Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult Page B

Paige
about her mother. She'd mentioned her at the diner, and from what
Nicholas could tell, the elusive Mrs. O'Toole drifted across Paige's
consciousness like a shadow from time to time but Paige wasn't
willing to share the details. He knew that the woman had left; he
knew that Paige had been five; he knew that Paige didn't remember
her very well. But she had to have feelings about it. At the very
least, she had to have an impression.
    "What
was your mother like?" Nicholas asked gently, so close his lips
were brushing Paige's cheek.
    He
felt her tense almost instantly. "Supposedly she was like me,"
Paige said. "My father said she looked like me."
    "You
mean you look like her," Nicholas
said, correcting.
    "No."
Paige turned and sat up on the end of the couch. "I mean she
looked like me. I'm
the one that's still around, right? So I'm the one that you should be
comparing her to."
    Nicholas
didn't argue with that logic, but he sat up and leaned against the
opposite end of the couch. He ran his fingers over the smooth black
leather. "Did your father ever tell you why she left?"
    Nicholas
watched the color drain from Paige's face. And almost as quickly, a
flush of red worked its way up her neck and into her cheeks. Paige
stood. "Do you want to marry me or my family?" she said.
She stared at Nicholas, who was speechless, for several seconds, and
then she smiled so openly that her dimples showed and the honesty
of it reached all the way into her eyes. "I'm just tired,"
she said. "I didn't mean to yell at you. But I really have to go
home."
    Nicholas
helped her into her coat and drove her to Doris's apartment. He
parked at the curb and clenched his hands on the steering wheel while
Paige fished in her bag for the key. He was so intent on silently
reviewing Paige's comments about her mother that he almost did not
hear her speaking. He had frightened her away by asking her to marry
him, and then just when she was warming up to him again, he'd blown
it by asking about her mother. She had been so flustered by that one
stupid question. Was there something she wasn't telling him? A Lizzie
Borden kind of story? Was her mother crazy, and was she unwilling to
mention that just in case Nicholas thought it might be hereditary? Or
was Nicholas crazy himself, for trying to convince his conscience
that this gaping hole in Paige's past couldn't really matter in the
long run?
    "Well,"
Paige said, facing him. "It's been some night, hasn't it?"
When Nicholas didn't look at her, she turned her gaze to her lap. "I
won't hold you to it," she said softly. "I know you didn't
mean it."
    At
that, Nicholas turned and pressed his own spare key into Paige's
palm. "I want you to hold me to it," he said.
    He
pulled Paige into his arms. "When will you be home tomorrow?"
she whispered against his neck. He could feel her trust opening like
a flower and passing through her fingertips to the places where she
touched him. She tilted her head up, expecting his kiss, but he only
pressed his lips gently to her forehead.
    Surprised,
Paige drew back and looked at Nicholas as if she were studying him
for a portrait. Then she smiled. "I'll think about your
question," she said.

    Paige
was waiting for him the next day when he got home from the hospital,
and things between them were back to normal. He knew it before he
even opened the door, because the smell of butter cookies was seeping
over the threshold, into the hall. He also knew that when he'd left
that morning, his refrigerator had held little more than a moldy
banana loaf and a half jar of relish. Paige had obviously walked all
the way here with groceries, and he was shocked at how his whole
center seemed to soften at the thought.
    She
was sitting on the floor, with her hands spread over the pages of Gray's
Anatomy as
if she were modestly trying to cover the naked musculoskeletal image
of a man. At first she did not see him. "Phalanges,"
she murmured, reading. She pronounced the clinical names for fingers
and toes all