Change of Heart Read online

  "Well," Fletcher said, "there was that."

  "What would you do if you were me?" I asked. "Would you carry through with this? Help Shay donate his heart?"

  "I guess that depends on why you're helping him," Fletcher said slowly. "Is it to save him, like you said on the stand? Or are you really just trying to save yourself?" He shook his head. "If man had the answers for questions like those, there wouldn't be a need for religion. Good luck, Father."

  I went back into the stall and closed the lid of the toilet, sat down. I slipped my rosary out of my pocket and whispered the familiar words of the prayers, sweet in my mouth like sucking candies. Finding God's grace wasn't like locating missing keys or the forgotten name of a 1940s pinup girl--it was more of a feeling: the sun breaking through an overcast morning, the softest bed sinking under your weight. And, of course, you couldn't find God's grace unless you admitted you were lost.

  A bathroom stall at the federal courthouse might not be the most likely spot to find God's grace, but that didn't mean it couldn't be done.

  Find God's grace.

  Find Grace.

  If Shay was willing to give up his heart, then the least I could do was make sure he'd be remembered in someone else's. Someone who--unlike me--had never condemned him.

  That was when I decided to find Shay's sister.

  June

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  It is not an easy thing to pick the clothes in which your child will be buried. I had been told by the funeral director, after the murders, to think about it. He suggested something that represented her, a beautiful girl--such as a nice little dress, one that opened up the back, preferably. He asked me to bring in a picture of her so that he could use makeup to match the blush of her cheek, the natural color of her skin, her hairstyle.

  What I had wanted to say to him was: Elizabeth hated dresses. She would have worn pants without buttons, because they were frustrating, or possibly last year's Halloween costume, or the tiny set of doctors' scrubs she got for Christmas--I had, just days before, found her ''operating" on an overgrown zucchini that was the size of a newborn. I would have told him that Elizabeth did not have a hairstyle, because you could not ground her long enough to brush it, much less braid or curl. And that I did not want him putting makeup on her face, not when I would never have that bonding moment between a mother and daughter in a bathroom before an elegant night on the town, when I could let her try the eye shadow, a smudge of mascara, pink lipstick.

  The funeral director told me that it might be nice to have a table of mementos that meant something to Elizabeth--stuffed animals or family vacation photos, chocolate chip cookies. To play her favorite music. To let her school friends write messages to her, which could be buried in a silk satchel inside the coffin.

  What I wanted to say to him was: Don't you realize that by telling me the same things you tell everyone else about how to make a meaningful funeral, you are making it meaningless? That Elizabeth deserved fireworks, an angel choir, the world turning backward on its axis.

  In the end, I had dressed Elizabeth in a ballerina's tutu, one she somehow always wanted to wear when we went grocery shopping, and that I always made her take off before we left. I let the funeral director put makeup on her face for the first time. I gave her a stuffed dog, her stepfather, and most of my heart to take with her.

  It was not an open-casket funeral; but before we left for the graveside service, the funeral director lifted the cover to make final adjustments. At that moment, I pushed him out of the way. Let me, I had said.

  Kurt was wearing his uniform, as befitted a police officer killed in the line of duty. He looked exactly like he did every day, except for the fine white line around his finger where his wedding ring had been. That, I now wore on a chain around my neck.

  Elizabeth looked delicate, angelic. Her hair was tied up in matching ribbons. Her arm was around her stepfather's waist.

  I reached into the coffin, and the moment my hand brushed my daughter's cheek I shivered, because somehow I had still expected it to be warm--not this fake-flesh, this cool-to-the-touch skin. I tugged the ribbons out of her hair, gently lifted her head, fanned her hair on both sides of her face. I tugged the left leotard sleeve down a quarter inch, to match the one on the right.

  I hope you're pleased, the funeral director had said.

  It didn't look like Elizabeth, not one bit, because she was too perfect. My daughter would have been rumpled and untucked, her hands dirty from chasing frogs, her socks mismatched, her wrists ringed with bracelets she'd beaded herself.

  But in a world where things happen that shouldn't, you find yourself saying and doing things that are the complete opposite of what you mean. So I had nodded, and watched him seal away the two people I loved most in this world.

  Now I found myself in the same position I'd been in eleven years ago, standing in the middle of my daughter's bedroom and sifting through her clothes. I sorted through shirts and skirts and tights, jeans as soft as flannel and a sweatshirt that still smelled like the apple orchard where she last wore it. I chose a pair of flared black leggings and a long-sleeved tee that had Tinker Bell printed on it--clothes that I had seen Claire wear on the laziest of Sundays, when it was snowing and there was nothing to be done but read the Sunday paper and doze with your cheek pressed against the wall of heat thrown by the fireplace. I picked out a pair of underwear--SATURDAY, it read across the front, but I couldn't find any other days of the week scattered in the drawer. It was when I was looking that I found, wrapped in a red bandanna, the photograph. In a tiny silver oval frame, I thought at first it was one of Claire's baby pictures--and then I realized it was Elizabeth.

  The frame used to sit on top of the piano that nobody played anymore, gathering dust. The fact that I never even noticed it was missing was a testament to the fact that I must have learned how to live again.

  Which is why I collected the clothes and put them into a shopping bag to take to the hospital: an outfit in which I sincerely hoped I would not bury my daughter, but instead, bring her back home.

  Lucius

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  These nights, I slept well. There were no more sweats, no diarrhea, no fevers to keep me thrashing in my bunk. Crash Vitale was still in solitary, so his rants didn't wake me. From time to time, the extra officer who'd been assigned to Shay for protection would prowl through the tier, his boots a soft-soled shuffle on the catwalk.

  I had been sleeping so well, in fact, that I was surprised I woke up to the quiet conversation going on in the cell next door to mine. "Will you just let me explain?" Shay asked. "What if there's another way?"

  I waited to hear whom he was talking to, but there was no answer.

  "Shay?" I said. "Are you okay?"

  "I tried to give away my heart," I heard him say. "And look at what it turned into." Shay kicked at the wall; something heavy in his cell tumbled to the floor. "I know what you want. But do you know what I want?"

  "Shay?"

  His voice was just a braid of breath. "Abba?"

  "It's me. Lucius."

  There was a beat of silence. "You were listening to my conversation."

  Was it a conversation if you were having a monologue in your own cell? "I didn't mean to ... you woke me up."

  "Why were you asleep?" Shay asked.

  "Because it's three in the morning?" I replied. "Because that's what you're supposed to be doing?"

  "What I'm supposed to be doing," Shay repeated. "Right."

  There was a thud, and I realized Shay had fallen. The last time that had happened, he'd been having a seizure. I scrabbled underneath the bunk and pulled out the mirror-shank. "Shay," I called out. "Shay?"

  In the reflection, I could see him. He was on his knees in the front of the cell, with his hands spread wide. His head was bowed, and he was bathed in sweat, which--from the dim crimson light on the catwalk--looked like beads of blood.

  "Go away," he said, and I withdrew the mirror from the