Mercy (47 page)

"You knew," Allie repeated, "or you know?"

"Does it make a difference?"

Allie turned away again. "I'm not sure."

There was so much negative energy burrowed into the girl that 333

Ellen thought she could dig and dig and maybe never unearth its core. And sh e had to try; people had burned up from the inside because of this kind of t hing.

"I don't want to talk about it," Allie said tightly, but then she looked at he r mother-in-law and sighed. "You can't blame yourself. He's your son." Ellen did not hesitate. "Every bit as much as you're my daughter. And I woul dn't have taken well to a substitute."

Allie tried to smile, but instead she turned back to the rain and tried to co unt the drops that were chasing each other to the edges of the windowpane, as if there were some kind of censure in standing alone.

Ellen dropped her coffee all over her own lap. "Oh, Lord. I can't believe I did that." She began to mop ineffectually at the runny brown puddle with her single, drenched napkin.

Allie jumped up. "Did you hurt yourself? I'll get some more napkins." As sh e ran out of the room toward the ladies' lounge, Ellen quickly opened her p urse and drew out a small vial of ground ignatia. This cure she had made wi thout Allie, but she hoped that her teaching had rubbed off. It was the rem edy for grief, for anger, and for disappointment that your own soul could n ot shake.

By the time Allie came back, the ignatia had been stirred into her coffee. Sh e helped Ellen pat the mess on the front of her dress and clucked over the da mage. "I'll be fine," Ellen said. "What's a little dry cleaning?" She spread her legs a few inches and waved the filmy material in the air, hoping to dry off before court went back into session.

She watched her daughter-in-law take a sip of her coffee. "Finish it," she urged when Allie pushed it aside. "God knows you need to replenish your ene rgy."

Finally, Allie turned the cup upside down. One tiny drip rolled onto the co nference table. Ellen smiled at her. She wondered how long it would be befo re the herb took effect. "How much did you get for Ian's old fly rod?" Allie's mouth dropped open in disbelief. "Sixty bucks." Her mother-in-law nodded. "All in all," she said, "I couldn't have done bette r myself."

Jodi Picoult

The prosecution rested. Court was adjourned until the following morning. El len told Angus she would not take him home until he buttoned his entire coa t, and Jamie and Graham left the courtroom with their heads bent together, discussing the strategy of the day.

"Want a cup of coffee?" Cam said to Allie.

"I just had one with your mother."

She started to walk out of the courtroom but Cam was only a step behind. " Dinner," he pressed. "You've got to eat sometime."

"But not at four-thirty." She flipped her hair over the collar of her coat; Ca m watched it spill over her shoulders. "Begging doesn't suit you."

"I'm negotiating."

Allie ignored him. "I'll catch up with you later at home." She started to walk toward her car, but was stopped by Cam's carrying voice.

"No, you won't. You'll be there, and I'll be there, but we most certainly wil l not be together."

He had yelled across the parking lot, and although she thought that the peo ple they knew were all gone by now, she could not be entirely sure. She wal ked toward him again quickly, stopping just a foot away, her face turned up to his in anger. "It has been two days," she hissed. "Two lousy days. How dare you."

A raindrop caught her in the eye, making her vision blur without the heat of a tear. Until then, she hadn't noticed it was still raining. It had rained every single day of their honeymoon. In Aruba, where it never rained.

"I know what you're thinking of," Cam said, a smile spreading across his face, a big shit-eating grin that she wanted to slap right off him. "I always think about it, too, when it rains this hard."

"I don't remember."

Cam caught her upper arm. "You remember. You may be mad as hell at me but you can't just throw out everything that led up to the last few months." Allie blinked the moisture from her eyes. "Why not?" she asked. "You did." o

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The first motion Graham made was a general one for dismissal. He and Audra stood hip to hip in front of Judge Roarke's bench, jockeying for better pos ition like two cubs aiming for the same teat. Roarke pulled off his eyeglas ses and rubbed the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. It wa s only nine in the morning. "Why, Counselor?"

