The Pact by Jodi Picoult
"And who might have told you that?" Melanie snorted, her voice thick with sarcasm. "Did she cry right in the middle of her salad? Or did she wait until she was finished eating to tell you the prosecutor's made a terrible mistake?"
"She didn't do anything," Michael said quietly. "Even if ... even if ... " He could not bring himself to say it. "It still wouldn't be her fault."
Melanie shook her head. "You're a fool. Don't you understand the lengths a mother will go to to protect her child?" She glanced up, her nostrils flared, her lips white. "That's what Gus is doing, Michael. Which is more than I can say for you."
THE PLAN, the following Saturday, was for Kate and James to ride together to the Palm d'Or, and have Gus meet them after her visit with Chris. James and Kate had been sitting at the tastefully appointed table for a half hour, though, when the waiter came over for the third time. "Perhaps," he said, "you would like to start without the rest of your party."
"No, Daddy," Kate said, frowning. "I want to wait for Mom."
James shrugged. "We'll give it a few more minutes," he said.
He slouched in his seat, watching Kate play with the delicate edges of the orchid that graced the center of the table. "She's usually late," Kate said, almost to herself, "but usually not this bad."
Suddenly Gus barreled into the tiny dining room, her camel's-hair coat nearly flying off her back into the arms of the maitre d' as she hurried toward James and Kate. "I am so sorry," she said, leaning over Kate. "Happy birthday, sweetie," she said, giving her a kiss.
"James," she greeted formally, slipping into her chair. And then, to the waiter: "Just water, please. I'm not hungry."
"How could you not be hungry?" James asked. "It's lunchtime."
Gus looked into her lap. "I ate something on the way here," she said dismissively. "Now," she smiled at Kate, "tell me how it feels to be fifteen."
"Daddy says," Kate beamed, "I can get my ears pierced if it's okay with you. Today. After lunch."
"What a terrific idea!" Gus said, turning to James. "Can you take her?" He did not hear Gus at first, because he was reveling in the smells that she had brought into the stuffy dining room--the wintergreen scent of the snow outside, the apple of her hair conditioner, and the lingering smell of perfume. But there was something else, something deep and tropical that he could not put a name to ... what was it?
"Can you?" Gus asked again.
"Can I what?"
"Take Kate to the jeweler. Her ears," Gus said, fiddling with her own lobes. Her face pinkened. "I ... well, I can't. I'm going back to see Chris again."
"You were just there," James said.
He would not have believed it possible, but Gus's cheeks burned redder. "They have extra visiting hours today," she said, smoothing her napkin onto her lap. "I told Chris I'd see him again."
James sighed and turned toward Kate. "We'll go to the jewelry store after lunch," he told her. He faced his wife again, intending to ask why she'd bothered coming all the way to the restaurant when she was just going right back, but was stopped again by the smell of her. Something was different, he realized. After she visited Chris she always came home smelling of jail, stale and confining, a scent that stayed in her clothes and her skin until they were scrubbed. She had been to visit Chris today, she said, but that smell was missing. There was something else in its place--that exotic element, which James suddenly recognized as the sweet, heated scent of a lie.
CHRIS SLOUCHED IN HIS CHAIR, trying not to be pissed off at his mother and failing miserably. It wasn't like he looked forward to her visits--he tried to be as nonchalant as possible about them, because if he didn't get himself psyched, then all the other days in between weren't quite so bad. But all the same, he'd been in his cell today at 10:45, which was when she always got there, and he waited and waited and didn't get the call to come down until nearly two o'clock.
"What happened to you?" he muttered.
"I'm sorry," his mother apologized. "We took Kate out for a birthday lunch."
"So?" Chris said sullenly. "You could have come before that."
"Actually," Gus said, "I had a prior engagement."
A prior engagement? Chris scowled, slouching even further down. What did she think this was, some nineteenth-century drawing room? What the hell kind of prior engagement was more important than making time to see your son, who was rotting away in a jail?
