Mad Honey

by Jodi Picoult

Imagine a sorrow so deep that it batters the hatches of sleep; imagine drowning before you even realize you’ve gone under.

We are so lucky to have our children, even for a little while, but we take them for granted. We make the stupid assumption that as long as we are here, they will be, too, though that’s never been part of the contract.

“Let the record reflect that Mr. Fields has entered a plea of not guilty.” The judge sounds bored. Tired. As if his entire life has not suddenly come apart at the seams, the way ours have. If you do this long enough, I wonder, do you even notice that the people in front of you are falling to pieces?

Do not listen to anyone who tells you a broken heart is a metaphor. You can feel the cracks and the fissures. It’s like ice splintering under your feet; like the cliff crumbling beneath your weight.

It makes me think about the way people assume identities, about all the masks we wear, and how often people assume you are exactly what you appear to be.

“Maybe,” Elizabeth says, “you need to think about the difference between what is secret and what is private.” I want to tell her that those are the same things, but maybe they’re not. I think about my history with Braden. Is what happened between us a secret, in the way that the nuclear codes are secret? Or is it private, in the way that—painful as the facts are—this is history that belongs to me, and is mine to reveal?

Something in me wants to tell these people, I am like Elizabeth. I am like Lily. I am like a lot of women in the world who choose to conceal something; who live in fear of what might happen, if the exact wrong person ever found out.

“The truth has no place in a court of law,

reasonable doubt. It traces back to the United Kingdom, to jurist William Blackstone, who said—in the 1700s—“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” This idea was meant to protect not only the defendant but also the jurors. Since only God could judge a man, it was a mortal sin for a juror to convict the wrong person.