Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

“No,” he said quickly, although he wasn’t sure he believed himself. “So . . . you’re just, like, really into nature?”

Chelsea nodded. “Yeah, but that’s not how a lot of people see it. When Gillian and Meg and Whit and I formed a coven, we knew we had to keep it to ourselves. We figured if people heard about it, they’d take it totally the wrong way.” Suddenly, she grinned. “My God, Thomas, do you know how good it feels to tell someone this?” She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. “Nine out of ten guys would be looking for my broomstick now, or expecting me to cast a love spell.”

Suddenly Thomas went still inside. “You mean you’re-”

“A Pagan, a witch, whatever you want to call it,” Chelsea said. “All four of us are.”

His hands stopped roaming over Chelsea’s back, and he suddenly realized that even if she ripped off her pants right now and climbed on him, he would be too distracted to do anything. For Christ’s sake, there was a beautiful, half-naked girl next to him, and all he could think about was his father’s case.

The crime scene was different in the still of the night. Owls called to each other from dark places in the sky, a symphony of crickets tuned their bows, and small creatures tangoed in the pine needles at Jordan’s feet. He didn’t really know why he’d come here. For inspiration, maybe? Certainly, he had a leg to stand on now for his defense . . . but it was shaky. The discrepancy in time and distance here didn’t effectively exclude Jack as a rapist-it only suggested that Gillian Duncan was covering something up.

If Jordan were a betting man, he’d lay odds that Jack and Gillian had had sex and after the fact, she’d been mortified and had spun this story to explain away what had happened. But why wouldn’t the other girls have heard the sounds of their passion? Why wouldn’t Jack have told him, if that was the way it had gone down?

He said he hadn’t touched Gillian. And there was also the strange fact that the other girls who had been there would have seen something-a look, a smile, a touch exchanged between Gillian and Jack that flirted with the possibility of sexual attraction. Yet not a single one of them had mentioned it. Were they protecting their friend? Or was it simply that-as Jack said-he’d never had sex with her?

Either Jack was a liar who had committed a brutal rape-a very fast and quiet one-or Gillian was a liar . . . and nothing had happened at all.

In the tree above Jordan’s head, the great yellow eyes of an owl stared at him sagely. “Whooo.”

“Wish I knew.” Jordan tilted his head to the sky. His eye caught a small flash of silver on a branch, a star that had fallen and gotten lodged in the crook of the tree. Curious, Jordan got to his feet and dusted off the seat of his jeans. He was just tall enough to reach the object when he stood on his tiptoes.

Damn. It was stuck.

Gritting his teeth, Jordan twisted his fingers more firmly around a loop and tugged.

He landed sprawled on the ground again, a thin strip of silver ribbon in his lap. “What the-”

Ribbons, and little sachets. Weird shit.

Ribbons.

Jordan ran as quickly as he could down that fifty-yard path to his car and then drove straight to the Carroll County Jail.

“Think!” Jordan ordered.

Jack paced the confines of the small room. “I told you,” he said. “I remember the ribbons. They were wrapped around a tree. And the ends were loose. Fluttering, like.”

It sounded completely unbelievable. In fact, Jordan still would have scoffed at Jack’s recollection if he didn’t happen to have a piece of silver ribbon in his pocket. “Like streamers at a high school dance?”

“Like a pole,” Jack clarified. “A maypole.”

The only maypole Jordan had ever seen was a re-creation done by a touchy-feely granola-and-Birkenstock nursery school Thomas had gone to for exactly three weeks before his father had yanked him out. People in today’s world didn’t weave maypoles.

“The things hanging on the dogwood . . . were they ornaments of some kind?”

“Not Christmas tree balls, if that’s what you mean. More like those little things that women stick in their lingerie drawers.”

“And Gillian Duncan was naked,” Jordan said.

Jack nodded. “Two other girls had their shirts off, too, but got dressed when I came.”

Jordan bowed his head, utterly lost. “Was it some kind of orgy?”

“With each other? They weren’t . . . doing anything like that when I came.”

“What were they doing?”

Jack thought for a moment. “Dancing. Around the fire. Like Native American warriors.”

“Ah, yes. Clearly, they were celebrating the kill of a buffalo.”

“A celebration,” Jack said slowly. “That’s what Gillian called it, too.”

It was after two in the morning when Jordan eased his way into the house, taking care not to wake anyone up. His mind was humming so strongly that it took him a moment to realize the lights were still on. When he stepped into the foyer, Thomas and Selena were waiting.

“You won’t believe this,” Jordan began, grinning from the inside out.

“Dad,” Thomas interrupted, stealing his thunder. “She’s a witch.”

June 2000

Salem Falls,

New Hampshire

A ddie paid ten dollars for a copy of Jack’s first conviction, but didn’t know what she was going to do with it. Keep it in the re-safe box where Chloe’s birth and death certificates were? Burn it, in some kind of ritual? Bury it in the yard, with all her other dreams?

A night of tossing and turning had convinced her that Jack had spun lies as easily as a silkworm crafted threads, and the result was something just as beautiful to behold. She couldn’t blame him for telling her that he hadn’t had a relationship with Catherine Marsh, or that he hadn’t raped Gillian Duncan, or even that he loved Addie. A lie took two parties-the weaver of the tale and the sucker who so badly wanted to believe it.

The clerk of the Grafton County Superior Court handed Addie a receipt. “Here you go,” he said. “State of New Hampshire v. Jack St. Bride.”

Addie thanked the man and looked at the court records. “Jack St. Bride?” a voice said to her left.

The tall man wore a police uniform. He had salt-and-pepper hair, a nose that was too big for his face, and many laugh lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Yes,” Addie answered.

“You know him?”

Her fist gripped the paper so tightly it bunched in her hand. “I thought I did.”

Addie noticed there was something about Jack’s name that brought a sad shadow to the man’s eyes, just like it did to hers. “I know,” he said finally. “So did I.”

It was the first time Addie could recall sitting in a diner as a patron rather than as an owner. Jay Kavanaugh ordered an entire breakfast, but Addie wasn’t hungry. She had to fight the overwhelming urge to stand up and get her own coffee from the burner.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Jay said, after hearing that Jack had again been charged with rape. “Sexual perps tend to be repeaters. What does surprise me is that I fell for it the first time around.” Shaking his head, he added, “I’m a cop, so I have this incredible sixth sense-like I can tell it’s bullshit, pardon my French, from half a mile away. And I swear to God, I believed hook, line, and sinker that Jack was just some struggling prep school teacher-you know, an ordinary guy. Then it comes out that his family is rich as the Rockefellers and that in his spare time he wasn’t doing lesson plans but seducing students.”