"Chris," his mother said, touching her hand to his forehead. "Are you sick again?"
He shied away from her palm. "I'm fine."
"You're not acting fine."
"Oh, really? How am I supposed to act when I'm stuck in jail for three more months before a jury gets to lock me away for the rest of my life?"
"Is that it?" Gus asked. "You're getting nervous about the trial? Because I can tell you--"
"What, Mom? What can you tell me?" He turned his face away, disgust distorting his features. "Absolutely nothing."
"Well," Gus said, "Michael and I both think Jordan's got a very good case."
Chris laughed outright. "By all means, I'd listen to Michael. The grieving father of the victim."
"You have no right to say that! He's going out of his way to help you. You ought to be grateful to him."
"For bringing charges against me in the first place?"
"He had nothing to do with that. It's up to the State, not the Golds."
"Jesus, Mom," Chris said, stunned. "Whose side are you on?"
Gus stared at him for a moment. "Yours," she said finally. "But Michael finally decided that he'll be a defense witness, which is a very good thing."
"He told you this?" Chris asked, guardedly optimistic.
"Today," Gus said.
At that, Chris's eyes narrowed with doubt. "When?" he asked.
"I saw him this morning, before we took Kate out," Gus said, her chin coming up. "We've been meeting on the days when we're both visiting you."
Chris's shoulders stiffened as he realized why his mother had been late visiting today, and he turned away, feeling oddly light-boned and jealous. "What do you talk about?" he asked quietly.
"I don't know," Gus said. "You. Our families. We just ... talk." She felt the faint outline of her heart in her chest, fist-size and smooth-edged, as it pounded a little harder. "There's nothing the matter with that," she said defensively, before she could remember that she had nothing to answer for.
Chris stared at the scarred table for a long moment, during which the inmate beside them left. Gus kept her eyes trained on her son's face. "You obviously have something you want to say," she announced.
Her son turned, his expression carefully blank. "Could you ask Dad," Chris said, "if he'd come to visit?"
"I WONDER IF WORKING with you is going to make me old and fat before my time," Selena said, her mouth rounding beneath an oily triangle of pizza.
Jordan looked up, surprised. "Am I that much of a slave driver?"
"No. But your eating habits are awful. Do you even know what a salad is?"
"Sure," Jordan said, smiling. "It's that stuff they invented a sneeze-guard for." He pushed aside a piece of pepperoni. "For Thomas," he explained.
Selena's eyes darted to the closed bedroom door. "Oh? He hasn't been ruined by croissants?"
"No. In fact he lost some weight over there, said the food was too greasy for him." Jordan grimaced at the pizza, soaking through the cardboard box. "But if American junk food's what brought him back, it's okay with me."
"Oh, he would have come back," Selena reassured. "He left his Nintendo behind."
Jordan laughed. "You're so good for my ego," he said.
"Like you don't do a fine job all yourself," Selena said dryly. "You pay me to investigate, not ingratiate."
"Mmm," Jordan agreed. "So what have you done lately to earn your keep?"
Selena, having finished interviewing the immediate world for the defense, was now working her way through the people on the prosecution's witness list, so that Jordan would know what he was up against. "I
"Well, maybe we'll get lucky," Jordan said. "Maybe she'll have a certified breakdown in the next few months and Puckett can rule her mentally incapable of taking the stand."
Selena rolled her eyes. "I'm not holding my breath," she said.
"Neither am I," Jordan admitted. "But stranger things have happened."
Selena nodded, and propped her feet up beside Jordan's on the coffee table. "Stocking feet," she said absently, wiggling her toes. "When I was a kid, I used to think the phrase was 'stalking feet.'"
"No wonder you went into PI work."
She nudged his sneaker. "Why did you?" she asked.
"Go into PI work?" Jordan said, grinning.
"You know what I mean."
"I went to law school for the same reason everyone else goes to law school: I had no idea what to do with my life and my parents were paying."
Selena laughed. "No, I can figure out why you became an attorney--so you'd get paid to have people listen to you argue. I want to know why you switched sides."
