Change of Heart Read online

  But she was serious, and I was just as serious when I refused. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was sit down with that monster to make him feel better about himself so that he could die at peace.

  Kurt didn't. Elizabeth didn't. Why should he?

  I thought that was that, until one morning when there was a knock on the door. Claire was lying on the couch with Dudley curled over her feet, watching the Game Show Network. Our days were spent waiting for a heart with the shades drawn, both of us pretending there was nowhere we wanted to go, when in reality, neither of us could stand seeing how even the smallest trips exhausted Claire. "I'll get it," she called out, although we both knew she couldn't and wouldn't. I put down the knife I was using to chop celery in the kitchen and wiped my hands on my jeans.

  "I bet it's that creepy guy who was selling magazines," Claire said as I passed her.

  "I bet it's not." He'd been a corn-fed Utah boy, pitching subscriptions to benefit the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I'd been upstairs in the shower; Claire had been talking to him through the screen door--for which I'd read her the riot act. It was that word Saints that had intrigued her; she didn't know it was a fancy word for Mormon. I had suggested that he try a town where there hadn't been a double murder committed by a young man who'd come around door to door looking for work, and after he left, I'd called the police.

  No, I was sure it wasn't the same guy.

  To my surprise, though, a priest was standing on my porch. His motorcycle was parked in my driveway. I opened the door and tried to smile politely. "I think you have the wrong house."

  "I'm sure I don't, Ms. Nealon," I replied. "I'm Father Michael, from St. Catherine's. I was hoping I could speak to you for a few minutes."

  "I'm sorry ... do I know you?"

  He hesitated. "No," he said. "But I was hoping to change that."

  My natural inclination was to slam the door. (Was that a mortal sin? Did it matter, if you didn't even believe in mortal sins?) I could tell you the exact moment I had given up on religion. Kurt and I had been raised Catholic. We'd had Elizabeth baptized, and a priest presided over their burials. After that, I had promised myself I would never set foot in a church again, that there was nothing God could do for me that would make up for what I'd lost. However, this priest was a stranger. For all I knew, though, this was not about saving my soul but about saving Claire's life. What if this priest knew of a heart that UNOS didn't?

  "The house is a mess," I said, but I opened the door so that he could walk inside. He stopped as we passed the living room, where Claire was still watching television. She turned, her thin, pale face rising like a moon over the back of the sofa. "This is my daughter," I said as I turned to him, and faltered--he was looking at Claire as if she were already a ghost.

  I was just about to throw him out when Claire said hello and propped her elbows on the back of the sofa. "Do you know anything about saints?"

  "Claire!"

  She rolled her eyes. "I'm just asking, Mom."

  "I do," the priest said. "I've always sort of liked St. Ulric. He's the patron saint who keeps moles away."

  "Get out."

  "Have you ever had a mole in here?"

  "No."

  "Then I guess he's doing his job," he said, and grinned.

  Because he'd made Claire smile, I decided to let him in and give him the benefit of the doubt. He followed me into the kitchen, where I knew we could talk without Claire overhearing. "Sorry about the third degree," I said. "Claire reads a lot. Saints are her latest obsession. Six months ago, it was blacksmithing." I gestured to the table, offering him a seat.

  "About Claire," he said. "I know she's sick. That's why I'm here."

  Although I'd hoped for this, my own heart still leapfrogged. "Can you help her?"

  "Possibly," the priest said. "But I need you to agree to something first."

  I would have become a nun; I would have walked over burning coals. "Anything," I vowed.

  "I know the prosecutor's office already asked you about restorative justice--"

  "Get out of my house," I said abruptly, but Father Michael didn't move.

  My face flamed--with anger, and with shame that I had not connected the dots: Shay Bourne wanted to donate his organs; I was actively searching for a heart for Claire. In spite of all the news coverage from the prison, I had never linked them. I wondered whether I had been naive, or whether, even subconsciously, I'd been trying to protect my daughter.

  It took all my strength to lift my gaze to the priest's. "What makes you think I would want a part of that man still walking around on this earth, much less inside my child?"

  "June--please, just listen to me. I'm Shay's spiritual advisor. I talk to him. And I think you should talk to him, too."

  "Why? Because it rubs your conscience the wrong way to give sympathy to a murderer? Because you can't sleep at night?"

  "Because I think a good person can do bad things. Because God forgives, and I can't do any less."

  Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears--a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you know how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it? "Nothing he says to me could make any difference."

  "You're absolutely right," Father Michael said. "But what you say to him might."

  There was one variable that the priest had left out of this equation: I owed Shay Bourne nothing. It already felt like a second, searing death to watch the broadcasts each night, to hear the voices of supporters camping out near the prison, who brought their sick children and their dying partners along to be healed. You fools, I wanted to shout to them. Don't you know he's conned you, just like he conned me? Don't you know that he killed my love, my little girl? "Name one person John Wayne Gacy killed," I demanded.

  "I ... I don't know," Father Michael said.

  "Jeffrey Dahmer?"

  He shook his head.

  "But you remember their names, don't you?"

  He got out of his chair and walked toward me slowly. "June, people can change."

  My mouth twisted. "Yeah. Like a mild-mannered, homeless carpenter who becomes a psychopath?"

  Or a silver-haired fairy of a girl whose chest, in a heartbeat, blooms with a peony of blood. Or a mother who turns into a woman she never imagined being: bitter, empty, broken.

  I knew why this priest wanted me to meet with Shay Bourne. I knew what Jesus had said: Don't pay back in kind, pay back in kindness. If someone does wrong to you, do right by them.

  I'll tell you this: Jesus never buried his own child.

  I turned away, because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry, but he put his arm around me and led me to a chair. He handed me a tissue. And then his voice, a murmur, clotted into individual words.

  "Dear St. Felicity, patron saint of those who've suffered the death of a child, I ask for your intercession that the Lord will help this woman find peace ..."

  With more strength than I knew I had, I shoved him away. "Don't you dare," I said, my voice trembling. "Don't you pray for me. Because if God's listening now, he's about eleven years too late." I walked toward the refrigerator, where the only decoration was a picture of Kurt and Elizabeth, held up by a magnet Claire had made in kindergarten. I had fingered the photo so often that the edges had rounded; the color had bled onto my hands. "When it happened, everyone said that Kurt and Elizabeth were at peace. That they'd gone someplace better. But you know what? They didn't go anywhere. They were taken. I was robbed."

  "Don't blame God for that, June," Father Michael said. "He didn't take your husband and your daughter."

  "No," I said flatly. "That was Shay Bourne." I stared up at him coldly. "I'd like you to leave now."

  I walked him to the door, because I didn't want him saying another word to Claire--who twisted around on the couch to see what was going on but must have picked up enough nonverbal cues from my stiff spine to know better than to make a peep.