Keeping Faith Read online

  The music from Jesus Christ Superstar fills his chambers, and Rothbottam smiles. There is nothing wrong, nothing at all, with getting in the mood for what is yet to come.

  Manchester, New Hampshire

  Malcolm Metz moves so gracefully in the leather swivel chair that he looks like a twentieth-century version of a centaur as he gestures to his three minions and finishes telling the joke. "So Saint Peter opens the gates of heaven and lets in a pope and a lawyer. 'Come in,' he tells them. 'I'll show you to your new quarters.'" Metz glances around. A skilled litigator, after all, is at best a superb actor.

  "Saint Peter stops off at a tremendous golden penthouse, built on top of a cloud. He leads them inside and shows them the gold faucets in the bathrooms and the silk bedding and the expensive rugs in the halls. Then he turns to the lawyer and says, 'This is your new home.' He leaves with the pope, and takes him to a tiny cell with a little twin bed and a washstand. 'And this,' he says, 'is where you are going to live from now on.'"

  Metz adopts a lilting Italian accent. "'Now, wait a second!' the pope cries. 'I've lived a pious life and led the Catholic Church--but I have to live here while that lawyer gets a penthouse?' Saint Peter nods. 'Yes,' he says. 'See, we've got plenty of popes up here. But this is the first time we've ever had a lawyer!'"

  The conference room erupts into laughter--no one likes lawyer jokes more than lawyers. But Metz is equally aware that he could have read a perfectly dull legal statute aloud, and if he'd expected his associates to find it funny, they would have been rolling on the floor. At the sound of the intercom, he holds up a hand, and the younger lawyers fall silent. "Peggy," Metz says to his secretary, "put him through."

  They watch him with expectant faces. "All right. Yes, I see." Metz hangs up the receiver and folds his hands on the polished table. "Gentlemen and lady," he says, "the ex parte motion has been denied."

  He turns to Hunstead, his first associate. "Call Colin White. Tell him to get himself into a good suit and meet me at the Grafton County Courthouse at two-thirty P.M. Lee," he says to a second man, "tip off the media. I want them to know the father thinks his daughter's in danger."

  The two associates run off, leaving Metz alone with the third. "I'm sorry, Mr. Metz," Elkland says. "A lucky break would've been nice."

  Metz shrugs, collecting his papers and files. "Actually, I never expected the judge to rule in my favor." He taps the legal pads on their edges, aligning them. "I only filed it so that the judge could deny it, and get that out of his system. Let's face it--no small-town judge wants someone like me cruising into his courtroom. I'd much rather have Rothbottam use this motion as a pissing contest to show me who's boss, instead of something intrinsic to the case."

  The associate is surprised. "Then this was just strategic? Isn't the kid in danger?"

  "Hell, who knows? Filing an ex parte motion keeps the father happy. Denying it keeps the judge happy. And you know what makes me happy?"

  "Knowing that you're going to win?"

  Metz pats her shoulder. "I knew I hired you for a reason," he says.

  New Canaan, New Hampshire

  "The mother isn't going to let you near Faith," Father MacReady says, watching the visiting priest move about the rectory's tiny guest room. "I can't blame her."

  Father Rampini turns in a smooth motion. "Why not?"

  "She's Jewish. We've got no right to be there."

  "She's spouting heresy," Father Rampini corrects. "If we don't have jurisdiction over the person making the claims, we at least can control what she says that misleads good Catholics." He lifts a jacket and hangs it in the closet. "Surely you take issue with a female apparition?"

  "No. The Church has accredited plenty of visions of Mary."

  "Are we talking about Mary? No. God in a dress, God as a mother." Rampini frowns. "You have no problem with this?"

  Father MacReady turns away. He has taken vows that hold him to helping others for the rest of his life, but that doesn't take away the occasional urge to plant a facer. He sits at the small table and drums his fingers on its surface, casually glancing at the stack of books Rampini has placed there and the Saint-A-Day desk calendar, open to November 7. Saint Albinus, he reads. If he remembers correctly, Saint Albinus killed an evil man by breathing into his face.

  "Maybe God just looks different to a seven-year-old," Father MacReady muses.

  "Tell that to the children at Fatima," Rampini says. "Three kids, who--unlike Faith White--all saw the same vision of Mary. They didn't say she was wearing pants or smoking a hookah. They saw the Blessed Virgin the way she's traditionally pictured."

  "But not everyone has traditional visions. Saint Bernadette said the Virgin spoke to her in French patois."

  "Cultural resonance isn't part and parcel of a vision. So what if the Virgin was speaking French to Bernadette? She was still too uneducated to know what Mary meant when she referred to herself as the Immaculate Conception." Rampini zips his duffel bag and slides it beneath the bed. "Everything you've told me and everything I've read suggests that this is a crock. It's a hallucination, one the girl's managed to pass along into a mild hysteria. If Faith White is seeing God, there's no way He would appear in the form of a woman. Either an apparition is Jesus Christ or it is not." He shrugs. "I'm more likely to consider the visions satanic than divine."

  MacReady runs his finger along the tabletop, scattering a fine layer of dust. "There's concrete, objective proof."

  "Right. The resurrections and the healing. I'll let you in on a little trade secret: I've read about Lourdes and Guadalupe and a hundred others, but in my lifetime I've yet to see a bona fide miracle worker."

  Joseph MacReady meets his gaze. "For a good Catholic, Father, you sound an awful lot like a Pharisee."

  I am still half asleep when I hear Ian, speaking from the plane seat beside Faith. "I didn't get to thank you." I will my eyelids to stay slitted, and just listen.

  Faith doesn't answer him. "You did it, didn't you?" Ian presses. "You gave Michael those few minutes."

  "I didn't do anything."

  Ian shakes his head. "I don't believe that."

  "You don't believe a lot of stuff."

  He grins. "Call me Ian."

  "Okay." They stare at each other. Faith smooths down the front of her shirt, and Ian uncrosses his legs. "Ian? You can hold my mother's hand if you want."

  Ian nods gravely. "Thank you." He hesitates for a moment. "Can I hold yours?"

  Faith slowly extends her hand, with the Band-Aid at its center. Ian slips his fingers around hers carefully. He does not examine the Band-Aid, doesn't even give the supposed stigmata a second glance.

  Maybe, just maybe, Faith has worked a miracle after all.

  Millie Epstein opens the front door, expecting to see Mariah and Faith back from their flight, and instead lays eyes on yet another man in a black shirt and backward collar. "What are they doing in Rome? Cloning you fellows?"

  Father Rampini draws himself up to his full five feet ten inches. "Ma'am, I'm here to speak to Faith White at the request of His Excellency, Bishop Andrews of Manchester."

  "Who asked him?" Millie says. "I don't mean to be rude, but I find it highly unlikely that my daughter or granddaughter called His Highness--"

  "His Excellency--"

  "Whoever," Millie interrupts. "Look. We've had more priests around here than the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York. I'm sure that one of them has the information you want. Have a nice day."

  She begins to wedge the door closed but is stopped by the priest's foot. "Mrs...?"

  "Epstein."

  "Mrs. Epstein, you're interfering with the process of the Roman Catholic Church."

  Millie stares at him for a moment. "And your point is?"

  By now Father Rampini is sweating. He wonders if he should have taken the insufferable Father MacReady up on his offer to accompany him to Faith White's home. At the time, the thought of twenty minutes on back roads with the ridiculously liberal priest had seemed like more pen