"From the AG's office, you mean?" Jordan shrugged. "Pay sucked."
Selena glanced around the well worn house. Jordan liked his creature comforts, but was never going to be ostentatious. "The truth," she pressed.
He swung his eyes toward her. "You know how I feel about the truth," he said quietly.
"Your story, then," Selena said.
"Well," Jordan answered, "as a prosecutor, you've got the burden of proof. As a defense lawyer, all you have to do is introduce a tiny doubt. And how can't a jury have some doubt? I mean, they weren't there at the scene of the crime, right?"
"You're telling me you switched sides because you wanted the easy way out? I don't buy it."
"I switched sides," Jordan said, "because I didn't buy it either. The idea of there being one correct story. You have to believe in that, to prosecute, or what the hell is your case all about?"
Selena shifted, turning onto her side so that her face was only inches away from Jordan's. "Do you think Chris Harte did it?" She put a hand on his arm. "I know you don't think it makes any difference," she said. "You'd still defend him, and well. But I just want to know."
Jordan looked down at his hands. "I think he loved that girl, and I think that he was scared shitless when the police found them. Beyond that?" He shook his head. "I think Chris Harte is a very good liar," he said slowly. Then he looked up at Selena. "But not quite as good as the prosecution thinks."
IT WAS THURSDAY, a quiet day in the cemetery, so that the voice of the rabbi seemed to carry, floating up to the branches of the trees where the finches watched with their button black eyes, their beaks closing around the words as if prayers were as nourishing as thistle seed. Michael stood beside Melanie, his dress shoes no match for the cold that came up through the packed earth. How, he wondered, did they get the stone in? And for the fiftieth time that morning, his eyes wandered to the brand new pink marble headstone on Emily's grave, the purpose for this unveiling ceremony.
The stone itself did not say much: Emily's name, the dates of her birth and death. And slightly below that, in large letters, a single word: BELOVED. Michael did not remember ordering that phrase from the stonecutter, but he supposed it was possible; it had been so long ago, and his mind had been so disordered. Then again, it would not have surprised him to learn that Melanie had had that part added. He wondered, though, if it had been her idea to put the slightest of spaces between the E and the L, or if that had been a slip of the carver's hand, so that you could not be sure if the word was a description of Emily--BELOVED--or BE LOVED, a directive issued on her behalf.
He listened to the guttural run of Hebrew coming from the rabbi, and the soft sound of Melanie's tears. But his eyes kept roaming, wandering, until he saw what he had been waiting for.
Coming up over the rise of the hill was Gus, dressed in a voluminous black parka and a dark skirt, her head bowed into the wind. She met Michael's eyes squarely and took up a spot slightly behind him, on the other side of Melanie.
Michael took a step back, and then another, until he was standing beside Gus. Hidden beneath the blowing folds of her coat, he touched her gloved hand. "You came," he whispered.
"You asked," she murmured in response.
And then it was over. Michael bent down and picked up a small rock, which he laid at the base of the new headstone. Melanie did the same, and then briskly walked past Gus as if she were not there. Gus knelt and found a smooth white pebble, walked toward the grave, and set her offering beside the other two.
She felt Michael's hand on her arm again. "I'll take you to your car," he said, turning to let Melanie know where he was going, but she'd disappeared.
Gus waited while Michael talked to the rabbi and handed him an envelope. Then she fell into step beside him, neither one speaking until they reached the car. "Thank you," Michael said.
"No, thank you," Gus said. "I wanted to come." She glanced up at Michael to say good-bye, but something about his face--the lines at the corners of his eyes, or maybe his shaky smile--made her open her arms and let him step into them. When Michael pulled back her eyes were as damp as his.
"Saturday?" he asked.
"Saturday," she said. He looked abstracted for a moment, as if struggling internally, and then apparently came to a decision. Still holding her loosely, he leaned down, kissed her softly on the mouth, and walked away.
