Free Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult Page A

thinly veiled message that there are some children who should never be born, and winged a silent thank-you to my birth mother for not feeling the same way.
    Piper
    Technically, I was your godmother. Apparently, that meant that I was responsible for your religious education, which was sort of a colossal joke since I never set foot in a church (blame that healthy fear of the roof bursting into flames), while your mother rarely missed a weekend Mass. I liked to think of my role, instead, as the fairy-tale version. That one day, with or without the help of mice wearing tiny overalls, I’d make you feel like a princess.
    To that end, I rarely showed up to your house empty-handed. Charlotte said I was spoiling you, but I wasn’t draping you in diamonds or giving you the keys to a Hummer. I brought magic tricks, candy bars, kiddie videotapes that Emma had outgrown. Even when I visited directly from a stint at the hospital, I’d improvise: a rubber glove, knotted into a balloon. A hair net from the OR. “The day you bring her a speculum,” Charlotte used to say, “your welcome is officially rescinded.”
    “Hello,” I yelled as I walked through the front door. To be honest, I can’t remember a time I ever knocked. “Five minutes,” I said, as Emma tore up the stairs to find Amelia. “Don’t even take your coat off.” I wandered through the hallway into Charlotte’s living room, where you were propped up in your spica cast, reading.
    “Piper!” you said, and your face lit up.
    Sometimes, when I looked at you, I didn’t see the compromised twist of your bones or the short stature that came part and parcel with your illness. Instead, I remembered your mother crying when she told me that she had failed to get pregnant yet another month; I remembered her taking the Doptone out of my ears at an office visit so that she could listen to your hummingbird heartbeat, too.
    I sat down beside you on the couch and took your gift du jour out of my coat pocket. It was a beach ball—believe me, it wasn’t easy finding one of those in February. “We didn’t get to go to the beach,” you said. “I fell down.”
    “Ah, but this isn’t just a beach ball,” I corrected, and I inflated it until it was as firm and round as the belly of a woman in her ninth month. Then I pushed it between your knees, the ball wedged tight against the plaster, and began to strike the top of it with an open palm. “This,” I said, “is a bongo drum.”
    You laughed, and began to smack the plastic surface, too. The sound brought Charlotte into the room. “You look like hell,” I said. “When was the last time you slept?”
    “Gee, Piper, it’s really great to see you, too…”
    “Is Amelia ready?”
    “For what?”
    “Skating?”
    She smacked her forehead. “I totally forgot. Amelia!” she yelled, and then to me: “We just got home from the lawyer’s.”
    “And? Is Sean still on a rampage to sue the world?”
    Instead of answering, she rapped her hand against the beach ball. She didn’t like it when I ragged on Sean. Your mother was my best friend in the world, but your father could drive me crazy. He got an idea in his head, and that was the end of that—you couldn’t budge him. The world was utterly black-and-white for Sean, and I guess I’ve always been the kind of person who prefers a splash of color.
    “Guess what, Piper,” you interrupted. “I went skating, too.”
    I glanced at Charlotte, who nodded. She was usually terrified about the pond in the backyard and its constant temptation; I couldn’t wait to hear the details of this story. “I suppose if you forgot about skating, you forgot about the bake sale, too?”
    Charlotte winced. “What did you make?”
    “I made brownies,” I told her. “In the shape of skates. With frosting for the laces and blades. Get it? Ice skates with frosting?”
    “You made brownies?” Charlotte said, and I followed her as she headed toward the kitchen.
    “From scratch. The rest of