Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

“Oh.” She looked very small in her nightgown and robe. The sash of the robe went around her waist twice. It was one of his; his mother had filched it from the closet.

Jack swung his legs over the side of the bed. “So I guess if you’re going to go, you’d just better go ahead.”

Emma looked down at the floor. She was a strange kid, always staring hard at the tiniest things. She knew how many freckles were on Jack’s ear, and that the third stair riser had a crack in it that was shaped like a W. “Maybe tomorrow night,” she said.

A week later, they lay side by side on his bed, not touching. Emma kept a buffer of a few inches between herself and everyone else she came in contact with; Jack had noticed that early on. “Do you have a girlfriend?” Emma asked.

“No.”

“How come?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t like girls.”

“You like me.”

Well, yeah. He did. He looked down at her. The question he’d wanted to ask forever swelled inside his stomach like a balloon. “Where would you go?”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “Home. Where else?”

Of all the answers she could have given, that was the one Jack least expected. “But . . . you can’t,” he stammered. “You just got away.”

Emma blinked at him. “Your mother took me away. What makes you think I wanted to leave?”

Jack felt heat creeping up the neck of his pajama top. “You weren’t safe there. Your uncle-”

“Loves me,” Emma said fiercely. “He loves me.”

Jack would have bet every single baseball card left in his possession that Emma didn’t even know she was crying.

Jack found Corazon in the laundry room, separating colors from whites. “You know,” she said, “if I tell you another seven hundred times, maybe one of these days you might turn your clothes right side out when you put them in the hamper, eh?”

He hopped on top of the dryer, swinging his legs. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“How do you know if you love someone?”

Corazon looked up, her hands stilling for a minute. “Well, that’s quite a question,” she said. “And usually it’s something you figure out for yourself.”

“If you love someone, you want to take care of them, right?”

She smiled slyly. “Someone’s had a change of mind about Rachel Covington?”

“And if you love someone, you’re not supposed to hurt them.”

“No,” Cora answered, “but you usually do at some point, anyway.”

Well, that made the whole thing about as clear as mud. Jack thanked Cora and scrambled out of the laundry room, up the stairs. Emma’s door was shut, as usual. But she’d managed to sneak out when no one was looking, because a stack of neatly banded baseball cards were set just inside the threshold of his own bedroom door.

That was how he knew she was planning to leave.

Eyelids, Jack thought, must weigh something like forty pounds each, or why would it be so hard to keep them up after midnight? He got down on the floor and did another fifty sit-ups, then paced around his room. He couldn’t risk falling asleep, not yet. And his parents had only just gone to bed. He knew Emma would make sure they were sound asleep before she sneaked away.

At 1:20, Jack swallowed hard and walked to Emma’s room. It was the first time he’d ever gone to her space instead of letting her come to his. And although he only had a vague impression of what must have happened between Emma and her uncle, he guessed it probably happened in her own bed.

Either this was going to work, Jack thought, or she was going to scream loud enough to bring down the whole building.

He turned the key in the lock she knew how to pick anyway and slipped inside on the slice of light from the hallway. One second Emma was facing the wall, and the next she was staring at him, her eyes huge in her face, her whole body going rigid.

“Shh,” Jack said. “It’s just me.”

That didn’t seem to make it any better. Emma was dead silent, just as still.

“Can I sit down?”

She didn’t answer, and with a slight pang in his stomach Jack realized that no one had ever asked for her permission. His weight tilted the mattress, and Emma rolled against his bent knee like a cylinder of wood. “I wanted to show you something,” he whispered. “I wanted to show you that someone who loves you doesn’t always have to hurt you.” And taking a deep breath, he reached down and held her hand.

She froze. It was the first time they had ever touched, beyond accidental brushing when they passed baseball cards back and forth. She was waiting for him to do something else, something disgusting Jack didn’t really want to picture in his head. But he just sat there, his fingers tangled with hers, until Emma’s other hand came up to cover his, until she crawled into his arms like the child she’d forgotten how to be.

June 29, 2000

Carroll County Jail

New Hampshire

Jack threaded his tie into a Windsor knot, pulled it tight, and tried his best not to think of a lynching. He smoothed the fabric down, never taking his eyes off the stranger in the mirror. Blue blazer, khaki pants, loafers, tie-this had become his trial uniform. And the man staring back at him was someone who understood that the legal system didn’t work.

There was a sharp rap on the other side of the bathroom wall. “Get moving,” a CO called out. “You’re gonna be late.”

Jack blinked twice, the man in the mirror blinked twice. He raised his hand to his forehead, where his hair was beginning to curl in the damp humidity of the shower room. He told himself it was time to go.

But Jack’s feet didn’t move. They might as well have been nailed to the cement floor. He grabbed the edge of the sink and tried to force one leg back but was literally paralyzed by the fear of what was yet to come.

The CO stuck his head into the bathroom. Humiliated, Jack met his eyes in the mirror, only to find that he could not force out a single word.

The guard wrapped his hand around Jack’s upper arm gently and pulled until Jack fell into step beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Jack murmured.

The CO shrugged. “You ain’t the first one.”

“And don’t forget to tell Darla the blue-plate special, when you decide,” Addie said.

Roy slipped his arm around his daughter’s waist. “We can do fine without you.” He faced her, so proud of his girl in this pale peach suit, with low heels on her feet and her brown hair pulled back from her face with a simple gold clip. Christ, she looked like a professional business woman, not some two-bit waitress. “You are beautiful,” Roy said quietly. “Jack won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

“Jack won’t be able to see me. I have to sit outside, sequestered, because I’m a witness.” Suddenly, Addie stripped off the fitted jacket of her suit. “Who am I kidding?” she muttered, reaching behind the counter for her apron. “I’m just going to drive myself crazy sitting there all day. At least here I’ll be able to focus-”

“-on what’s going on at court,” Roy said, interrupting. “You have to go, Addie. There’s something about you . . . like you’re a lighthouse, and other people see the beam. Or an anchor, with the rest of us just hanging on to you for dear life. You ground us. And right now, I figure, Jack needs something to grab on to.” He held out her suit jacket, so that she could shrug it on. “Go on, get down to that courthouse.”

“It’s only six-thirty, Daddy. Court doesn’t convene until nine.”

“Then drive slow.”

When he went back into the kitchen, Addie stood alone in the early light of the diner, watching the sun leapfrog over shadows on the linoleum floor. Maybe if she arrived early, she could find the entrance where the deputy sheriffs brought the inmates from the jail. Maybe she could be there when Jack was brought in, could catch his eye.