GUS PULLED THE CAR OVER a quarter mile from the cemetery. It was entirely possible that in the strain of the moment--and an unveiling was certainly stressful--Michael had not really thought about what he was doing. Then again, Gus would have staked her savings on the fact that Michael was clearly aware.
She was emotionally needy, she knew that. God, it had been months since she'd slept with James, longer since she'd really talked to him. And at the same time she'd lost her husband, her best friend had turned her back. Having some adult who wanted--wanted!--to talk about Chris was seductive.
But she wondered, feeling slightly ill, whether she looked forward to seeing Michael because she could talk about Chris, or whether she'd been using Chris as an excuse to see Michael.
They did speak of Chris, and Emily, and the trial. And it was good to get all that off her chest. But it didn't account for the way the hair on the back of Gus's neck stood up when he looked at her and smiled, or for the fact that she could close her eyes now, and picture his face in a variety of expressions with the same recall that she had once had for James.
She had known Michael for years, knew him nearly as well as she knew her own husband. It was an attraction born of close quarters, and false familiarity. It meant, she told herself, absolutely nothing.
Yet she drove home one-handed, the fingertips of her free hand gently touching her mouth, her tires sibilant on the smooth road, whispering, "Beloved."
ALTHOUGH NEITHER OF THEM had spoken of it, ever since James's forthright decision not to testify as a witness for Chris, Gus had been sleeping in a different room. Chris's room, actually. There was comfort in feeling the mattress curved beneath her where it had spooned her son's body for years; in smelling the rank collection of athletic gear fermenting on the floor of the closet, in waking up to the sound of an alarm tuned to his favorite radio station--all of which contributed to the illusion that he was still just as close to Gus as any one of these things.
It was James's late night at the hospital. Gus heard him coming in, the heavy click of the front door, the rhythm of his footsteps on the stairs. There was a slight creak as he checked on Kate, asleep hours before, and the sound of water rushing through the pipes as he turned on the shower in the master bath. He did not come to talk to Gus. He did not go near Chris's room at all.
She slipped out of the bed, her feet
It was strange seeing her bed. The sheets were clean and smooth, but lapped untucked from the comforter like a lolling tongue--clear evidence that she wasn't sleeping here. James liked the sheets free; on Gus's side, they always stayed tucked, the line of demarcation shifting subtly night after night.
The water in the shower stopped running. Gus imagined James stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel around his waist, his hair standing on end from a vigorous scrubbing. Then she pushed open the bathroom door.
James turned to her immediately. "What's the matter?" he asked, certain there was no other reason, barring emergency, for her to be there.
"Everything," Gus said, as she untied the terry-cloth robe and let it fall.
She stepped toward him hesitantly, laid her palms flat on his chest. With amazing force, James's arms closed around her. He slid down the length of her, his mouth on her breast and her ribs, and rested his cheek on her belly.
She tugged him upright and led him into the bedroom. James fell back upon her, his heart pounding every bit as hard as hers. Gus ran her hands over the joinings of the muscles in his arms, the light furring of his buttocks, the smooth divots at the bottom of his spine--all places she needed to touch, and commit again to memory. As he entered her, she arched beneath him like a willow. James thrust again and Gus bit down hard on the skin of his shoulder, afraid of what she might say. And then as quickly as it had escalated, it was over, James straining above her, their hands ripping at the bedclothes and each other, still in silence.
With a shy smile, James went off to the bathroom, nail marks raking his back. Gus patted her breasts, rubbed raw with beard stubble, and looked down at the bed. It was a mess, sheets tangled, quilt discarded. There was even blood on the sheets, from James's back, and they'd knocked over a nightstand lamp. It did not look like the site of a reconciliation, or a bower of love. In fact, Gus thought, it did not look like anything so much as the scene of a crime.
JORDAN UNSNAPPED THE RUBBER BAND from the small packet of mail. At the letterhead of the Grafton County Superior Court, he felt his pulse pick up. He ripped open the envelope to find the letter sent by the Honorable Leslie Puckett, in response to the pretrial motions he and Barrie had filed.