Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“I needed to think of an excuse fast,” Alex answered. “It was the first one to pop into my head.”

“So why are you really here?”

Alex watched Josie turn up the volume of the vent. “Do I need a reason to have lunch with my daughter?”

“It’s, like, ten-thirty.”

“Then we’re playing hooky.”

“What ever,” Josie said.

Alex pulled away from the curb. Josie was two feet away from her, but they might as well have been on different continents. Her daughter stared firmly out the window, watching the world go by.

“Is it over?” Josie asked.

“The arraignment? Yes.”

“Is that why you came here?”

How could Alex describe what it had felt like, seeing all of those nameless mothers and fathers in the gallery, without a child between them? If you lost your child, could you still even call yourself a parent?

What if you’d just been stupid enough to let her slip away?

Alex drove to the end of a road that overlooked the river. It was racing, the way it always did in the spring. If you didn’t know better, if you were looking at a still photo, you might wish you could take a dip. You wouldn’t realize, just by glancing, that the water would rob you of your breath; that you might be swept away.

“I wanted to see you,” Alex confessed. “There were people in my courtroom today…people who probably wake up every day now wishing that they’d done this-left in the middle of the day to have lunch with their daughters, instead of telling themselves they could do it some other day.” She turned to Josie. “Those people, they didn’t get to have any other days.”

Josie picked at a loose white thread, silent long enough for Alex to start mentally kicking herself. So much for her spontaneous foray into primal motherhood. Alex had been rattled by her own emotions during the arraignment; instead of telling herself she was being ridiculous, she’d acted on them. But this was exactly what happened, wasn’t it, when you started to sift through the shifting sands of feelings, instead of just feeding facts hand over fist? The hell with putting your heart on your sleeve; it was likely to get ripped off.

“Hooky,” Josie said quietly. “Not lunch.”

Alex sat back, relieved. “What ever,” she joked. She waited until Josie met her gaze. “I want to talk to you about the case.”

“I thought you couldn’t.”

“That’s sort of what I wanted to talk about. Even if this was the biggest career opportunity in the world, I’d step down if I believed it was going to make things harder for you. You can still come to me anytime and ask me anything you want.”

They both pretended, for a moment, that Josie did this on a regular basis, when in fact it had been years since she’d shared anything in confidence with Alex.

Josie’s glance slanted toward her. “Even about the arraignment?”

“Even about the arraignment.”

“What did Peter say in court?” Josie asked.

“Nothing. The lawyer does all the talking.”

“What did he look like?”

Alex thought for a moment. She had, upon first seeing Peter in his jail jumpsuit, been amazed at how much he’d grown. Although she had seen him over the years-in the back of the classroom during school events, at the copy store where he and Josie had worked together briefly, even driving down Main Street-she still somehow had expected him to be the same little boy who’d played in kindergarten with Josie. Alex considered his orange scrubs, his rubber flip-flops, his shackles. “He looked like a defendant,” she said.

“If he’s convicted,” Josie asked, “he’ll never get out of prison, will he?”

Alex felt her heart squeeze. Josie was trying not to show it, but how could she not be afraid that something like this would happen again? Then again, how could Alex-as a judge-make a promise to convict Peter before he’d even been tried? Alex felt herself walking the high wire between personal responsibility and professional ethics, trying her damnedest not to fall. “You don’t have to worry about that…”

“That’s not an answer,” Josie said.

“He’ll most likely spend his life there, yes.”

“If he was in prison, would people be allowed to talk to him?”

Suddenly, Alex couldn’t follow Josie’s line of logic. “Why? Do you want to talk to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d want to, after-”

“I used to be his friend,” Josie said.

“You haven’t been Peter’s friend in years,” Alex answered, but then the tumblers clicked, and she understood why her daughter, who was seemingly terrified about Peter’s potential release from prison, might still want to communicate with him after his conviction: remorse. Maybe Josie believed that something she’d done-or hadn’t-might have brought Peter to the point where he would have gone and shot his way through Sterling High.

If Alex didn’t understand the concept of a guilty conscience, who would?

“Honey, there are people looking out for Peter-people whose job it is to look out for him. You don’t have to be the one to do it.” Alex smiled a little. “You just have to look out for yourself, all right?”

Josie looked away. “I have a test next period,” she said. “Can we go back to school now?”

Alex drove in silence, because by that time it was too late to make the correction; to tell her daughter that there was someone looking out for her, too; that Josie was not in this alone.

At two in the morning, when Jordan had been bouncing a wailing, sick infant in his arms for five straight hours, he turned to Selena. “Remind me why we had a child?”

Selena was sitting at the kitchen table-well, no, actually she was sprawled across it, her head pillowed in her arms. “Because you wanted to pass along the finely tuned genetic blueprint of my bloodline.”

“Frankly, I think all we’re passing along is some viral crud.”

Suddenly, Selena sat up. “Hey,” she whispered. “He’s asleep.”

“Thank God. Get him off me.”

“Like hell I will-that’s the most comfortable he’s been all day.”

Jordan glowered at her and sank into the chair across from her, his hands still cupped around his sleeping son. “He’s not the only one.”

“Are we talking about your case again? Because to be honest, Jordan, I’m so damn tired that I need clues, here, if we’re going to shift topics…”

“I just can’t figure out why she hasn’t recused herself. When the prosecution brought up her daughter, Cormier dismissed it…and more importantly, so did Leven.”

Selena yawned and stood up. “You’re looking a gift horse in the mouth, baby. Cormier’s got to be a better judge for you than Wagner.”

“But something’s rubbing me the wrong way about this.”

Selena smiled at him indulgently. “Got a little diaper rash, huh?”

“Even if her kid doesn’t remember anything now, that doesn’t mean she’s not going to. And how is Cormier going to remain impartial, knowing that her daughter’s boyfriend was blown away by my client while she stood there watching?”

“Well, you could make a motion to get her off the case,” Selena said. “Or you could wait for Diana to do that instead.”

Jordan glanced up at her.

“If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

He reached out, snagging the sash of her robe so that it unraveled. “When do I ever keep my mouth shut?”

Selena laughed. “There’s always a first time,” she said.

Each tier in maximum security had four cells, six feet by eight feet. Inside the cell was a bunk bed and a toilet. It had taken Peter three days to be able to take a dump while the correctional officers were walking past, without his bowels seizing up, but-and this was how he knew he was getting used to being here-now he could probably crap on command.