Mercy (52 page)

Maggie agreed. Jamie pushed her away, ran into the bathroom, and threw up

.

Late Saturday morning, they took everything they could eat from the refriger ator and had a picnic for breakfast. They climbed to the top of the roof, to the big dormer out back that kept the upstairs from having narrow, sloped c eilings. Bud Spitlick saw them when he came out for his paper and told them they'd better watch it or they'd fall. Jamie had instinctively tightened his arms around Maggie, where she sat in the nest of his lap. "I could break my neck," she whispered to him, and she started to giggle. "Think of all the t rouble I would save you."

They both laughed then, until they realized exactly what they were laughing a t, and then they just fell quiet and held each other.

Jamie asked her what she wanted to do next. Maggie said she should pack up her clothes; he argued that that wasn't the way she should spend her last f ew days. "Let's do something I've never done," she said, and he wondered wh at that would be: renting an X-rated film? jumping from an airplane? drivin g to Florida?

She wanted to go to a movie theater and make out in the back row like a tee nager. Jamie couldn't remember the name of the film they picked; it didn't much matter. He unbuttoned her shirt and slipped his fingers into the waist of her jeans and in the end came into Maggie's hand while the movie glowed green and blue on her skin.

Jodi Picoult

They had a fancy dinner that night and drove around Lenox, following the m oon. On a whim, since they were dressed nicely, they infiltrated a wedding reception of people they had never met. Maggie laughed when Jamie had a t en-minute conversation with the father of the bride. They danced a jitterb ug they'd learned one summer at a community dance class Maggie had signed them up for, spinning and twisting until a line of sweat made a T down the back of Maggie's dress, and only then did they notice that everyone was c lapping.

They drove the car to one of the Berkshire passes and slept there, waking wh en the sun poured itself into the valley like a rich blush wine. Still dress ed in a suit and a silk dress, they took off their shoes and socks and stock ings and walked through the crab-grass at the base of the hills, looking for four-leaf clovers and winking primroses and flat, smooth stones for skippin g. They drove home, faces flushed with color, and showered together. Then th ey sat in the middle of the bed and watched the stars come out. On Monday, they were nearly out the front door when Maggie pulled Jamie's arm and dragged him back to the bedroom and ripped at his clothes until he fell back on the bed with her and loved her with a fury that at any other time might have promised more.

He drove her to Wheelock, stopping in front of his cousin's address, which h e'd picked out from the phone book and located on a map he bought at the loc al gas station. "He'll take care of me," he said to Maggie, as they sat park ed across the street. "He's family."

For the first time, Maggie seemed to consider that Jamie would be left to f ace the consequences. "What's going to happen?" she asked. Jamie smiled at her. "Who cares? I don't have any immediate plans without you."

Maggie was tired. All the activity, in spite of her Percoset, was taking its toll. They spent most of the day in their room at the Inn. That night, whil e they drank champagne from a bottle and Maggie picked pieces of pepperoni f rom the pizza, she told him what she wanted of him. "You ought to get marrie d," she said. "You'd be a terrific father." The thought of anyone other than Maggie was ridiculous, but he did not tell h er this.

"I want you to get married again," she pressed. Jamie glanced at her. "I think you've asked me to do enough."

"You'll fall in love again," Maggie said smugly. "And you'll be happy we ha d this conversation."

Jamie stood up and walked to the window, where Wheelock was shutting dow n for the night. "There won't be anyone like you."

"I should hope not," Maggie laughed. "I was one of a kind."

"You were," Jamie said, turning around and looking at her. He realized they were already speaking in the past tense. "You are." They made love again, so slowly that Maggie cried. Jamie woke in the night when her legs twitched against his. "Do you want to know when?" he whispe red in her hair. "Should it be while you're asleep?"

"Oh, no," Maggie murmured, her lips against the pulse at the bottom of his t hroat. "I have to say goodbye."

In the moments before, she had kissed him. She wove her fingers into his ha ir and pulled so hard it brought tears to his eyes. / would do it for you, Maggie said fiercely, and Jamie nodded. But he knew he never would have ask ed. He never would have been able to leave her.

