Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page A

legs and slipped her shoes back on. “Oh, and to bring snacks to Mass, but not things that crunch.” She began to tell Nicholas about her father’s inventions—ones that had succeeded, like the automatic spinning carrot peeler, and ones that hadn’t, like the canine toothbrush. In the middle of her reverie she cocked her head and looked at Nicholas. “He would like you,” she said. “Yes.” She nodded, convincing herself. “He’d like you very much.”
    â€œAnd why’s that?”
    â€œBecause of what you have in common,” Paige said. “Me.”
    Nicholas ran his hands around the edges of the steering wheel. “And your mother?” he said. “What did you learn from her?”
    He remembered after he said it what Paige had told him about her mother at the diner. He remembered when it was too late, when the words, heavy and stupid, were hanging almost palpably in the space between them. For a moment Paige did not answer, did not move. He would have thought she hadn’t even heard him, but then she leaned forward and switched on the radio, blasting the music so loudly she could only have been trying to crowd out the question.
    Ten minutes later, Nicholas parked in the shade of an oak tree. He got out of the car and walked around to Paige’s side to help her, but she was already standing and stretching.
    â€œWhich one is yours?” Paige asked, looking across the street at several pretty Victorians with white picket fences. Nicholas turned her by her elbow so that she would notice the house behind her, a tremendous brick colonial with ivy growing on its north side. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, shrinking back a little. “Are you a Kennedy?” she murmured.
    â€œAbsolutely not,” Nicholas said. “They’re all Democrats.” He walked her up the slate path to the front door, which, he thanked God, was opened not by the maid but by Astrid Prescott herself, wearing a wrinkled safari jacket, three cameras slung around her neck.
    â€œNich- olas , ” she breathed. She threw her arms around him. “I’ve just gotten back. Nepal. Amazing culture; can’t wait to see what I’ve got.” She patted her cameras, caressing the one on top as if it were alive. She pulled Nicholas through the doorway with the force of a hurricane, and then she took Paige’s small, cold hands in her own. “And you must be Paige.” She pulled Paige into a breathtaking mahogany-paneled hallway with a marble floor that reminded her of the Newport mansions she had seen when visiting RISD as a junior. “I’ve been back less than an hour, and all Robert’s told me about is this mysterious, magical Paige.”
    Paige took a step back. Robert Prescott was a well-known doctor, but Astrid Prescott was a legend. Nicholas didn’t like to tell acquaintances he was related to “the Astrid Prescott,” which people said with the same reverent tone they’d used a hundred years before to murmur “the Mrs. Astor.” Everyone knew her story: the rich society girl had impetuously given up balls and garden parties to toy with photography, only to become one of the best in the field. And everyone knew Astrid Prescott’s photography, especially her graphic black-and-white portraits of endangered species, which—Paige noticed—were placed haphazardly throughout the hall. They were haunting photos, shadows and light, of giant sea turtles, bird-wing butterflies, mountain gorillas. In flight, a spotted owl; the split of a blue whale’s tail. Paige remembered a Newsweek article she’d read some years ago on Astrid Prescott, who was quoted as saying that she wished she’d been around when the dinosaurs died, because that would have been quite a scoop.
    Paige looked from one photograph to another. Everyone had an Astrid Prescott calendar, or a small Astrid Prescott day