Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“Well, not all of us have growing kids at home.”

She traced the lip of her wineglass with one finger. “You don’t have any?”

“Never married.”

“Why not?”

Patrick shook his head, smiling faintly. “I’m not getting into that.”

“Boy,” the judge said. “She must have done a job on you.”

His jaw dropped open. Was he really that easy to read?

“Guess you haven’t cornered the market on those amazing detective skills,” she said, laughing. “Except we call it women’s intuition.”

“Yeah, that’ll get you your gold shield in no time.” He glanced at her ringless hand. “Why aren’t you married?”

The judge repeated his own answer. “I’m not getting into that.”

She sipped her wine in silence for a moment, and Patrick tapped his fingers on the wood of the bar. “She was already married,” he admitted.

The judge set her glass down, empty. “So was he,” she confessed, and when Patrick turned to her, she looked him right in the eye.

Hers were the pale gray that made you think of nightfall and silver bullets and the edge of winter. The color that filled the sky before it was torn in half by lightning.

Patrick had never noticed this before, and suddenly he realized why. “You’re not wearing glasses.”

“I sure am glad to know Sterling’s got someone as sharp as you protecting and serving them.”

“You usually wear glasses.”

“Only when I’m working. I need them to read.”

And when I usually see you, you’re working.

That was why he hadn’t noticed before that Alex Cormier was attractive: before this, when they crossed paths, she was in full buttoned-up judge mode. She had not been curled over the bar like a hothouse flower. She had not been quite so…human.

“Alex!” The voice came from behind them. The man was spiffy, in a good suit and wingtips, with just enough gray hair at his temples to look distinguished. He had lawyer written all over him. He was no doubt rich and divorced; the kind of guy who would sit up at night and talk about penal code before making love; the kind of guy who slept on his side of the bed instead of with his arms wrapped so tight around her that even after falling asleep, they stayed tangled.

Jesus Christ, Patrick thought, looking down at the ground. Where did that come from?

What did he care who Alex Cormier dated, even if the guy was practically old enough to be her father?

“Whit,” she said, “I’m so glad you could come.” She kissed him on the cheek and then, still holding his hand, turned to Patrick. “Whit, this is Detective Patrick Ducharme. Patrick, Whit Hobart.”

The man had a good handshake, which only pissed Patrick off even more. Patrick waited to see what else the judge was going to say about him by way of introduction. But then, what options did she have? Patrick wasn’t an old friend. He wasn’t someone she’d met sitting at the bar. She couldn’t even say that they were both involved with the Houghton trial, because in that case, he shouldn’t have been talking to her.

Which, Patrick realized, is what she’d been trying to tell him all along.

May appeared from the kitchen, holding a paper bag folded and neatly stapled. “Here you go, Pat,” she said. “We see you next week, okay?”

He could feel the judge staring. “Happy family,” she said, offering a consolation prize, the smallest of smiles.

“Nice seeing you, Your Honor,” Patrick said politely. He threw the door of the restaurant open so hard that it banged on its hinges against the outside wall. He was halfway to his car when he realized he wasn’t even really hungry anymore.

The lead story on the local news at 11:00 p.m. was the hearing at the superior court to get Judge Cormier removed from the case. Jordan and Selena sat in bed in the dark, each with a bowl of cereal balanced on their stomachs, watching the tearful mother of a paraplegic girl cry into the television camera. “No one’s speaking for our children,” she said. “If this case gets messed up because of some legal snafu…well, they aren’t strong enough to go through it twice.”

“Neither’s Peter,” Jordan pointed out.

Selena put down her spoon. “Cormier’s gonna sit on that case if she has to crawl her way to the bench.”

“Well, I can’t very well get someone to gilhooly her kneecaps, can I?”

“Let’s look at the bright side,” Selena said. “Nothing in Josie’s statement can hurt Peter.”

“My God, you’re right.” Jordan sat up so quickly that he sloshed milk onto the quilt. He set his bowl on the nightstand. “It’s brilliant.”

“What is?”

“Diana’s not calling Josie as a witness for the prosecution, because she’s got nothing they can use. But there’s nothing to stop me from calling her as a witness for the defense.”

“Are you kidding? You’re going to put the judge’s daughter on your witness list?”

“Why not? She used to be Peter’s friend. He’s got precious few of them. It’s all in good faith.”

“You wouldn’t really-”

“Nah, I’m sure I’ll never use her. But the prosecutor doesn’t need to know that.” He grinned at Diana. “And incidentally…neither does the judge.”

Selena set her bowl aside, too. “If you put Josie on your witness list…Cormier has to step down.”

“Exactly.”

Selena reached forward, bracketing his face with her palms to plant a kiss on his lips. “You’re awfully good.”

“What was that?”

“You heard me the first time.”

“I know,” Jordan grinned, “but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

The quilt slipped down as he wrapped his arms around her. “Greedy li’l thing, aren’t you,” Selena murmured.

“Isn’t that what made you fall in love with me?”

Selena laughed. “Well, it wasn’t your charm and grace, honey.”

Jordan leaned over her, kissing Selena until-he hoped-she had forgotten she was in the throes of making fun of him. “Let’s have another baby,” he whispered.

“I’m still nursing the first one!”

“Then let’s practice having another one.”

There was no one in the world quite like his wife, Jordan thought-statuesque and stunning, smarter than he was (not that he’d ever admit it to her face), and so perfectly attuned to him that he nearly had to concede his skepticism and believe that psychics truly did walk among us. He buried his face in the spot he loved best on Selena: the part where the nape of her neck ran into her shoulder, where her skin was the color of maple syrup and tasted even sweeter.

“Jordan?” she said. “Do you ever worry about our kids? I mean…you know. Doing what you do…and seeing what we see?”

He rolled onto his back. “Well,” he said. “That certainly killed the moment.”

“I’m serious.”

Jordan sighed. “Of course I think about it. I worry about Thomas. And Sam. And whoever else might come along.” He came up on an elbow so that he could find her eyes in the dark. “But then I figure that’s the reason we had them.”

“How so?”

He looked over Selena’s shoulder, to the blinking green eye of the baby monitor. “Maybe,” Jordan said, “they’re the ones who’ll change the world.”

Whit hadn’t really made up Alex’s mind for her; that had already been done when she met him for dinner. But he’d been the salve she needed for her wounds, the justification she was afraid to give herself. You’ll get another big case, eventually, he had said. You won’t get back this moment with Josie.

She walked into chambers briskly, mostly because she knew that this was the easy part. Divorcing herself from the case, writing the motion to recuse herself-that was not nearly as terrifying as what would happen tomorrow, when she was no longer the judge on the Houghton case.