Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online

how to take care of myself.”
    “What about letting someone else do it once in a while?”
    A shadow of irritation crossed over Alex’s face. “Look, I don’t need a therapy session. Honestly. I appreciate the concern, but-”
    “Does your partner support your decision to give the baby up?” Lacy asked.
    Alex turned her face away for a moment. Before Lacy could find the right words to draw her back, however, Alex did it herself. “There is no partner,” she said coolly.
    The last time Alex’s body had taken over, had done what her mind told her not to do, she had conceived this baby. It had started innocently enough-Logan Rourke, her trial advocacy professor, calling her into his office to tell her that she commanded the courtroom with competence; Logan saying that no juror would be able to take his eyes off her-and that neither could he. Alex had thought Logan was Clarence Darrow and F. Lee Bailey and God rolled up into one. Prestige and power could make a man so attractive it took one’s breath away; it turned Logan into what she’d been looking for her whole life.
    She believed him when he told her he hadn’t seen a student with as quick a mind as Alex in his ten years of teaching. She believed him when he told her that his marriage was over in all but name. And she believed him the night he drove her home from the campus, framed her face between his hands, and told her she was the reason he got up in the morning.
    Law was a study of detail and fact, not emotion. Alex’s cardinal mistake had been forgetting this when she became involved with Logan. She found herself postponing plans, waiting for his call, which sometimes came and sometimes didn’t. She pretended that she did not see him flirting with the first-year law students who looked at him the way she used to. And when she got pregnant, she convinced herself that they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together.
    Logan had told her to get rid of it. She’d scheduled an abortion, only to forget to write the date and time on her calendar. She rescheduled, but realized too late that her appointment conflicted with a final exam. After that, she’d gone to Logan. It’s a sign, she’d said.
    Maybe, he told her, but it doesn’t mean what you’re thinking. Be reasonable, Logan had said. A single mother will never make it as a trial attorney. She’d have to choose between her career and this baby.
    What he really meant was that she’d have to choose between having the baby and having him.
    The woman looked familiar from behind, in that way that people sometimes do when you see them out of context: your grocery clerk standing in line at the bank, your postman sitting across the aisle of the movie theater. Alex stared for another second, and then realized it was the infant throwing her off. She strode across the hallway of the courthouse toward the town clerk, where Lacy Houghton stood paying a parking ticket.
    “Need a lawyer?” Alex asked.
    Lacy looked up, the baby carrier balanced in the crook of her arm. It took a moment to place the face-she hadn’t seen Alex since her initial visit nearly a month ago. “Oh, hello!” she said, smiling.
    “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”
    “Oh, I’m posting bail for my ex…” Lacy waited for Alex’s eyes to widen, and then laughed. “Just kidding. I got a parking ticket.”
    Alex found herself staring down at the face of Lacy’s son. He wore a blue cap that tied underneath his chin, and his cheeks spilled over the edges of the fleece. He had a runny nose, and when he noticed Alex looking at him, he offered her a cavernous smile.
    “Would you like to grab a cup of coffee?” Lacy said.
    She slapped ten dollars down on top of her parking ticket and fed it through the open mouth of the payment window, then hefted the baby bucket a little higher into the crook of her arm and walked out of the court building to a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. Lacy stopped to give a ten-dollar bill to