She lay on the pillow she'd slept on the night before. He placed the pillow h e'd used over her face at 7:32 a.m. She put a hand on his wrist and lifted th e corner of the cotton pillowcase from her mouth. "It smells like you," she s aid, and she smiled.

It was over at 7:38 a.m.

J)

amie stopped speaking. The air in the courtroom seemed dry and stiff, and h e was afraid to shift his position for fear the atmosphere would actually s hatter. Graham had his hand on Jamie's arm. "You okay?" he whispered. Jamie nodded.

"Did she try to fight you?" Graham asked.

"Yes," Jamie said. "She tried once."

"Why didn't you stop?"

No matter what, she had said. "She told me not to," Jamie answered. "We had talked about it."

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"You say you killed her at about seven-thirty in the morning. Why didn't you go to the police until the early afternoon?"

Jamie thought of Maggie, lying still on the bed, and the way he had pulled the covers to her chin. He remembered watching her from a chair across the room, bent over, his elbows on his knees, waiting. "She looked like she was sleeping." He raised his eyes to Graham. "I kept thinking that maybe, if I gave her a little more time, she might wake up."

That night Allie dreamed of the day she'd lost her virginity. But because it was a dream, she let herself rewrite it, until her own history played the w ay she had wanted it to in the first place. In this recollection, Cam had re alized before the fact, and left the decision up to her. It was almost as tr easured a commodity--that rough rasp, Are you sure?--as the heat of his hand s and the whisper of his mouth. With the power of one word, she had made tim e stop for both of them, something she had never been able to quite do again

. Yes, she had said, when Cam touched her. She said it over and over. Yes. Allie woke up hugging her arms to herself and shivering. She did not want to be dreaming of Cam; she did not want to think about him at all. Althoug h she had hoped it might have gone away by now, she could not forget the i mage of him in another woman's arms.

She wondered if forgiving was any easier than forgetting. She sat up in bed, letting the covers fall away. Then she got up and went dow n the stairs.

Cam, startled, felt her presence before he saw her standing in the dark; a few steps up from the bottom, her white nightgown gleaming with the moon.

"You can come upstairs," she said. She began to walk back. "If you want," s he added over her shoulder.

She did not think she had ever heard anything quite as lovely as the groan of the mattress when Cam eased into his side of the bed. She sagged toward him a little, her arms still folded across her chest. They stared at the ceiling, as if they could see through it to the cold, constricting night. He could not read the signs. She had invited him back upstairs but he didn't know if he was supposed to touch her or to beg for-373

giveness or to simply accept this small concession and lie in the dark, the h eat from her body snaking across the extra foot of space to warm his side.

"Couldn't you sleep?" he asked.

"No. Could you?"

"I was asleep when you came downstairs."

He heard Allie shift a little. "I didn't know. I wouldn't have gotten you up." Cam felt his erection tenting the material of his boxer shorts, a natural con sequence of being this close and able to smell her skin and her shampoo, and he smiled at her choice of words. "It's okay," he said. "I'd rather be here." She rolled to her side. In the faint light, Cam could make out the tight lines of her mouth, the unsettled flicker of her eyes. "I have to know. Was she her e? In this bed?"

Cam thought of the weekend they had spent together when Allie was in Cummin gton. He had a flash of Mia, a towel wrapped around her wet hair, sitting o n Allie's side of the bed. And he realized that in this one instance honest y was not going to serve any purpose. "No," he lied. Allie flopped onto her back again. She crept to the edge of the bed, crowde d out by Mia, who seemed to have taken up all the room between herself and Cam. He was thinking of her; she knew this as well as she knew her own name

; and she had been stupid enough to plant the idea in his head. Mia's laugh

, Mia's bright blue eyes, Mia's skilled and shaping hands. Allie clutched t he mattress so that she would not fall off. She could not breathe for the l ack of space.

