Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

Author:Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan [Picoult, Jodi & Boylan, Jennifer Finney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

WE WAIT LONG enough for the press to have dispersed, and then before heading to the car, I tell Jordan and Asher I’m going to use the bathroom. The ladies’ room at the courthouse is on the far side of the building, but I don’t pass a single person in the hall the entire way there. I use a stall, flush, and step out to wash my hands.

Standing at a sink a few feet away is Ava Campanello.

I have not seen her in the months since Lily’s funeral. She is stick-thin, her dress hanging on her shoulders and swallowing her body whole. She looks up.

“Ava,” I say, hoarse.

She jerks her gaze away from mine, scrubbing at her hands with the vengeance of Lady Macbeth. Then she turns, reaching for the tongue of paper towel curling from the dispenser.

I am rooted to the floor, trapped by the loss of Lily and the potential loss of Asher. If things were reversed—if Asher had been the one to die—would I so badly want to find a scapegoat, a way to burn the world down, that I’d think the worst of Lily? I can’t imagine how badly she hurts, how she can hold herself together. I would never presume to know Lily as well as Ava did, but I still cannot see myself believing the worst of her.

I would never presume to know Lily as well as Ava did.

Jordan might not have known Lily was trans. Gina Jewett might not have known Lily was trans. But Ava did, and she chose to say nothing. Not even to the prosecutor, who would have interviewed her at length before moving ahead with this trial.

The question is…why?

It wasn’t to protect Asher, for sure. Was it to protect Lily?

Or was it because this secret wasn’t Ava’s to tell?

“Asher isn’t a murderer, Ava,” I force out. My voice is wobbling so much it is unrecognizable. “You must know that.”

Sometimes, in a hive, you find brood cells shaped like circus peanuts, where potential new queens are being raised to replace an old or weak one. Most beekeepers say the first queen to emerge will sting the others still in their cells to kill her rivals, but I prefer to think that she caucuses: running around the hive, shaking hands and kissing babies and leaving her pheromones all over the place. As later queens hatch, they have to challenge her candidacy. It’s about persuasion, consensus. Not everything is solved with violence.

Ava doesn’t turn around, but her shoulders stiffen. “Things aren’t always what they seem to be,” she says, and then she is gone.

I run the water in the sink and wash my hands. Then I splash some over my face. Finally, I go back to the conference room where Jordan and Asher are waiting. “It’s about time,” Jordan says. “What the hell took you so long?”

I force a smile. “Coast is clear,” I announce.

He gives us our marching instructions, in case we are ambushed en route to the truck, but it is unnecessary—the reporters have slunk back into whatever holes they came from.

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