Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

Meg whispered so quietly that Addie didn’t believe she had heard correctly. “She’s so lucky.”

“Who is?”

“Chloe.”

Addie’s hands stilled. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” Meg wiped at her face with the bottom of her T-shirt. “I wish I were dead.”

It hit Addie then, what Meg had been doing at the cemetery. She had come back to the spot where the alleged assault had occurred. Jack hadn’t done it-she knew this as surely as she knew that Chloe was buried close by-but something had rattled Meg that night, all the same.

Addie squeezed Meg’s shoulders. “I think we should go. This place has bad memories for both of us.”

Meg reluctantly glanced in the direction of the clearing. “Ms. Peabody,” she whispered, miserable. “I think . . . I think he touched me, too.”

“Touched . . . you?” Addie said, the words round, with no sound behind them.

“Touched me,” Meg repeated, mortified. “You know.” And God help her, Addie did.

In the end, it came down to this: Being a mother was something that stayed with you, dormant, ready to flare at a single match-stroke of circumstance. And apparently it didn’t matter if the child was one of your body or just one with a place in your heart-instinct was instinct.

Addie loved Jack. She believed him when he said he hadn’t attacked Gillian Duncan. But she was a mother, and she knew what had to be done. So she took Meg to Charlie’s office at the police station and closed the door behind them. She kept her expression blank. Then, holding Meg’s hand tight for moral support, she listened as this girl-this friend of her daughter’s-told Charlie what she’d told Addie minutes before.

Charlie knew the floor was stable, but he could feel it rocking beneath his feet. He cleared his throat for the hundredth time and swallowed, then turned on the tape recorder that sat between himself and his daughter.

Meggie was shivering, although she wore the blue uniform jacket that usually hung on the back of his office door. Her hands fell at elbow-length in the jacket, and it made him think of how he and Barb would dress her up when she was just a baby, crazy angel wings made out of real feathers and soft headbands with antennae, things like that that were immortalized in dusty photo albums.

Oh, Christ.

“Where, um, did he touch you?”

She couldn’t look him in the eye, and that was fine, because Charlie couldn’t look at her, either. “Here. And here.”

“The victim,” Charlie said thickly, “is indicating her left hip and breast.”

Every muscle in his body was rigid with tension. How was he going to tell Barbara about this? How was he ever going to finish? You could not be a detective when you wanted so badly to be simply a father.

“Charlie.” Houlihan’s voice fell heavily. “You don’t have to do this.”

Charlie shook his head tightly. “Meg, did Jack St. Bride expose himself to you?”

“No,” his daughter whispered.

“Did he touch you anywhere else? In any other way?”

“Did any part of his body come in contact with part of yours?” Matt asked quietly.

“Jesus Christ!” Charlie was out of his seat, punching the button on the tape recorder to shut it off. Why couldn’t you rewind your own life? He paced to the far end of the room, Matt coming up beside him. “My little girl,” Charlie choked. “He did this to my little girl.”

“We’ll get him,” Matt promised. “We’ll press charges for this, too.”

Nodding, Charlie started back to the table, only to be restrained by Matt. “No,” the county attorney said. “Let me.”

Molly lay curled like a fiddlehead against her flannel crib sheets, her thumb tucked in her mouth as she slept. Matt stared down at her and could easily imagine the kind of pain that Charlie was in right now. God, if someone ever did anything to his child, he couldn’t be held accountable for his actions.

This latest drama was not what Matt needed the night before the trial began. But Meg’s accusations would be a different case, brought before a different judge on a different day . . . if there was enough evidence to try it. He would never have told Charlie, but part of Matt had to wonder how reliable Meg’s tearful confession was. She had already been taking hallucinogenic drugs that night. . . . It was possible that this alleged assault was imagined.

And that was how it affected his current case-he could no longer risk Meg as a witness. If she testified to bringing the drugs and then confessed to being attacked, too, would the jury believe her? And if they didn’t, would they still believe Gillian?

Matt couldn’t say for sure whether Meg was going to help or hurt the case. He didn’t need her to convict Jack St. Bride; therefore, he would simply omit her. He’d call Chelsea Abrams up for her eyewitness account, instead . . . and if her story didn’t match quite as neatly with Whitney O’Neill’s as Meg’s had, it was still less of a gamble with the jury.

Matt touched his hand lightly to the sweet globe of his daughter’s head. “Good night,” he whispered, but for long minutes afterward, he made no move to leave her.

The moon slipped over the windowsill and beneath the covers, but Jordan and Selena didn’t notice. Selena stared down at her arms, tangled with Jordan’s just below her breasts. “What are you thinking?”

“That I plead temporary insanity.”

“Ah.” Selena turned in his embrace. “Feeling guilty?”

“No. I feel . . . I feel . . .”

She swatted at his hand. “Yeah, I see what you feel.” Laughing, she darted out of the way. “Get out of there.”

“That’s not what you said ten minutes ago.”

“Maybe I’m pleading temporary insanity, too.”

They had fallen asleep sitting on the couch, watching reruns of Perry Mason on TVLand. Somehow, when they’d awakened, they’d been lying down in each other’s arms, pressed together from chest to thigh. It was all the impetus they needed; a subliminal reminder that no matter how hard they tried, they weren’t meant to be apart. From there, they’d been lucky to make it to the privacy of a bedroom.

“Hey, Selena?”

“Mmm?”

“Why didn’t we do this a month ago?”

“Oh, take your pick: We were smarter then. We had better self-control.”

Jordan looked at her soberly. “You really think that?”

For once, she had no smart answer. “Actually,” Selena admitted, “I don’t.” She stared at him. “How do you think this will all turn out?”

Jordan shook his head. “I have no idea.”

Selena smiled against his chest. “Are you talking about us, or the case?”

“Either one.” He sighed, choosing the easier route of conversation. “All we’ve really been able to prove is that she’s a witch.”

“A witch on drugs. I’ve thought about it,” Selena confessed. “And I can explain away just about all the evidence, and clear Jack in my head. Except for that semen. That’s not something you leave behind while you’re just chatting it up with someone.”

“The semen’s the most inconclusive evidence Houlihan’s got. A jury will see that.”

“You hope.”

“I hope.”

“Jack could still be lying to you,” Selena pointed out.

“So could Gillian Duncan.”

They were quiet for a while, soaking up the heat and the memory of each other’s bodies. “Speaking of lies,” Selena whispered. “I have to tell you something.”

Jordan came up on one elbow. “What?”

“My car was ready two weeks ago.”

“I have to tell you something, too.” His teeth flashed in the darkness. “Your car would have been ready five weeks ago, but I paid the mechanic to say the part was delayed.”