Jodie Picoult: Salem Falls

“W-what are you doing?”

He stroked her brows, her widow’s peak. “Taking you with me,” Jack said.

In that moment, an incredible peace fell inside him. He would not be like the other prisoners in the state pen. He would never be like them, because he’d been exposed to something truly beautiful, and it had gotten into his system. For the rest of his life, he would carry it around, hot as a secret under his skin, and just as jealously guarded.

“I will never forget you, Addie Peabody,” Jack said softly, covering her mouth once more.

He tasted of grief. She swallowed his sorrow like a seed, and breathed hope to the center of him. “You won’t have to,” Addie promised. “I’ll be here waiting.”

The sound of the deputy hurrying down the hall made Addie step back, although her hands still rested loosely in Jack’s. “Sorry to break this up,” the man said, “but you have to go.”

“I understand,” Addie said, her throat closing like a bud.

“Not you, ma’am.” The deputy turned to Jack. “Verdict’s in already.”

Some of the jury looked at him; some didn’t. “It’s normal,” Jordan assured him. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Mr. Foreman,” Judge Justice said, “have you reached a verdict?”

The cameras buzzed behind Jack’s shoulder, and he concentrated very hard on making the muscles of his legs work. If he were being recorded for posterity, he wanted to be sure he could stand on his own two feet.

“We have, Your Honor,” the foreman said.

“Will the defendant please rise?”

Jordan locked his arm through Jack’s, to draw him to his feet. Weak-kneed, Jack managed to remain upright and breathing.

“Mr. Foreman, how do you find the defendant on the charge of aggravated felonious sexual assault?”

Jack glanced at the jury, still poker-faced. The foreman looked at the paper he held in his hands. A thousand years later, he read, “Not guilty.”

The cry of outrage from Amos Duncan was drowned out by the immediate whoop of delight behind Jack, as Selena Damascus hopped the barricade and threw herself into Jordan’s arms. And then Addie was in his own, and Jordan was shaking his hand, telling him he’d known it would turn out this way all along.

The world revolved, a haze of glances and jurors and camera lenses. “The defendant is free to go,” the judge called over the melee, and that one word fixed in Jack’s consciousness and bloomed, obliterating all the noise and joy and surprise of the moment. Free. Free to go home. Free to shout out his innocence in the middle of the town green. Free to pick up the yarn of his life and see how it would knit together.

A liberated man, Jack turned around with a grin on his face-and found himself staring at the people of Salem Falls, who now had even more reason to hate him.

Amos Duncan wanted to take the prosecutor apart, piece by piece. “You said he’d be locked up for years,” the man growled. “And now I have to see him on the streets of the town where my daughter and I live?”

Matt couldn’t possibly feel any worse than Duncan wanted him to feel. Losing cases was always a disappointment . . . losing one that seemed to be open and shut was downright devastating.

“What can I say?” Matt answered humbly. “Amos, Gillian-I’m so sorry.” He began to gather his notes and papers, stuffing them haphazardly into his briefcase.

“I hope you carry this with you, Houlihan,” Duncan spat. “I hope you can’t sleep at night, knowing he’s out there.”

In counterpoint to her blustering father, Gillian’s voice was quiet and firm. “You said it was a sure thing.”

Matt glanced at her. He looked at Amos Duncan, too. Then he thought of McAfee’s closing, of the atropine in Gillian’s blood sample, of Catherine Marsh testifying that she’d been afraid of her father. “Nothing’s a sure thing,” he muttered, and he walked up the aisle of the courtroom, heading home.

The champagne bottle popped, shooting its cork into the ceiling of Jordan’s porch. Foam sprayed and ran down the sides, soaking Selena’s toes and the wooden slats beneath her feet. “To justice!” she cried, pouring some into Dixie cups.

“May she continue to be conveniently blind,” Jordan said, toasting.

Thomas grinned, lifting his own glass. “And deaf and dumb, when you need it.”

They drank, giddy with the sheer delight of winning. “I knew I wanted to get back into trying cases again,” Jordan said, and behind his back, Thomas and Selena rolled their eyes. “Of course, I couldn’t have done it without the two of you.”

“If you’re feeling so charitable, then you can explain to Chelsea why I’m not a complete jerk.”

“Ah, that’s easy,” Selena said. “Just tell her you take after your mother.”

“Thomas.” Jordan slung his arm around his son’s shoulders. “We’ll have her over to dinner, and I’ll show her my enchanting side.” He smothered a laugh. “No pun intended.”

Selena poured herself a second glass of champagne. “She could bring along something to drink . . . or something to slip into the drink.”

“Very funny,” Thomas muttered.

Jordan, on the other hand, grinned at her. “Maybe I’ll get some atropine myself, stir it into your hot water, and tell you that we tied the knot.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t have to drug me for that,” Selena said lightly, but her words fell flat.

There was a thick beat of silence. “Do you-” Jordan asked, staring hard at her.

Selena’s smile started slow, then unrolled like a banner. “Yeah. I do.”

When they fell onto the porch swing in a tangle of arms and legs and joy, Thomas discreetly slipped into the house. He walked down the hall into his father’s bedroom, sat on the bed, and unzipped the linings of each of the two pillows. It took some rummaging, but he managed to find them-the small herbal charms Chelsea had given him weeks before. Red cloth, filled with sweet-smelling flowers and a penny, then tied with blue ribbon in seven knots. “You can’t force someone to love someone else,” Chelsea had warned, when he asked her to make these. “All a spell can do is open a person’s eyes to what’s out there.”

Thomas had shrugged. “I think that’s all they need.”

As his father and Selena embraced outside, Thomas slipped the charms back into their pillows. And then, toasting himself, he drank down the rest of his champagne.

Charlie knocked on the door of his daughter’s bedroom. “Hi,” he said, sticking his head in the door. “Can I come in?”

“Since when do you ask?” Meg shot back. She didn’t look at him.

This angry girl, huddled on her bed, looked nothing like the child who’d once followed him around with a tinfoil badge pinned to her dress, so that she could be just like her father. Betrayal sat between them, a monster of enormous proportions. “I guess you heard that Jack St. Bride got acquitted.”

Meg nodded. “Gillian’s a mess about it.”

The detective sighed. “Understandable, I guess.” He took a deep breath. “We can still press charges, if you want.”

His daughter shook her head, her cheeks flaming. “No,” she murmured.

“Meggie?”

“I knew,” she blurted out. “I knew that Gillian was doing all this just to hurt Jack. At first I didn’t care, because of the things . . . the things I remembered. But now I know they weren’t real.” Meg’s round, sweet face was turned to his, waiting for him to make it all better, the way he used to do when she’d fallen down and scraped her knee. A Band-Aid, and a kiss. If only that was what it took once they grew up. “Gilly lied . . . and she told us to lie . . . and we did it, because we were all so afraid of what would happen if we didn’t. Maybe we were a little curious, too, to see if we could pull it off.”