Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“What did you do when you heard?”

“I told someone to cover for me, and I drove to the school. I needed to make sure that Peter was all right.”

“How did Peter usually get to school?”

“He drove,” Lacy said. “He has a car.”

“Ms. Houghton, tell me about your relationship with Peter.”

Lacy smiled. “He’s my baby. I had two sons, but Peter was the one who was always quieter, more sensitive. He always needed a little more encouragement.”

“Were you two close when he was growing up?”

“Absolutely.”

“How was Peter’s relationship with his brother?”

“It was fine…”

“And his father?”

Lacy hesitated. She could feel Lewis in the room as surely as if he were beside her, and she thought about him walking in the rain through the cemetery. “I think that Lewis had a tighter bond with Joey, while Peter and I have more in common.”

“Did Peter ever tell you about the problems he had with other kids?”

“Yes.”

“Objection,” the prosecutor said. “Hearsay.”

“I’m going to overrule it for now,” the judge answered. “But be careful where you’re going, Mr. McAfee.”

Jordan turned to her again. “Why do you think Peter had problems with those kids?”

“He’d get picked on because he wasn’t like them. He wasn’t very athletic. He didn’t like to play cops and robbers. He was artistic and creative and thoughtful, and kids made fun of him for that.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried,” Lacy admitted, “to toughen him up.” As she spoke she directed her words at Peter, and hoped he could read it as an apology. “What does any mother do when she sees her child being teased by someone else? I told Peter I loved him; that kids like that didn’t know anything. I told him that he was amazing and compassionate and kind and smart, all the things we want adults to be. I knew that all the attributes he was teased for, at age five, were going to work in his favor by the time he was thirty-five…but I couldn’t get him there overnight. You can’t fast-forward your child’s life, no matter how much you want to.”

“When did Peter start high school, Ms. Houghton?”

“In the fall of 2004.”

“Was Peter still being picked on there?”

“Worse than ever,” Lacy said. “I even asked his brother to keep an eye out for him.”

Jordan walked toward her. “Tell me about Joey.”

“Everybody liked Joey. He was smart, an excellent athlete. He could relate just as easily to adults as he could to kids his own age. He…well, he cut a swath through that school.”

“You must have been very proud of him.”

“I was. But I think that because of Joey, teachers and students had a certain sort of idea in mind for a Houghton boy, before Peter even arrived. And when he did get there, and people realized he wasn’t like Joey, it only made things worse for him.” She watched Peter’s face transform as she spoke, like the change of a season. Why hadn’t she taken the time before, when she had it, to tell Peter that she understood? That she knew Joey had cast such a wide shadow, it was hard to find the sunlight?

“How old was Peter when Joey died?”

“It was at the end of his sophomore year.”

“That must have been devastating for the family,” Jordan said.

“It was.”

“What did you do to help Peter deal with his grief?”

Lacy glanced down at her lap. “I wasn’t in any shape to help Peter. I had a very hard time helping myself.”

“What about your husband? Was he a resource for Peter then?”

“I think we were both just trying to make it through one day at a time…. If anything, Peter was the one who was holding the family together.”

“Mrs. Houghton, did Peter ever say that he wanted to hurt people at school?”

Lacy’s throat tightened. “No.”

“Was there ever anything in Peter’s personality that led you to believe he was capable of an act like this?”

“When you look into your baby’s eyes,” Lacy said softly, “you see everything you hope they can be…not everything you wish they won’t become.”

“Did you ever find any plans or notes to indicate that Peter was plotting this event?”

A tear coursed down her cheek. “No.”

Jordan softened his voice. “Did you look, Mrs. Houghton?”

She thought back to the moment she’d cleared out Joey’s desk; how she’d stood over the toilet and flushed the drugs she’d found hidden in his drawer. “No,” Lacy confessed. “I didn’t. I thought I was helping him. After Joey died, all I wanted to do was keep Peter close. I didn’t want to invade his privacy; I didn’t want to fight with him; I didn’t want anyone else to ever hurt him. I just wanted him to be a child forever.” She glanced up, crying harder now. “But you can’t do that, if you’re a parent. Because part of your job is letting them grow up.”

There was a clatter in the gallery as a man in the back stood up, nearly upending a television camera. Lacy had never seen him before. He had thinning black hair and a mustache; his eyes were on fire. “Guess what,” he spat out. “My daughter Maddie is never going to grow up.” He pointed at a woman beside him, and then further forward on a bench. “Neither is her daughter. Or his son. You goddamned bitch. If you’d done your job better, I could still be doing my job.”

The judge began to smack his gavel. “Sir,” he said. “Sir, I have to ask you to-”

“Your son’s a monster. He’s a fucking monster,” the man yelled, as two bailiffs reached his seat and grabbed him by the upper arms, dragging him out of the courtroom.

Once, Lacy had been present at the birth of an infant that was missing half its heart. The family had known that their child would not live; they chose to carry through with the pregnancy, in the hope that they could have a few brief moments on this earth with her before she was gone for good. Lacy had stood in a corner of the room as the parents held their daughter. She didn’t study their faces; she just couldn’t. Instead, she focused on the medical needs of that newborn. She watched it, still and frost-blue, move one tiny fist in slow motion, like an astronaut navigating space. Then, one by one, her fingers unfurled and she let go.

Lacy thought of those miniature fingers, of slipping away. She turned to Peter. I’m so sorry, she mouthed silently. Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

Once the judge had called for a recess and the jury had filed out, Jordan moved toward the bench. “Judge, the defense asks to be heard,” he said. “We’d like to move for a mistrial.”

Even with his back to her, he could feel Diana rolling her eyes. “How convenient.”

“Well, Mr. McAfee,” the judge said, “on what grounds?”

The grounds that I’ve got absolutely nothing better to salvage my case, Jordan thought. “Your Honor, there’s been an incredibly emotional outburst from the father of a victim in front of the jury. There’s no way that kind of speech can be ignored, and there’s no instruction you can give them that will unring that bell.”

“Is that all, Counselor?”

“No,” Jordan said. “Prior to this, the jury may not have known that family members of the victims were sitting in the gallery. Now they do-and they also know that every move they make is being watched by those same people. That’s a tremendous amount of pressure to put on a jury in a case that’s already extremely emotional and highly publicized. How are they supposed to put aside the expectations of these family members and do their jobs fairly and impartially?”

“Are you kidding?” Diana said. “Who did the jury think was in the gallery? Vagrants? Of course it’s full of people who were affected by the shootings. That’s why they’re here.”