"Insufficient evidence."

Audra laughed.

Graham had told himself it wasn't going to work; that the only reason he wa s even throwing motions at the judge before the defense testimonies began w as because it was standard procedure. Insufficient evidence? Well, maybe it didn't really apply to this case, but it was the most common grounds for d ismissal.

"Motion denied," Judge Roarke said. "Is that all, or do you want to waste m ore of my time?"

Graham squared his shoulders. He could feel Jamie's gaze from the defense ta ble, burning a small warm spot in his back. "It's essentially wrong to try J

ames MacDonald the same way you'd try a sniper who goes nuts and shoots thir ty people at a fast-food restaurant. This is a completely different sort of case."

Audra's lips drew back in a poor imitation of a condescending smile. She ha d put on her blush badly this morning; to Graham it

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seemed as if she had clown dots on her cheeks. "Tell that to your elected off icial," she said. "As of right now, murder is murder. It happens to be the la w."

Graham looked back at the judge. "A common-law crime suggests the absence of consent of the victim."

Roarke nodded. "Yes, but unfortunately that's the way the statute still reads

. You aren't planning to overturn the foundations of the legal system in this little courtroom, are you, Mr. MacPhee?"

Graham took a deep breath, his last-ditch attempt. "This case involves the righ t to die, not the taking of a life."

Audra smirked. "That's touching, Graham, but it isn't a legal defense." Judge Roarke rapped his gavel with more force than he intended. "Enough. Al l motions denied. Trial will resume after a ten-minute recess." Graham walked back to the defense table, reminding himself that motions for dismissal were a technicality, and that a denial was what he had expected all along. But as he raised his eyes to Jamie's hopeful face, he realized w hat it truly meant. You made motions for dismissal so that you could cover your ass in the event of an appeal. Which meant that on some level, Graham had already accepted the fact of defeat.

T7"e was an idiot to bring her flowers. Not only had Cam bought JLJL them from one of her competitors, but seeing so many blooms covering her dres ser and the vanity and the bedroom floor made Allie think of her shop, wh ich made Allie think of Mia.

There were mums and daisies and gladioli, amaryllis and gentians and fuchsi a. There were lilies and cyclamen and a big bunch of pearly everlasting. Ca m seemed to have gone to the trouble of finding every color in the rainbow, and bringing it into her room.

She had awakened while he was sneaking in with another vase to set beside h er hairbrush. "What are you doing in here?" she asked, sitting up abruptly. Cam smiled at her, and instead of placing the flowers on the dresser, held th em out like a presentation bouquet. "Isn't that obvious?" He had slept on the couch again last night, she supposed, be-Jodi Picoult cause she wasn't about to let him into the bedroom. "It's not my birthday." Cam sat on the edge of the bed, and Allie instinctively moved an inch away.

"I know."

She glared at him. "You can't buy a clean conscience." A flash of black flared in his eyes for a second, but disappeared behind a se t mask of self-control. He forced a smile.

Allie knew she was being spiteful. She had told Cam to stay, but she knew th at if she'd had to put up with the bullshit she was tossing Cam's way she wo uld have left long ago. And yet, she couldn't help it. She'd open her mouth to declare a truce and this horrible thing that had taken up residence insid e her would spew out a reel of its hate.

She wondered how long it would take her brain to convince her heart that t his was no longer a contest. Cam had won, hands down. No matter what verba l weapon she used, Allie could not even begin to hurt Cam as badly as he h ad hurt her.

"Do you know where she is?"

Allie heard the question fall from her own lips, shocked she had uttered it. Cam's face reddened, then drained. "No," he said. "And if I did, it wouldn't matter."

"How can you say that? That didn't stop you before." Cam stared at a spot just to the left of Allie's shoulder. There was a mark on the wallpaper. It had been a mosquito last summer; one night he had swa tted it in the dark, mashing it up against the wall. He had been making lov e with Allie, and it had landed on her shoulder, drawing blood. "This is wh ere I'm supposed to be," Cam said simply. "With you."

