Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

“The man or the lady?”

“The lady. She’s going to help us.”

You blinked. “Help us do what?”

I hesitated. How was I supposed to explain the legal system to a five-year-old? “You know how there are rules?” I said. “At home, and at school? What happens if someone breaks those rules?”

“They get a time-out.”

“Well, there are rules for grown-ups, too,” I said. “Like, you can’t hurt someone. And you can’t take something that’s not yours. And if you break the rules, you get punished. Lawyers can help you if someone breaks a rule and hurts you in the process. They make sure that the person who did something wrong takes responsibility.”

“Like when Amelia stole my glitter nail polish and you made her buy me another one with her babysitting money?”

“Exactly like that,” I said.

Your eyes welled up again. “I broke the rules in school and the lawyer’s going to make me move out of the house,” you said.

“No one is moving,” I said firmly. “Especially not you. You didn’t break the rules. Someone else did.”

“Is it Daddy?” you asked. “Is that why he doesn’t want you to get a lawyer?”

I stared at you. “You heard us talking about that?”

“I heard you yelling about it.”

“It wasn’t Daddy. And it wasn’t Amelia.” I took a deep breath. “It was Piper.”

“ Piper stole something from our house?”

“This is where it gets complicated,” I said. “She didn’t steal a thing, like a television or a bracelet. She just didn’t tell me something that she should have. Something very important.”

You looked down at your lap. “It was something about me, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s nothing that would ever change the way I feel about you. There’s only one Willow O’Keefe on this planet, and I was lucky enough to get her.” I kissed the top of your head, because I wasn’t brave enough to look you in the eye. “It’s a funny thing, though,” I said, my voice knotting around a rope of tears. “In order for this lawyer to help us, I have to play a game. I have to say things I don’t really mean. Things that might hurt if you heard them and didn’t know I was really just acting.”

Now I watched your face carefully to see if you were following me. “Like when someone gets shot on TV but not in real life?” you said.

“Right,” I said. They’re fake bullets, so why do I still feel like I’m bleeding out? “You’re going to hear things, and maybe read things, and you’ll think to yourself, My mom would never say that . And you’d be right. Because when I’m in court, talking to that lawyer, I’m pretending to be someone else, even though I look the same and my voice sounds the same. I might fool everyone else in the world, but I don’t want to fool you.”

You blinked up at me. “Can we practice?”

“What?”

“So I can tell. If you’re acting or not.”

I drew in my breath. “Okay,” I said. “You were absolutely right to trip Cassidy today.”

You stared at me fiercely. “You’re lying. I wish you weren’t, but you’re lying.”

“Good girl. Ms. Watkins needs to pluck her unibrow.”

A smile fluted across your face. “That’s a trick question, but you’re still lying, because even if she really does look like there’s a caterpillar between her eyes, that’s something Amelia would say out loud but not you.”

I burst out laughing. “Honestly, Willow.”

“True!”

“But I didn’t say anything yet!”

“You don’t have to say I love you to say I love you, ” you said with a shrug. “All you have to do is say my name and I know.”

“How?”

When I looked down at you, I was struck by how much of myself I could see in the shape of your eyes, in the light of your smile. “Say Cassidy,” you instructed.

“Cassidy.”

“Say…Ursula.”

“Ursula,” I parroted.

“Now…,” and you pointed to your own chest.

“Willow.”

“Can’t you hear it?” you said. “When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it’s safe inside your mouth.”

“Willow,” I repeated, feeling the pillow of the consonants and the swing of the vowels. Were you right? Could it drown out everything else I would have to say? “Willow, Willow, Willow,” I sang; a lullaby, a parachute, as if I could cushion you even now from whatever blows were coming.

October 2007

You have never seen anything like the amount of time and dead trees that go into a civil lawsuit. Once, during a suit brought against a priest for sexual assault, I had sat through a deposition of a psychiatrist that went on for three days. The first question was: What is psychology? The second: What is sociology? The third: Who was Freud? The expert was getting paid $350 an hour and wanted to make damn sure he took his time. I think we lost three stenographers to carpal tunnel syndrome before we finally got his answers on record.

It was eight months since I’d first met with Charlotte O’Keefe and her husband, and we were still in the learning phase. Basically, it involved the clients going about their everyday lives and, every now and then, getting a call from me saying that I needed this document or that information. Sean was promoted to lieutenant. Willow started full-day kindergarten. And Charlotte spent the seven hours that Willow was in school waiting for the phone to ring, in case her daughter had another break.

Part of getting ready for the depositions involved questionnaires called interrogatories that help lawyers like me see the strengths and weaknesses of the case, and whether or not it should settle. Discovery is aptly named: you are meant to find out if your case is a loser, and where the black holes are, before you’re sucked into them.

Piper Reece’s interrogatory had landed in my inbox this morning. I’d heard, through the grapevine, that she had taken a leave of ab sence from her practice and had her mentor come out of retirement to cover for her.

This entire lawsuit was predicated on the assumption that she had not told Charlotte about her baby’s medical condition early on-had not given her information that might have led to terminating the pregnancy. And there was a little piece of me that wondered if it had been an oversight on the obstetrician’s part or a subconscious slip. Were there obstetricians who-instead of recommending abortions-suggested adoption? Had one of them taken care of my own mother?

I had finally received my nonidentifying letter from Maisie in the Hillsborough County Court Records Office. Dear Ms. Gates, the letter had read.

The following information has been compiled from the court record of your adoption. Information in the record indicates the birth mother’s obstetrician contacted his attorney seeking advice for a patient who was considering adoption. The attorney was aware of the Gateses’ interest in adopting. The attorney met with the birth parents after you were born and made arrangements for the adoption.

You were born in a Nashua hospital at 5:34 p.m. on January 3, 1973. You were discharged from the hospital on January 5, 1973, into the care of Arthur and Yvonne Gates. Their adoption of you became final on July 28, 1973, in Hillsborough County Court.

Information recorded on the original birth certificate indicates the birth mother was seventeen when she gave birth to you. She was a Hillsborough County resident at the time. She was Caucasian, and her occupation was Student. The birth father was not identified on the birth certificate. At the time of the adoption, she was living in Epping, NH. The adoption petition identifies your religious affiliation as Roman Catholic. The birth mother and maternal grandmother signed a consent to your adoption.