She thought of her buffalo cowboy. It was right there on the tip of her to ngue. She would look at Cam and say, Guess what? I fucked someone else too

. She would watch his features freeze in shock and she would say, How does that make you feel? . . . Oh, really? Now you know.

He would not be able to tell what had happened, unless she let him know. A nd she realized she would not speak of it just to hurt Cam. This was somet hing she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of p ain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone for more than a w eek. A security blanket, an

Jodi Picoult

ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its pres ence like a swelling, secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty.

A heady rush of power coursed through her as she realized that she was not giving in. She had watched Cam taking unsteady steps to come halfway for the first time, and she was simply allowing herself to meet him. She moved a fraction closer to her husband and slipped her hand beneath his T-shirt.

He was leaning over her in a minute, pressing her against her pillow with his hands bracketing her head, strands of hair caught between his fingers. He ki ssed her on the lips, on the throat, on her closed eyes. He felt as if he'd b een granted an audience with a king, as if he'd been welcomed to a sanctioned inner circle.

His body could think only of sinking into Allie, but for the first time in m onths his mind was in control. He could feel his desire physically being pus hed to the background, and he slid down Allie's body to tuck his head agains t her chest. Instinctively, she cradled him, running her fingers through his hair and rocking him as the fear of what had almost happened to his life st ruck him full force. He did not want to lose her. If he did, he would no lon ger know who he was.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his nose running and his tears scalding Allie's ski n like individual brands. "I'm so sorry."

Audra Campbell had been waiting for days. She looked bright and refreshed first thing in the morning. Jamie followed her warily with his eyes as she crossed the width of the courtroom. "If I asked you, Mr. MacDonald, would you kill me now?" Jamie glanced at Graham, who nodded imperceptibly, as i f to remind him he had to answer the question, no matter how ridiculous it seemed, no matter what fantasies it created in his mind. "Of course not," he said. "Why not?"

He spread his hands, a gesture of concession. "I don't know you." "Ah," Aud ra said. "You only kill people you know?" Jamie frowned at her. "There was a whole situation attached to Maggie's death. I did it because I loved her.

"

375

"Oh." Audra drew out the syllable, a discovery. "You only kill people you l ove." She stopped pacing and faced him. "Let's go back to the doctor's visi t on January fifteenth. When Maggie came home, that's when you first decide d to kill her?"

"No."

"Isn't it true you were planning to kill her six months ago?"

"No," Jamie repeated.

"Had your wife's condition deteriorated?"

Jamie blinked at the abrupt change of subject. Graham had warned him about this. Campbell would try to get him flustered, confused, so that he'd say something she could use against him. "Yes," he said. "Maggie's condition had deteriorated very much."

"How?"

"She was having bouts of temporary blindness, and there was the mastectomy, of course. She was in a great deal of pain--headaches and hip problems and things like that. She got winded very easily. She'd lost about twenty-five pounds since the beginning of the illness."

"Isn't it a fact that your medical bills had increased astronomically?"

"Of course," Jamie said. "Treatment doesn't come free. But we had insurance

."

"Speaking of insurance, Mr. MacDonald, did your wife have life insurance?

"

"Yes," Jamie said, quietly.

"For how much?"

"It was a sixty-thousand-dollar policy."

"And who was the primary beneficiary of her life insurance?" Jamie looked up at the prosecutor. He would not let himself seem guilty. "I was."

Audra started to move in for the kill. "Isn't it true that the woman your wife had become when she was ill wasn't the same woman you fell in love wi th--not someone you wanted to be around anymore?"

Jamie's mouth dropped open. He was stunned; he wondered if this was somethi ng everyone could see when they shook his hand or met him on the street, or if Audra Campbell had the power to read a sinner's mind. "No," he said, a little too late. "Of course not."

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"You took your wife out to dinner two nights before the murder. Is that when you decided to kill her?"

"No," Jamie said firmly.

"Was it when you were picking flowers in the park?"

"No."

"It was before you got to Wheelock, though, right?"

"No!" Jamie thundered. He was still sitting in his chair, but his hands were g ripping the railing of the witness box with the last shred of his self-control