Change of Heart Read online

  "Please. Just hear me out. I want to tell you why I ... why I look this way."

  I glanced down at Claire, but who was I kidding? We could scream at the top of our lungs and not disturb her; she was in a medically induced haze. "What makes you think I want to listen?"

  She continued, as if I hadn't spoken at all. "When I was thirteen, I was in a fire. So was my whole foster family. My foster father, he died." She took a step forward. "I ran in to try to get my foster father out. Shay was the one who came to save me."

  "Sorry, but I can't quite think of your brother as a hero."

  "When the police came, Shay told them he'd set the fire," Grace said.

  I folded my arms. She hadn't said anything yet that surprised me. I knew that Shay Bourne had been in and out of the foster care system. I knew that he'd been sent to juvenile prison. You could throw ten thousand more excuses for a sorry childhood on his shoulders, and in my opinion, it still wouldn't negate the fact that my husband, my baby, had been killed.

  "The thing is," Grace said, "Shay lied." She pushed her hand through her hair. "I'm the one who set the fire."

  "My daughter is dying," I said tightly. "I'm sorry you had such a traumatic past. But right now, I have other things to focus on."

  Undaunted, Grace kept speaking. "It would happen when my foster mom went to visit her sister. Her husband would come to my bedroom. I used to beg to leave my lights on at night. At first, it was because I was afraid of the dark; then later it was because I so badly wanted someone to see what was happening." Her voice trailed off. "So one day, I planned it. My foster mother was gone overnight, and Shay was--I don't know where, but not home. I guess I didn't think about the consequences until after I lit the match--so I ran in to try to wake my foster dad up. But someone dragged me back out--Shay. And as the sirens got closer I told him everything and he promised me he'd take care of it. I never thought he meant to take the blame--but he wanted to, because he hadn't been able to rescue me before." Grace glanced up at me. "I don't know what happened that day, with your husband, and your little girl, and my brother. But I bet, somehow, something went wrong. That Shay was trying to save her, the way he couldn't save me."

  "It's not the same," I said. "My husband would never have hurt Elizabeth like that."

  "My foster mother said that, too." She met my gaze. "How would you have felt if--when Elizabeth died--someone told you that you can't have her back, but that a part of her could still be somewhere in the world? You may not know that part; you may not ever have contact with it--but you'd know it was out there, alive and well. Would you have wanted that?"

  We were both standing on the same side of Claire's bed. Grace Bourne was almost exactly my height, my build. In spite of her scars, it felt like looking into a mirror. "There's still a heart, June," she said. "And it's a good one."

  We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you are a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.

  How long ago had Claire decided that she couldn't fight any longer? Did she talk to a friend, a diary, Dudley, because I didn't listen? And had I done this before: ignored another daughter, because I was too afraid to hear what she had to say?

  Grace Bourne's words kept circling around my mind: My foster mother said that, too.

  No. Kurt would never.

  But there were other images clouding my mind, like flags thrown on a grassy field: the pair of Elizabeth's panties that I found inside a couch cushion liner when she was too little to know how to work a zipper. The way he often needed to search for something in the bathroom--Tylenol, an Ace bandage--when Elizabeth was in the tub.

  And I heard Elizabeth, every night, when I tucked her in. "Leave the lights on," she'd beg, just like Grace Bourne had.

  I had thought it was a phase she'd outgrow, but Kurt said we couldn't let her give in to her fears. The compromise he suggested was to turn off the light--and lie down with her until she fell asleep.

  What happens when I'm asleep? she'd asked me once. Does everything stop?

  What if that had not been the dreamy question of a seven-year-old still figuring out this world, but a plea from a child who wanted to escape it?

  I thought of Grace Bourne, hiding behind her scarves. I thought of how you can look right at a person and not see them.

  I realized that I might never know what had really happened between them--neither Kurt nor Elizabeth could tell. And Shay Bourne--well, no matter what he saw, his fingerprints had still been on that gun. After last time, I did not know if I could ever bear to face him again.

  She was better off dead, he'd said, and I'd run away from what he was trying to tell me.

  I pictured Kurt and Elizabeth together in that coffin, his arms holding her tight, and suddenly I thought I was going to throw up.

  "Mom," Claire said, her voice thin and wispy. "Are you okay?"

  I put my hand on her cheek, where there was a faint flush induced by the medicine--her heart was not strong enough to put a bloom on her face. "No, I'm not," I admitted. "I'm dying."

  She smiled a little. "What a coincidence."

  But it wasn't funny. I was dying, by degrees. "I have to tell you something," I said, "and you're going to hate me for it." I reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly. "I know it isn't fair. But you're the child, and I'm the parent, and I get to make the choice, even though the heart gets to beat in your chest."

  Her eyes filled with tears. "But you said--you promised. Don't make me do this ..."

  "Claire, I cannot sit here and watch you die when I know that there's a heart waiting for you."

  "But not just any heart." She was crying now, her head turned away from me. "Did you think at all what it will be like for me, after?"

  I brushed her hair off her forehead. "It's all I think about, baby."

  "That's a lie," Claire argued. "All you ever think about is yourself, and what you want, and what you've lost. You know, you're not the only one who missed out on a real life."

  "That's exactly why I can't let you throw this one away."

  Slowly, Claire turned to face me.

  "I don't want to be alive because of him."

  "Then stay alive because of me." I drew in my breath and pulled my deepest secret free. "See, I'm not as strong as you are, Claire. I don't think I can stand to be left behind again."

  She closed her eyes, and I thought she had drifted back into sleep, until she squeezed my hand. "Okay," she said. "But I hope you realize I may hate you for the rest of my life."

  The rest of my life. Was there any other phrase with so much music in it? "Oh, Claire," I said tightly. "That's going to be a long, long time."

  "God is dead: but considering the state Man is in,

  there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet,

  in which his shadow will be shown."

  --FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, THE GAY SCIENCE

  MICHAEL

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  When inmates tried to kill themselves, they'd use the vent. They would string coaxial cables from their television sets through the louvers, wrap a noose around their necks, and step off the metal bunk. For this reason, one week before Shay's execution, he was transferred to an observation cell. There was a camera monitoring his every move; an officer was stationed outside the door. It was a suicide watch, so that a prisoner could not kill himself before the state had its turn.

  Shay hated it--it was all he talked about as I sat with him for eight hours a day. I'd read from the Bible, and from the Gospel of Thomas, and from Sports Illustrated. I'd tell him about the plans I'd made for the youth group to host a Fourth of July pie auction, a holiday that he would not be around to celebrate. He would act like he was l