Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

She ran into the house and past her mother. This was her obsession, a Lady Macbeth spot check she did every afternoon when she came home. She flung open her bedroom door, gasping for breath, and stuck her head inside the closet.

“Margaret Anne Saxton,” her mother said from the doorway.

Meg startled, smashing her head on the wooden frame of the closet.

“Honey, are you all right?” Meg’s mother walked over and touched her forehead lightly, feeling for fever, or maybe insanity. “You look like you’re being chased by the hounds of hell.”

“No hounds,” Meg managed, with a weak smile. “Only a heap of homework.”

“I’m worried about you. You don’t look right.” She glanced at Meg’s clothing. “You’re losing weight.”

“Jesus, Mom, you’ve been suggesting I go on a diet for years.”

“I never said that. I only felt that with a face as lovely as yours, you might want not to draw attention away from it.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “I love you too, Ma,” she said dryly. “Now can I please have some privacy? For once?”

The moment her mother closed the door, Meg dove into the closet. On her hands and knees, she tossed aside her dolls and shoes . . . but the ballet bag that had been there just yesterday afternoon was missing. “Oh, shit,” she whispered, and then felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Her father had quietly opened the door of her bedroom and now leaned against it, holding the pink sack. “Looking for this?”

Meg hung her head. Just shoot me, she thought.

He came into the room, closed the door, and sat down on the floor across from her. “You want to talk first, or should I?”

Suddenly, Meg felt herself dissolve. From the inside out, like those disgusting bacteria in sci-fi movies that leave people with Jell-O instead of organs. She felt her mind go blank.

“Meggie,” her father said, in a voice so quiet it made her ache, “did you bring drugs to the woods that night?”

Meg shook her head, stunned. That thermos . . . the one Gillian had brought filled with iced tea . . . it had been full of drugs?

And her father believed that Meg was responsible.

Memories chased each other at the heels: the forest shimmying that night before her eyes; the white blanks still crowding out huge blocks of time in her mind; the four of them, hysterical and sobbing, when her father had found them. Suddenly, the dam burst. In her life, Meg had never cried like this, sobbing until she shook, until she couldn’t make any sound at all, until her mother raced into the room in a panic. “Charlie,” she heard her mother say, from a tunnel of distance. “Do something!”

Meg cried for Gillian, for the expression on her father’s face, for what she was beginning to remember. She flung her arms wide and kicked at whoever came close to her.

In the end, a paramedic gave her a shot of Haldol. She drifted back to earth like one of the flowers that had fallen from the dogwood that night. Her father’s strong arms were wrapped tight around her, and his coffee breath fell onto her cheek. “Meggie,” he said, his voice broken. “Who?”

They were not speaking of the same thing, not at all, and in some small corner of her mind Meg knew this. But as her eyes drifted shut, as she fell headfirst into that night again, she murmured, “It could have been me.”

It was the first time that Gillian had been in Matt Houlihan’s office without her father sitting beside her. Granted, he was only a hundred feet away in the waiting room, maybe even had his ear pressed to the door, but the privacy was empowering. “I hope you feel comfortable being here alone with me,” Houlihan said.

What a sensitive guy, Gillian thought. Making sure the rape victim isn’t threatened by a Big Bad Male and a small closed room. She looked into her lap. “I’m okay,” she said.

“The reason I asked to speak to you without your father present is because of some new evidence that I thought you might feel more comfortable discussing in private.”

Every cell in Gillian’s body went on alert. She froze, waiting for him to speak again.

“Detective Saxton found a thermos and some cups in his daughter’s room, Gillian. Meg said they belonged to you.”

Gillian was so relieved that this was the crucial evidence, she nearly laughed out loud. “That’s true.”

“Did the residue of drugs in the thermos and cups belong to you, too?”

Gillian blinked. “What drugs?”

“Atropine. It’s a prescription drug . . . that can also make you high.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Well, according to Meg, you’re the one who brought the drinks that night. Atropine and all.”

The bitch. “Meg said that?” Gilly managed, her voice so tight she thought her vocal cords might snap like the strings of a rock guitar. “I would never bring drugs. I would never do drugs.” She laughed, but it sounded forced. “Mr. Houlihan, I’ve grown up around pharmaceuticals my whole life. My first memory is of my dad telling me to say no to drugs.” She looked toward the waiting room. “Go ask him if you don’t believe me.”

“If you didn’t bring the atropine, who did?”

“I have no idea,” Gillian said. “Probably Meg.”

“Meg’s father is a policeman. Presumably, she’s heard the same party line as you.”

“That’s not my problem,” she snapped.

Houlihan sighed. “I couldn’t care less who’s the dealer here, Gillian. That’s not in the least important to my case. What I need to know is if you drank any of the tea that night.”

Before Gilly could answer, the telephone rang. The county attorney picked it up, spoke for a moment, and then turned, apologetic. “I have to see someone before they go off to trial,” he explained. “Will you excuse me?”

Two seconds later, Gillian was alone in the office.

Had she taken the drugs that night? Well, of course. But hearing that wasn’t going to make Houlihan happy. Someone who took a hallucinogen wasn’t a reliable eyewitness.

Then again, it had been nearly six weeks. No drug stayed in your system that long, especially one ingested in such a small volume. Houlihan could draw blood this instant and never know if Gillian was lying.

The ER had drawn blood.

The memory hit her; the doctor drawing vial after vial. Chewing on her bottom lip, Gillian stared at the folder on Houlihan’s desk.

It took her less than a second to decide to open it. The front page gave the lab results from the rape kit. She skimmed the odd numbers and phrases until she came to the typing for VICTIM, KNOWN SAMPLE. And all the drugs for which she had tested negative.

Atropine wasn’t on the list . . . but it hadn’t been flagged in her system, either.

She slid the folder back on the edge of the leather blotter just as Houlihan came in. “I didn’t drink anything,” Gilly said.

“You’re absolutely certain?”

“Yes. Meg borrowed my thermos, but she brought iced tea. I hate iced tea.”

The lawyer studied her, then nodded, satisfied. He opened a drawer of his butt-ugly metal desk and began to unravel a silver ribbon. “You have any idea what this is?”

“No,” she said, letting it slide through her fingers. “Where did you find it?”

“With the thermos and cups.”

“Well,” Gillian shrugged. “Then it must be Meg’s, too.”

Addie came into the diner after the dinner rush to find Darla playing chess with her father in the kitchen. “You’re back,” Roy said.

An apron-her father was wearing an apron. Before she could get past this startling fact, Darla was in her face. “I had to work double shifts, on account of Delilah getting sick, and don’t think I’m not expecting time and a half.” Turning to Roy, she said, “Check,” and then sashayed into the front room.