"Where would you rather be?"

/ don't know. Cam stood up, took the flowers from Allie, and set them on h er nightstand. "Look. You have to give me some credit. You have to give me i. break."

Allie folded her arms across her chest. "I don't have to give you anything," she said, but her voice broke over the words.

Cam left the room a minute later. Allie could hear the water running in the shower, the quick zip of cotton as he pulled a T-shirt over his head and s kimmed out of his shorts. She got out of bed and wrapped her big bathrobe a round herself and padded down the stairs.

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Cam had folded the blanket and sheets and stacked them on one end of the c ouch. His equipment belt was draped, as always, across the dining room tab le. His boots were sitting beside the TV.

His wallet and pocket change were on top of the VCR. Allie touched the leathe r billfold with one finger. Then she opened it, feeling her heart pound, list ening with half an ear to the sound of water still running through the pipes upstairs.

Seventeen dollars. A driver's license. An organ donor card. She fiddled with the tight pockets, pulling out a CPR certificate, a Visa card, and an Ameri can Express Card. Some bank receipts; a charge slip from a restaurant in Pit tsfield. An ATM card.

There were no hidey-holes in the wallet; she knew, because she had bought it for him two Christmases ago. She did not come up with a scrap of paper that had an unfamiliar address on it, or a note with a telephone number an d a scrawled "M" beside it. There was no condom tucked into the back pocke t of the wallet, no picture of Mia creased and weathered from handling. Th ere was no evidence that Cam had lied about anything he'd just said. She knew how you went about falling in love; she did not know how you went about falling into trust. Disgusted with her own curiosity, she snapped the wallet shut.

During the ten-minute recess, Judge Roarke's daughter broke her leg falling from a jungle gym. Frazzled and hurried, he dismissed the jury with an apo logy and stated that the trial would resume at nine o'clock the following m orning. Jamie grinned from ear to ear. "This is good," he said to Graham. " Don't you think this is good?"

Graham glanced at him over the files he was shoving into his briefcase. "H

ow so?"

"I figure if the jury has a whole day away from this courtroom, whatever the prosecution said won't be fresh in their minds."

"Jamie," Graham said, "never prejudge a jury." Allie leaned over the rail that separated the spectators from the rest of the c ourt. "Well, I think Jamie's right. The longer the trial drags out, the further away all the prosecution's testimony is."

Graham smiled. "You forget, Audra gets to do a closing statement, too." He clasped his briefcase and checked his watch. "You

Jodi Picoult

going back to Wheelock, Allie? I have a plea bargain I've got to work on; I th ink I'll head to the law library."

Allie nodded. "I'll take Jamie."

Jamie turned toward Graham. "You have other cases besides mine?" he said, s miling a little.

Graham grinned. "A good lawyer makes you feel like you're the only one on hi s docket. Of course, in your case, it's pretty close to the truth." He start ed off down the aisle of the courtroom, holding up a hand in a half-wave. Allie took a deep breath and smoothed her hands down the front of her woo l coat. "Well. Are you hungry?"

Jamie shook his head. "Graham won't let me outside the town lines until I've had a good breakfast." He took Allie's elbow and guided her out of the cour troom, ducking past the growing throng of local media. "I'm up for a quiet r ide," he said. "I'll try to get some sleep this afternoon." Allie unlocked Jamie's side of the car first, and watched him fold himself int o the tiny space and then push back the passenger seat so that his legs could stretch out. She started the ignition; a thick blast from the heater blew her bangs from her forehead. "It's hard to believe that yesterday it was fifty deg rees."

Jamie made a noise at the back of his throat. "It's getting hard to predict any thing these days."

Allie glanced at him before making the right-hand turn out of the superior court. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin beneath them looked puffy and t ender. Jamie felt her staring and turned her way. "I know. I look three sha des shy of dead."