Free Keeping Faith: A Novel by Jodi Picoult Page B

tell you.” Her eyes grow round,
expectant. “A long time ago, before you were born, I was very upset about something. Instead of telling people how I felt, I started acting different. Crazy. I did something that scared a lot of people, and because of it I was sent somewhere I really didn’t want to be.”
“You mean, like … jail?”
“Kind of. It doesn’t matter now. But I wanted you to know that it’s okay to be sad. I understand. You don’t need to act different to get me to see that you’re upset.”
Faith’s chin trembles. “I’m not upset.
I’m not acting different.”
“Well, you didn’t always have this guard of yours.”
The tears that have been building in her eyes spill over. “You think I made her up,
don’t you? Just like Dr. Keller and the kids at school and Mrs. Grenaldi. You think I’m just doing this to get noticed.” Suddenly she draws in a sharp breath. “And now I’m going to have to go to that jail place for it?”
“No,” I insist, hugging her close.
“You’re not going anywhere. And I’m not saying you made her up, Faith, I’m not. It’s just that I was so sad once that my mind made me believe something that wasn’t true–that’s all I’m saying.”
Faith’s face digs into my shoulder as she shakes her head. “She’s real. She is.”
I close my eyes, rub my thumb against the bridge of my nose to ward off the headache.
Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I stand up and gather an empty platter, left over from the afternoon’s treat of cookies. I am halfway to the kitchen when Faith tugs on the bottom of my shirt. “She wants to tell you something.”
“Oh?”
“She knows about Priscilla. And she forgives you.”
The plate I am holding drops to the floor.
When I was eight years old, I wanted a pet so badly that I began to collect small creatures–frogs and box turtles and, once,
a red squirrel–and secretly bring them into the house. It was the turtle crawling over the kitchen counter that finally turned the tide. Rather than risk salmonella poisoning, my mother came home one day with a kitten, mine for the promise that I’d leave other creatures outdoors.
I named the kitten Priscilla, because she had been a princess in my favorite library book that week. I slept with her on my pillow, her tail curled over my brow like a beaver hat. I fed her the milk from my cereal bowls. I dressed her in doll clothes and bonnets and cotton socks.
One day I decided I wanted to give her a bath. My mother explained to me that cats hate to get wet and that they’d lick themselves clean rather than go anywhere near water to wash. But then again, she’d said Priscilla wouldn’t like being swaddled and walked in a toy baby carriage, and she’d been wrong about that. So on a sunny afternoon when I was playing in the backyard, I filled up a bucket with water and called for the cat. I waited until my mother was out of sight and then dunked Priscilla into the water.
She fought me. She scratched and twisted and still I managed to hold her in the water, convinced I knew best. I scrubbed her fur using a bar of Ivory that I’d stolen from my parents’
bathroom. I was very careful to wash all the trouble spots my mother always reminded me about. I was so careful, in fact, that I forgot to let her up to breathe.
I told my mother that Priscilla must have fallen into the bucket, and because I was crying so hard, she believed me. But for years I could feel the bones shifting beneath the slack fur.
Sometimes, there is a tiny weight in my palm that I curl my hand around as I sleep.
I never got another cat. And I never told a soul.
“Mariah,” my mother stares at me blankly.
“Why are you telling me now?”
I glance toward my mother’s guest bedroom, where Faith has gone to play with a tin of buttons.
“Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“About Priscilla? That I drowned her?”
My mother rolls her eyes. “Well, of course not. Not until five minutes ago.”
“Did Daddy?” My mind