Change of Heart (34 page)

He had not wanted to impose, because he didn’t know if I’d want to be buried near my first husband. Even that tiny bit of consideration—the fact that he wanted me to choose, instead of making an assumption—had made me realize why I loved him.
I want to be with you
, I had told him. I wanted to be where my heart was.

After the murders, I would sleepwalk. I’d find myself the next morning in the gardening shed, holding a spade. In the garage, with my face pressed against the metal cheek of a shovel. In my subconscious, I was making plans to join them; it was only when I was awake and alert and felt Claire kicking me from within that I realized I had to stay.

Would she be the next one I’d bury here? And once I did, what would keep me from carrying things through to their natural conclusion, from putting my family back together in one place?

I lay down for a minute, prone on the grass. I pressed my face into the stubbled moss at the edge of the head-stone and pretended I was cheek-to-cheek with my husband; I felt the dandelions twine through my fingers and pretended I was holding my daughter’s hand.

In the elevator of the hospital, the duffel bag started to move itself across the floor. I crouched down, unzipped the top of it. “Good boy,” I said, and patted the top of Dudley’s head. I’d retrieved him from my neighbor, who had been kind enough to play foster parent while Claire was sick. Dudley had fallen asleep in the car, but now he
was alert and wondering why I had zipped him into a piece of luggage. The doors opened and I hoisted him up, approaching the nurse’s desk near Claire’s room. I tried to smile normally. “Everything all right?”

“She’s been sleeping like a baby.”

Just then, Dudley barked.

The nurse’s eyes flew up to mine, and I pretended to sneeze. “Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “Is that pollen count something or
what
?”

Before she could respond, I hurried into Claire’s room and closed the door behind me. Then I unzipped the bag and Dudley shot out like a rocket. He ran a lap around the room, nearly knocking over Claire’s IV pole.

There was a reason dogs weren’t allowed in hospitals, but if Claire wanted
normal
, then she was going to get it. I wrapped my arms around Dudley and hoisted him onto Claire’s bed, where he sniffed the cotton blanket and began to lick her hand.

Her eyes fluttered open, and when she saw the dog, a smile split her face. “He’s not allowed in here,” she whispered, burying her hands in the fur at his neck.

“Are you going to tell on me?”

Claire pushed herself to a sitting position and let the dog crawl into her lap. She scratched behind his ears while he tried to chew on the wire that ran from beneath Claire’s hospital gown to the heart monitor.

“We won’t have a lot of time,” I said quickly. “Someone’s going to—”

Just then, a nurse walked in holding a digital thermometer. “Rise and shine, missy,” she began, and then she saw the dog on the bed. “
What
is that doing in here?”

I looked at Claire, and then back at the nurse. “Visiting?” I suggested.

“Mrs. Nealon, not even service dogs are allowed onto this ward without a letter from the vet stating that the vaccinations are up to date and the stool’s tested negative for parasites—”

“I was just trying to make Claire feel better. He won’t leave this room, I swear.”

“I’ll give you five minutes,” the nurse said. “But you have to promise you won’t bring him in again before the transplant.”

Claire, who had a death grip on the dog, glanced up. “Transplant?” she repeated. “
What
transplant?”

“She was being theoretical,” I said quickly.

“Dr. Wu doesn’t schedule theoretical transplants,” the nurse said.

Claire blinked at me. “Mom?” There was a thread in her voice that had started to unravel.

The nurse turned on her heel. “I’m counting,” she said, and left the room.

“Is it true?” Claire asked. “There’s a heart for me?”

“We’re not sure. There’s a catch …”

“There’s
always
a catch,” Claire said. “I mean, how many hearts have turned out to not be as great as Dr. Wu expected?”

“Well, this one … it’s not ready for transplant yet. It’s sort of still being used.”

Claire laughed a little. “What are you planning to do?
Kill
someone?”

I didn’t answer.

“Is the donor really sick, or old? How could she even
be
a donor if she’s sick or old?” Claire asked.

“Honey,” I said. “We have to wait for the donor to be executed.”

Claire was not stupid. I watched her put together this new information with what she’d heard on television. Her hands tightened on Dudley. “No
way
,” she said quietly. “I am not taking a heart from the guy who killed my father and my sister.”

