"It's right here. Why?"
"Defense attorney just called; he wants a copy faxed over to his office yesterday."
Quentin hands the papers to the secretary. "What's the rush?"
"Who knows."
It makes no sense to Quentin; Fisher Carrington must realize that the information will not make or break his case. But then again, it doesn't matter at all for the prosecution-Nina Frost is facing a conviction, he's certain, and no lab report about a dead man is going to change that. By the time the secretary has closed the door behind herself, Quentin has put Carrington's request out of his mind.
Marcella Wentworth hates snow. She had enough of it, growing up in Maine, and then working there for nearly a decade. She hates waking up and knowing you have to shovel your way to your car; she hates the sensation of skis beneath her feet; she hates the uncontrollable feel of wheels spinning out on black ice. The happiest day of Marcella's life, in fact, was the day she quit her job at the Maine State Lab, moved to Virginia, and threw her Sorrel boots into a public trash bin at a highway McDonald's.
She has worked for three years now at CellCore, a private lab. Marcella has a year-round tan and only one medium-weight winter coat. But at her workstation she keeps a postcard Nina Frost, a district attorney, sent her last Christmas-a cartoon depicting the unmistakable mitten shape of her birth state, sporting googly eyes and a jester's hat. Once a Mainiac, always a Mainiac, it reads.
Marcella is looking at the postcard, and thinking that there may already be a dusting on the ground up there by now, when Nina Frost calls.
"You're not going to believe this," Marcella says, "but I was just thinking about you."
"I need your help," Nina answers. All business-but then, that has always been Nina. Once or twice since Marcella left the state lab, Nina called to consult on a case, just for the purpose of verification.
"I've got a DNA test I need checked."
Marcella glances at the overwhelming stack of files piling her in-box. "No problem. What's the story?"
"Child molestation. There's a known blood sample and then semen on a pair of underwear. I'm not an expert, but the results looks pretty cut and dried."
"Ah. I'm guessing they don't jive, and you think the state lab screwed up?"
"Actually, they do jive. I just need to be absolutely certain."
"Guess you really don't want this one to walk," Marcella muses.
There is a hesitation. "He's dead," Nina says. "I shot him."
Caleb has always liked chopping wood. He likes the Herculean moment of hefting the ax, of swinging it down like a man measuring his strength at a carnival game. He likes the sound of a log being broken apart, a searing crack, and then the hollow plink of two halves falling to opposite sides. He likes the rhythm, which erases thought and memory.
Maybe by the time he has run out of wood to split, he will feel ready to go back inside and face his wife.
Nina's single-mindedness has always been attractive-especially to a man who, in so many matters, is naturally hesitant. But now the flaw has been magnified to the point of being grotesque. She simply cannot let go.
Once, Caleb had been hired to build a brick wall in a town park. As he'd worked, he'd gotten used to the homeless man who lived beneath the birthday pavilion. His name was Coalspot, or so Caleb had been told. He was schizophrenic but harmless. Sometimes, Coalspot would sit on the park bench next to Caleb as he worked. He spent hours unlacing his shoe, taking it off, scraping at his heel, and then putting his shoe back on. "Can you see it?" the man asked Caleb. "Can you see the hole where the poison's leaking?"
One day a social worker arrived to take Coalspot to a shelter, but he wouldn't go. He insisted he would infect everyone else; the poison was contagious. After three hours, the woman had reached the end of her rope. "We try to help them," she sighed to Caleb, "and this is what we get."
So Caleb sat down beside Coalspot. He took off his own work boot and sock, pointed to his heel. "You see?" he said. "Everyone already has one."
After that, the homeless man went off, easy as a kitten. It didn't matter there was no poisonous hole-just at that moment, Coalspot truly believed there was one. And that for a second, Caleb had told the man he was right.
Nina is like that, now. She has redefined her actions so that they make sense to her, if not to anyone else. To say that she killed a man in order to protect Nathaniel? Well, whatever trauma he might suffer as a witness couldn't be nearly as bad as watching his mother get handcuffed and carted off to jail.
Caleb knows that Nina is looking for vindication, but he can't do what he did with Coalspot-look her in eye and tell her that yes, he understands. He can't look her in the eye, period.
He wonders if the reason he's putting up a wall between them is so that, when she is sentenced, it is easier to let her go.
Caleb takes another log and sets it on end on the chopping block. As the ax comes down, the wood cleaves into two neat pieces, and sitting in the center is the truth. What Nina has done doesn't make Caleb feel morally superior, by default. It makes him a coward, because he wasn't the one brave enough to cross the line from thought to deed.
There are parts of it Nathaniel can't remember-like what he said when Nathaniel first shook his head no; or which one of them unbuttoned his jeans. What he can still think of, sometimes even when he is trying his hardest not to, is how the air felt cold when his pants came off, and how hot his hand was after that. How it hurt, it hurt so bad, even though he had said it wouldn't. How Nathaniel had held Esme so tight she cried; how in the mirror of her gold eyes he saw a little boy who no longer was him.
It will make Nina happy.
