Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online

was standing with the portable phone next to a spare suit of armor. Taking the phone, he walked a discreet distance away from her and the People reporter who was covering the filming. “Herb,” he said, still in accent, “this better be damn good.”
    He knew his agent wouldn’t call him on location unless it was a dire emergency, an Academy Award nomination, or a part that would boost his career even higher. But he’d already received an Oscar nomination this year and he’d been choosing his own roles for ages. His fingers gripped the receiver a little tighter, waiting for the transatlantic static to clear.
    â€œâ€”newspaper this morning, and there she—” he heard.
    â€œWhat?” he shouted, forgetting the cast and crew around him. “I can’t hear a thing you’re saying!”
    Herb’s voice came clearly into his ear. “Your wife’s picture was on page three of the L.A. Times . She was picked up by the police and she doesn’t remember her name.”
    â€œOh Jesus,” he said, his pulse racing. “What happened to her? Is she all right?”
    â€œI just read this two minutes ago,” Herb said. “She looks okay in the picture. I called you right away.”
    He sighed into the telephone. “Don’t do anything. I’ll be home by”—he checked his watch—“six tomorrow morning, your time.” When he spoke again his voice broke. “I’ve got to be the first one she sees,” he said.
    He hung up on his agent without saying goodbye and started barking instructions to Jennifer. He called over her shoulder to his coproducer. “Joe, we’ve got to stop filming for at least a week.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œFuck the budget.” He started toward his trailer, but then turned and touched Jennifer’s shoulder. She was already bent over the telephone making plane reservations, her hair falling around her like a curtain. When she looked up he held her gaze, and she saw something in his striking eyes that very few people ever had: a quiet desperation. “Please,” he murmured. “If you have to, move heaven and earth.”
    It took Jennifer a moment to shake herself back to reality, and even after he’d been gone for several seconds she could still feel the heat where his hand had held her shoulder; the weight of his plea. She picked up the phone again and began to dial. What Alex Rivers needed, Alex Rivers would get.
    Â 
    A T SEVEN A.M. ON W EDNESDAY, THE TELEPHONE BEGAN TO RING . Will ran from the bathroom into the kitchen, wrapping a towel around his waist. “Yeah?”
    â€œIt’s Watkins. I just got a call from the station. Three guesses who’s showed up.”
    Will sank down to the kitchen floor and let the bottom drop out of his world. “We’ll be there in a half hour,” he said.
    â€œWill?” He heard Watkins’s voice as if from a long distance. “You really know how to pick ’em.”
    He knew he had to wake Jane and tell her that her husband had come to claim her; he knew he had to say the reassuring things that she’d expect him to say during the ride to the Academy, but he didn’t think he could do it. The feelings Jane brought out in him went deeper than a matter of a fateful coincidence. He liked knowing that she tried to cover her freckles with baby powder. He liked the way she had of talking with her hands. He loved seeing her in his bed. He told himself that he would simply put on the mask of indifference he’d worn for the past twenty years, and that within a week his life would be back to normal. He told himself that this was what was meant to be all along. And at the same time, he saw Jane running from the cemetery gate beneath the owl’s cry, and he knew that even when she was gone she would be his responsibility.
    She was sleeping on her side, her arm curled over her stomach. “Jane,”