before I could stop her she jumped out of the truck. She ran into the middle of the intersection, her arms outstretched and her eyes closed, as the snow-flakes landed on her hair and her face.

I honked, but she didn’t respond. She was going to cause a massive pileup. Cursing under my breath, I got out of the pickup. “Liddy,” I yelled. “Get into the fucking car!”

She was still spinning. “I’ve never seen snow before!” she said. “This never happens in Mississippi! It’s so pretty!”

It wasn’t pretty. Not on a grimy Providence street where a guy was doing a drug deal on the corner. But cynics always assume the worst, and I guess I was the biggest cynic of them all. Because, at that moment, I realized why I distrusted Liddy on principle. I was afraid that maybe someone like Liddy had to exist in the universe in order to balance someone like me. A woman who couldn’t do anything wrong surely canceled out a guy who never did anything right.

Together, we were two halves of a whole.

I knew then why Reid had fallen for her. Not in spite of the fact that she was so sheltered but because of it. He would be there for all these firsts-her first bank account, her first sexual encounter, her first job. I’d never been someone’s first anything, unless you counted mistake.

By now, other cars had started honking. Liddy grabbed my hand and twirled me around while she laughed.

I managed to get her back into the car, but I sort of wished I hadn’t. I wished we’d just stayed in the middle of that street.

When we started driving again, her cheeks were pink and she was out of breath.

Reid might have everything else, I remember thinking, but that first snow? That was mine.

One sip, when you measure it, is practically nothing. A teaspoonful. A taste. Certainly not enough to really help you quench a thirst, which is why that first sip leads to just a tiny second one, and then really just enough to wet my lips. And then I start thinking about Zoe’s voice and Liddy’s and they blend together and I take another swallow because I think that may split them apart again.

I really haven’t drunk very much. It’s just that it’s been so long, the buzz starts fast and spreads through me. There is a rush like a tide in my head every time my foot hits the brake, which manages to wash away whatever I was thinking at that moment.

Which feels awfully good.

I reach for the bottle again, and, to my surprise, there’s nothing in it.

It must have spilled, because there’s no way I drank a fifth of whiskey.

I mean, I couldn’t have, right?

In my rearview mirror is a lit Christmas tree. It takes me by surprise when I happen to glance at it, and then I can’t stop staring, even though I know my eyes should be on the road. Then the tree lets out a siren.

It’s May; there are no Christmas tree lights. The cop raps against my window.

I have to unroll it, because if I don’t he’ll arrest me. I tell myself to get a grip, to be polite and charming. I can convince him I haven’t been drinking. I did that for years, with the rest of the world.

I think I recognize him. I think he may even go to my church. “Don’t tell me,” I say, offering up a gummy, sheepish grin. “I was going forty in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone?”

“Sorry, Max, but I’m gonna have to ask you to step out of the-”

“Max!” We both turn at the sound of another voice, followed by the slam of a car door.

The cop falls back as Liddy leans into my open window. “What were you thinking, driving yourself to the emergency room?” She turns to the policeman. “Oh, Grant, thank goodness you found him-”

“But I didn’t-”

“He fell off a ladder while he was cleaning out the gutters, and conked his head, and I go off to get an ice pack and by the time I get back I see him zooming off in his truck.” She frowns at me. “You could have killed yourself! Or worse-you could have killed someone else! Didn’t you just tell me you were seeing double?”

I honestly don’t know what to say. I’m wondering if she conked her head.

Liddy opens the driver’s side door. “Move over, Max,” she says, and I unbuckle and slide across the bench into the truck’s passenger seat. “Grant, I just cannot thank you enough. We are so blessed to have you as a public safety officer, not to mention as a member of our congregation.” She looks up at him and smiles. “Will you be a darling and make sure my car gets back home?”

She gives a little wave as she drives off.

“I didn’t bang my head-”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Liddy snaps. “I was out looking for you. Reid told me you left him at the dock to go help Pastor Clive.”

“I did.”

She glances at me. “That’s funny. Because I was with Pastor Clive all afternoon, and I never saw you.”

“Did you tell Reid?”

Liddy sighs. “No.”

“I can explain-”

She holds up one small hand. “Don’t, Max. Just… don’t.” Wrinkling her nose, she says, “Whiskey.”

I close my eyes. Stupid idiot I am, believing I can pull a fast one. I look drunk. I smell drunk. “How would you know, if you’ve never had it?”

“Because my daddy did, every day of my childhood,” Liddy says.

There is something about the way she says it that makes me wonder if her father, the preacher, was trying to drown his own demons, too.

She drives past the turn that would have led to our house. “Lord knows I can’t take you home in this state.”

“You could hit me over the head and take me to the hospital,” I mutter.

Liddy purses her lips. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” she says.

The biggest knock-down fight I ever had with Zoe was after Christmas Eve at Reid and Liddy’s house. We’d been married about five years by then and had already had our share of fertility nightmares. Anyway, it’s not a secret that Zoe wasn’t a big fan of my brother and his wife. She had been watching the Weather Channel all day, hoping to convince me that the snow we were going to be getting that night was enough to keep us from driving from our place to theirs.

Liddy loved Christmas. She decorated-not in a cheesy inflatable Santa way but with real garlands wrapped around the banister and mistletoe hanging from the chandeliers. She had a collection of antique wooden St. Nicholas dolls, which were propped up on windowsills and tables. She switched out her everyday dishes for a set with holly around the edges. Reid told me it took her an entire day to prepare the house for the holidays, and looking around, I totally believed it.