Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

The woman was waiting for them when they climbed to the third floor-thin, worn, with red hair that came out of a bottle. Her hands twisted in front of her, as if she were pulling invisible taffy. The moment she saw Jack, her mouth rounded into a silent O. “You . . . you look like him.”

Jack turned away, pretending to study the peeling paint on the hallway walls.

His mother stepped forward. “Hello,” she said, holding out her hand. Even after years of working with underprivileged women, Jack couldn’t understand how she was managing to make this look easy. “I’m Annalise St. Bride.”

The woman blinked rapidly. “You’re A,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Remembering herself, the woman blushed and stepped back. “Please come in.”

The entire apartment could have fit inside the living room of the penthouse in which Jack had grown up. They stood uncomfortably in the living room-a nook, really, with a battered floral couch and a television. Is this where they did it? Jack wondered, his throat burning to shout that he hated this woman, hated her place, hated that she had stolen his father away. With someone like his mother at home, this was what his father had run to?

“I thought about calling you,” the woman confessed. “But I couldn’t get up the nerve. He left something here . . . Joseph.”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out his father’s gold Rolex. Annalise took it and smoothed the engraved words on the back: To J, forever. Love, A.

Jack read over her shoulder. He snorted. “Forever.”

“It’s kind of you to return this to me,” Annalise said, lifting her chin.

“More like she was going to steal it until you showed up,” Jack muttered.

“Jack,” his mother warned sharply. “Miss . . .”

“Rose. Just Rose.”

“Rose, then. I came here to thank you.”

“You . . . you wanted to thank me?”

“The paramedics said you wouldn’t leave his side. If I . . . couldn’t be with him when this happened, then I’m glad someone else was.” Annalise nodded, as if assuring herself that she’d said the right thing. “Did he come . . . often?”

“Once a week. But I wouldn’t take his money. I’d slip it back in his wallet when he slept.”

That was the last straw for Jack. He stepped in front of his mother, the veins in his neck and forehead pulsing. “You cheap fucking whore! Do you think she wants to hear this? Do you think you could possibly make it any worse?”

“Jack, that’s enough,” his mother said firmly. “I haven’t laid a hand on you since you were ten, but God help me, I will. Whatever your father did was not this woman’s fault. And if she made him happy, when I obviously didn’t, then the last thing you should be doing is yelling at her.”

Tears ran down his mother’s face, and Jack was certain if he stayed there another second, his heart was going to simply explode. He gently touched his mother’s cheek, felt her sorrow slip over his fingertips. “Ma,” he whispered brokenly. “Let’s just go.”

“You made him happy.”

They turned at the sound of Rose’s voice, quiet as a memory. “He talked about you all the time. He said he didn’t deserve someone as fine as you.”

Annalise closed her eyes. “Thank you for that,” she said softly.

When she blinked and looked at Rose, hard, Jack’s jaw dropped. He had seen this expression before on his mother’s face-the specter of a crusade. “Mom-don’t.”

But Annalise grasped Rose’s hand. “You don’t have to live like this.”

“Not much call for my skills in the professional world.”

“There are things you could do. Places you can start over.”

“I’m not going to a shelter,” Rose answered firmly.

“Then come home with me.” Annalise bridged the shocked silence with words. “I need a housekeeper,” she explained, although Jack knew for a fact she currently had one. “I’ll pay a fair wage and offer room and board.”

“I can’t . . . I can’t live with you. Joseph-”

“-is smiling,” Annalise finished.

There was a poetic justice, Jack supposed, in this prostitute coming to literally clean up a mess she’d made. And this generosity of spirit was certainly nothing new for Annalise, who had a heart so wide that people tripped into it and landed square on her good faith before they realized they had been falling. Maybe it was even a selfish act of his mother’s, because between herself and Rose, they couldn’t help but keep Joseph’s presence strong.

Then again, maybe his mother just wanted to kill Rose in her sleep.

Annalise strapped his father’s watch onto her wrist, although it was too large. “Rose,” she said warmly. “Meet my son.”

“I am going to have to remember her every day for the rest of my life,” Annalise said that evening, before Jack left to go back to school. “So I might as well get to like her.”

“There’s nothing to like,” Jack said.

“That’s not what your father thought. And I certainly approved of his first choice.”

“She’s not your responsibility. Mother Teresa wouldn’t even have done this.”

“Mother Teresa didn’t have a cheating husband.” Annalise’s lips twitched. “When it’s all over, Jack, you’re remembered for what you did, not what you said you were going to do. Your father found that out too late.”

Jack kissed his mother’s cheek. “I want to grow up to be just like you.” They were silent, both reading the subtext of what he had not said.

“You will,” Annalise answered. “I’m counting on it.”

The cab dropped him off at his apartment shortly after eight o’clock. Even from the street, Jack could see the silhouettes in the windows, could hear the heavy drumbeat of the music. It was as if he’d never left, as if this party had been going on all weekend, in spite of the fact that his own personal world had stopped spinning.

He let himself in with the key and found Chad sitting on the couch with a few of the other guys on the team. A girl he didn’t recognize was draped across Chad’s lap like a knitted throw. “Hey,” he said, immediately pushing her aside, getting to his feet, and approaching Jack. “Sorry about your dad, man.”

Jack shrugged. “Thanks. I’m just going to go hang out in my room.”

Chad pressed a cold beer into his hand. “Maybe you just need to take your mind off things,” he suggested pointedly.

Jack handed back the bottle. “I’m not in the mood, Chad.”

“You sure?”

He started to nod, then looked at the girl, who smiled at him. “Maybe you’re right.”

A knowing grin spread across Chad’s mouth. But he turned toward the others with a somber face. “Jack’s father just passed away.”

On cue, Mandy sighed. “You poor thing.”

“He could use someone to talk to,” Chad hinted.

Jack felt himself go into his room, felt this girl sit down beside him and hold his hand, felt his arms go around her-all without making any of it happen. It was as if his body knew how to go through the motions and his mind didn’t have to be there at all. When the tears came-hot, huge sobs that wracked his big frame-Mandy held him tight and stroked his hair. “I’m sorry,” he said thickly. “I’m really sorry.”

In that instant, Jack thought of Rose. He thought of the girl he’d slept with the night his father had died, and he wondered where she was and what she would remember about that experience, long after all of the team had forgotten. He imagined his mother’s shelters overflowing, stuffed with women who no longer understood how to help themselves.

If he died with his next breath, what would he leave behind?

Jack lightly tugged Mandy to her feet. “Come,” he said softly. He steered her into the living room, where the others looked up in surprise.