Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

I loved this juror. I wanted to clone her.

I wondered if Guy would strike this juror. But chances were, he was just as touchy about how disabilities would play for him as I was. Whereas I’d thought at first that mothers of disabled children would be locks for Charlotte, I had reconsidered. Wrongful birth-a term with which Guy was going to slather the courtroom-could be horribly offensive to them. It seemed that the better juror, from my point of view, would be either someone who had sympathy but no firsthand experience with disabilities or, like Juliet Cooper, someone who knew so much about disability that she understood how challenging your life had been.

“Mrs. Cooper,” Guy said, “on the question that asked about religious or personal beliefs about abortion, you wrote something and then crossed it out, and I can’t quite read it.”

“I know,” she replied. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“It’s a very tough question,” Guy admitted. “Do you understand that the decision to abort a fetus is central to making a judgment in this case?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever had an abortion?”

“Objection!” I cried out. “That’s a HIPAA violation, Your Honor!”

“Mr. Booker,” the judge said. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“My job, Judge. The juror’s personal beliefs are critical, given the nature of this case.”

I knew exactly what Guy was doing-taking the risk of upsetting the juror, which he’d weighed to be less important than the risk of losing the trial because of her. There had been every chance I’d have had to ask an equally contentious question. I was just glad that it had been Guy instead, because it allowed me to play good cop. “What Mrs. Cooper did or didn’t do in her past is not at all integral to this lawsuit,” I declared, turning to the jury pool. “Let me apologize for my colleague’s invasion of your privacy. What Mr. Booker is conveniently forgetting is that the salient issue here isn’t abortion rights in America but a single case of medical malpractice.”

Guy Booker, as the defendant’s attorney, would be using a combination of smoke and mirrors to suggest that Piper Reece had not made an error in judgment: that OI couldn’t be conclusively diagnosed in utero, that you can’t be blamed for not seeing something you can’t see, that no one has the right to say life’s not worth living if you’re disabled. But no matter how much smoke Guy blew in the jury’s direction, I would redirect them, remind them that this was a medical malpractice suit and someone had to pay for making a mistake.

I was vaguely aware of the irony that I was championing the juror’s right to medical privacy when-on a personal level-it had made my life a nightmare. If not for the sealing of medical records, I would have known my birth mother’s name months ago; as it was, I was still in the great black void of chance, awaiting news from the Hillsborough Family Court and Maisie.

“You can stop grandstanding, Ms. Gates,” the judge said. “And as for you, Mr. Booker, if you ask a follow-up question like this again, I’ll hold you in contempt.”

Guy shrugged. He finished up his questioning, and then we both approached the bench again. “The plaintiff has no objection to Mrs. Cooper sitting on this panel,” I said. Guy agreed, and the judge called up the next potential juror.

Her name was Mary Paul. She had gray hair pulled into a low ponytail and wore a shapeless blue dress and crepe-soled shoes. She looked like someone’s grandmother, and smiled kindly at Charlotte as she took the stand. This, I thought, could be promising .

“Ms. Paul, you say here that you’re retired?”

“I don’t know if retired is really the word for it…”

“What kind of work were you doing previously?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said. “I was a Sister of Mercy.”

It was going to be a very long day.

When Charlotte finally came home from jury selection, you were soundly kicking my ass in Scrabble. “How did it go?” I asked, but I could tell before she even said a word; she looked like she’d been run over by a truck.

“They all kept staring at me,” she said. “Like I was something they’d never seen before.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say, really. What did she expect?

“Where’s Amelia?”

“Upstairs, becoming one with her iPod.”

“Mom,” you said, “do you want to play? You can just join in, it doesn’t matter if you missed the beginning.”

In the eight hours I’d been with you today, I hadn’t managed to bring up the divorce. We’d taken a field trip to the pet store and had gotten to watch a snake eat a dead mouse; we had watched a Disney movie; we had gone food shopping and bought SpaghettiOs-Chef Boyardee, which your mother called Chef MSG. We’d had, in short, the perfect day. I didn’t want to be the one who took the light out of your eyes. Maybe Charlotte had known this, which was why she’d suggested that I be the one to tell you. And maybe for that reason, too, she looked at me now and sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Sean, it’s been three weeks.”

“It hasn’t been the right time…”

You stuck your hand into the bag of letters. “We’re down to two-letter words,” you said. “Daddy tried to do Oz, but that’s a place and it’s not allowed.”

“There’s never going to be a right time. Honey,” she said, turning to you, “I’m really wiped out. Can I take a Scrabble rain check?” She walked into the kitchen.

“I’ll be right back,” I told you, and I followed her. “I know I have no right to ask you this, but-I’d like you to be there when I tell her. I think it’s important.”

“Sean, I’ve had an awful day-”

“And I am about to make it more awful. I know.” I looked down at her. “Please.”

Wordlessly, she walked back into the family room with me and sat down at the table. You turned, delighted. “So you do want to play?”

“Willow, your mom and I have some news for you.”

“You’re going to move back home for good? I knew it. At school Sapphire said that once her father moved out he fell in love with a dirty whore and now her parents aren’t together anymore, but I said that you’d never do that.”

“I told you so,” Charlotte said to me.

“Wills, your mother and I…we’re getting divorced.”

She looked at each of us. “Because of me?”

“No,” Charlotte and I said in unison.

“We both love you, and Amelia,” I said. “But your mom and I can’t be a couple anymore.”

Charlotte walked toward the window, her back to me.

“You’re still going to see both of us. And live with both of us. We’re going to do everything we can to make things easy for you, so not much has to change-”

Your face was pinching up tighter and tighter as I spoke, becoming a flushed and angry pink. “My goldfish,” you said. “He can’t live in two houses.”

You had a betta that we’d gotten you last Christmas, the cheapest concession to a pet we could provide. To everyone’s shock, it had lived longer than a week. “We’ll get you a second one,” I suggested.

“But I don’t want two goldfish!”

“Willow-”

“I hate you,” you shouted, starting to cry. “I hate both of you!”

You were out of your chair like a shot, running faster than I thought you could to the front door. “Willow!” Charlotte called out. “Be-”

Careful.

I heard the cry before I could reach the doorway. In your hurry to get away from me, from this news, you had not been cautious, and you were lying on the porch where you’d slipped. Your left femur was bent at a ninety-degree angle, breaking through the bloody surface of your thigh; the sclera of your eyes was an unholy blue. “Mommy?” you said, and then your eyes rolled back in your head.