Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

Then something beneath the counter stool where she liked to imagine Chloe sitting drew her attention. Shriveled and brittle, more brown than red-it took a moment for Addie to recognize it as the little bouquet she had once confiscated from Gillian Duncan, tucked into her apron and forgotten.

It was the craziest thing, but when she lifted the dead flowers to her nose, she could swear they were as fragrant as new blossoms.

Amos Duncan flattened his tie against his abdomen as he hurried downstairs to the kitchen. “Gillian,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re going to be late!”

He headed toward the kitchen, intent on swilling at least one cup of coffee to settle his stomach before he began the grim hell of this trial. Houlihan would put Gillian on the stand first. The thought of his daughter sitting up there with a thousand eyes on her, television cameras rolling, and twelve men and women bearing witness-well, it was enough to make him want to kill someone. Jack St. Bride, in particular.

He would have given anything to take the stand in her stead, to make their life private again. But instead, all he would be able to do was watch, like everyone else, and see how it played out at the end.

The smell of coffee grew stronger as Amos entered the kitchen. Gillian sat at the kitchen table, dressed in the virginal white outfit Houlihan had hand-picked for her. She was shoveling cornflakes into her mouth behind a barricade of brightly colored cereal boxes.

Amos looked at her, nearly hidden from his view by the cartons. He fixed his coffee, black, the way he liked it. Then he slid into the chair across from his daughter.

There were three boxes blocking her from his view. He pushed the Life cereal box away. When he moved a second box, Lucky Charms, his daughter stopped chewing.

Finally, Amos shifted the cornflakes, so that he could see her unobstructed. Bright color stained her cheeks. “Gilly,” he said softly, offering up a whole story in that one word.

Gillian reached for the Lucky Charms and set it up again, a wall. She took the cornflakes and the Life cereal and made barriers on either side of the first box. Then she lifted her spoon and began to eat in silence, as if her father were not there at all.

“Sydney!” Matt hollered at the top of his lungs, holding his squealing daughter at arm’s length as she fought to hand him the arrowroot biscuit she’d been gumming. “Don’t you do this to me, you little monster. This is my last clean suit.”

His wife rounded the corner, carrying a stack of clean laundry. “Where’s the fire?”

“Here,” Matt said, thrusting the baby into her free arm. “And it’s raging out of control. I can’t have her mess me up, Syd. I’m on my way to court.”

Sydney brushed her lips over the baby’s head. “She just wants to give you her good luck charm, isn’t that right, honey?”

“I’m not taking her cookie, dammit.”

His wife shrugged. “Well, someone’s going to be awfully sorry when the jury comes back with an acquittal.”

Matt gathered up his files and stuffed them into his briefcase. “I’m just not a rabbit’s foot kind of fellow.” He leaned down to kiss Sydney good-bye, then ran a light hand over the soft fuzz of his daughter’s head.

Sydney followed him to the front door, bouncing the baby in her arms. “Wave good-bye,” she told Molly. “Daddy’s going to go lock up the bad guys.”

Charlie took a deep breath and knocked on the bathroom door. A moment later, it opened, steam spilling into the hallway, his daughter’s face hovering in the mist left in the wake of her shower. “What?” she said belligerently. “Did you come to strip-search me?”

She threw open the door and spread her arms, the towel she’d wrapped around her damp body riding low. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know who this girl was, because she no longer acted like his daughter. So he opted for the practical, the functional, as if pretending that the wall of mistrust between them was invisible would keep it from hurting every time he slammed up against it. “Have you seen my badge?” Charlie asked. He needed it to complete his dress blues, before heading to court.

Meg turned away. “You didn’t leave it in here.”

Still, Charlie looked over her shoulder, at the edge of the sink, checking.

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” she said. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t believe me.”

“Meg . . .” He did believe her, and that was the problem. All he had to do was look at her and he saw her, again, sobbing at the station as she recounted a memory of being sexually assaulted. What Charlie wanted to do, more than anything, was turn back time. He wanted to go through Meg’s closet and never find that thermos. He wanted to keep her under lock and key, so nothing bad would ever happen to her.

He had not broached the subject of the atropine with Meg. He could barely conduct a completely innocuous conversation with her, much less one charged with so much suspicion.

“Then again, maybe I’ve got your badge, Daddy,” Meg said, tears in her eyes. “Maybe I hid it at the bottom of my closet.”

Charlie took a step forward. “Meg, honey, listen to yourself.”

“Why? You don’t.”

The sorrow broke over her, and she stood in her towel before him, crying so hard it made Charlie’s chest ache. He grabbed for her, held her in his arms the way he had when she was small and had believed there were monsters hiding under her bed. There are no monsters, he’d told her back then, when what he really should have said was: There are no monsters there.

Suddenly, Meg went stiff in his arms. “Don’t touch me,” she said, drawing away. “Don’t touch me!” She pushed past him, running for the sanctuary of her bedroom.

As the door flew open in her wake, Charlie saw something glinting on the floor. His badge, which must have fallen behind the door when he was in the bathroom washing his hands. Charlie knelt and picked it up, fastened it, then looked in the mirror. There it was, shiny and silver, pinned to the requisite position on his chest-a shield that covered his heart but had not been able to protect it.

“Shit,” Jordan said. “They beat us here.”

Selena squinted into the sun at the steps of the courthouse, thick with cameras and television reporters. “Is there a back entrance?”

He cut the ignition. “I have to run the gauntlet, you know that.” They got out of the car, Selena straightening her stockings and Jordan shrugging into his jacket. “Ready?”

The reporters reminded Jordan of black flies, those horrible bugs that take over the Northeast for a few weeks every summer and fly heedless up your nose and into your ears and eyes as if they have every right to be there. Jordan pasted a smile on his face and began to hustle up the stone steps of the court, bowed in the middle from years of defendants trudging up in hope and down in victory or defeat. “Mr. McAfee,” a female reporter called, making a beeline to his side. “Do you think your client will be acquitted?”

“I most certainly do,” Jordan said smoothly.

“How will you account for the fact that he’s been in jail for sexual assault before?” another voice shouted.

“Come on inside,” Jordan answered, grinning. “And I’ll show you.”

The press loved him. The press had always loved him. He was cocky and photogenic and had long ago mastered the art of the sound bite. He shouldered aside cameras and microphones, wondering how far behind he’d left Selena.

One step away from the top, a woman blocked his progress. She wore a blood-red turban and a T-shirt that read TAKE BACK THE NIGHT. “Mr. McAfee,” she bellowed, “are you aware that in the United States alone, 132,000 women reported a stranger rape last year-and that if you include the estimated number of women who don’t report violence against them, there may be as many as 750,000 women who were raped?”