Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult Page A

to come in and meet with me? I can have my secretary call you tomorrow.”
    “No,” I said, and then shook my head. “I mean, that’s fine, but I won’t be home tomorrow. I’m in the hospital with Willow.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “No, she’s fine. Well, she’s not fine, but this is routine. We’ll be home Thursday.”
    “I’ll make a note.”
    “Good,” I said, my breath coming in a rush. “Good.”
    “Give my best to your family,” Marin replied.
    “I’ve just got one question,” I said, but she had already hung up the phone. I pressed the mouthpiece against my lips, tasted the bitter metal. “Would you do this?” I whispered out loud. “Would you do this, if you were me?”
    If you’d like to make a call, said the mechanical voice of an operator, please hang up and try again.
    What would Sean say?
    Nothing, I realized, because I wouldn’t tell him what I’d done.
    I walked back down the hall toward your room. On the bed, you were snoring softly. The video you’d been watching when you fell asleep cast a reflection over your bed in reds and greens and golds, an early rush of autumn. I lay down on the narrow cot that had been converted from one of the guest chairs by a helpful nurse; she’d left me a threadbare blanket and a pillow that crackled like polar ice.
    The mural on the far wall was an ancient map, with a pirate ship sailing off its borders. Not long ago, sailors believed that the seas were precipitous, that compasses could point out the spots where, beyond, there’d be dragons. I wondered about the explorers who’d sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.
    Piper
    I met Charlotte eight years ago, in one of the coldest rinks in New Hampshire, when we were dressing our four-year-old daughters as shooting stars for a forty-five-second performance in the club’s winter skating show. I was waiting for Emma to finish lacing up her skates while other mothers effortlessly yanked their daughters’ hair into buns and tied the ribbons of the shimmering costumes around their wrists and ankles. They chatted about the Christmas wrapping paper sale the skating club was doing for fund-raising and complained about their husbands, who hadn’t charged the video camera batteries long enough. In contrast to this offhanded competence, Charlotte sat alone, off to one side, trying to coax a very stubborn Amelia into tying back her long hair. “Amelia,” she said, “your teacher won’t let you onto the ice like that. Everyone has to match.”
    She looked familiar, although I didn’t remember meeting her. I thrust a few bobby pins at Charlotte and smiled. “If you need them,” I said, “I also have superglue and marine varnish. This isn’t our first year with the Nazi Skating Club.”
    Charlotte burst out laughing and took the pins. “They’re four years old!”
    “Apparently, if you don’t start young, they’ll have nothing to talk about in therapy,” I joked. “I’m Piper, by the way. Proudly defiant skating parent.”
    She held out a hand. “Charlotte.”
    “Mom,” Emma said, “that’s Amelia. I told you about her last week. She just moved here.”
    “We came because of work,” Charlotte said.
    “For you or your husband?”
    “I’m not married,” she said. “I’m the new pastry chef over at Capers.”
    “That’s where I know you from. I read about you in that magazine article.”
    Charlotte blushed. “Don’t believe everything in print…”
    “You ought to be proud! Me, I can’t even bake a Betty Crocker mix without screwing it up. Luckily, that’s not part of my job description.”
    “What do you do?”
    “I’m an obstetrician.”
    “Well, that beats what I do, hands down,” Charlotte said. “When I deliver, people gain weight. When you deliver, they lose it.”
    Emma poked a finger into a hole in her