“He wants to
give
it to you. He offered.”

“This is sick,” Claire said. “You’re sick.” She struggled to get up, but she was tethered to the bed with tubes and wires.

“Even Dr. Wu said that it’s an amazing match for you and your body. I couldn’t just say no.”

“What about me? Don’t
I
get to say no?”

“Claire, baby, you know donors don’t come along every day. I
had
to do it.”

“Then
undo
it,” she demanded. “Tell them I don’t want his stupid heart.”

I sank down on the edge of the hospital bed. “It’s just a muscle. It doesn’t mean you’ll be like him.” I paused. “And besides, he
owes
this to us.”

“He doesn’t owe us anything! Why don’t you get that?” Her eyes filled with tears. “You can’t tie the score, Mom. You just have to start over.”

Her monitors began to sound an alert; her pulse was rising, her heart pumping too hard. Dudley began to bark. “Claire, you have to calm down …”

“This isn’t about him,” Claire said. “This isn’t even about me. It’s about
you
.
You
need to get payment for what
happened to Elizabeth.
You
need to make him pay for what he did. Where do
I
fit into that?”

The nurse flew into the room like a great white heron, fussing over Claire. “What’s going on in here?” she said, checking the connections and tubes and drips.

“Nothing,” we both said simultaneously.

The nurse gave me a measured glance. “I highly recommend you take that dog away and let Claire get some rest.”

I reached for Dudley and wrestled him back into the duffel bag. “Just think about it,” I pleaded.

Ignoring me, Claire reached into the bag and patted the dog. “Good-bye,” she whispered.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||

I had gone back to St. Catherine’s. I told Father Walter that I had not been seeing clearly, and that God had opened my eyes to the truth.

I just neglected to mention that God happened to be sitting on I-tier about three miles away from our church, awaiting an expedited trial that began this week.

Each night, I said three consecutive rosaries—penance for lying to Father Walter—but I
had
to be there. I had to do something constructive with my time, now that I wasn’t spending it with Shay. Since I’d confessed to him at the hospital that I’d served on the jury that had convicted him, he’d refused to see me.

There was a part of me that understood his reaction—imagine how it would feel to know your confidant had betrayed you—but there was another part of me that spent hours trying to figure out why divine forgiveness hadn’t kicked in yet. Then again, if the Gospel of Thomas was to be believed, no matter how much time and space Shay put between us, we were never really separate: mankind and divinity were flip sides of the same coin.

And so, every day at noon, I told Father Walter I was meeting a fictional couple at their house to try to guide them away from the path of divorce. But instead, I rode my Trophy to
the prison, burrowed through the crowds, and went inside to try to see Shay.

CO Whitaker was called to escort me to I-tier after I’d passed through the metal detectors at the visitor’s booth. “Hi, Father. You here to sell Girl Scout cookies?”

“You know it,” I replied. “Anything exciting happen today?”

“Let’s see. Joey Kunz got a medical visit for diarrhea.”

“Wow,” I said. “Sorry I missed that.”

As I suited up in my flak jacket, Whitaker went into I-tier to tell Shay I’d come. Again. But no more than five seconds had passed before he returned, a sheepish look on his face. “Not today, Father,” he said. “Sorry.”

“I’ll try again,” I replied, but we both knew that wasn’t possible. We had run out of time: Shay’s trial began tomorrow.

I left the prison and walked back to my motorcycle. All modesty aside, I was the closest thing Shay had to a disciple; and if that was true, it meant learning from the mistakes of history. At Jesus’s crucifixion, His followers had scattered—except for Mary Magdalene, and his mother. So even if Shay didn’t acknowledge me in court, I would still be there. I would bear witness for him.

For a long time, I sat on my bike in the parking lot, going nowhere.

In fairness, it wasn’t like I wanted to spring this all on Maggie a few days before the trial. The truth of the matter was that if Shay didn’t want me as his spiritual advisor anymore, I had no excuse for not telling Maggie that I’d been on the jury that convicted him. I’d tried to contact her several times over the past week, but she was either out of her office, not at home, or not answering her cell. And then, out of the blue, she
called me. “Get your ass down here,” she said. “You have some explaining to do.”

In twenty minutes, I was sitting in her ACLU office. “I had a meeting with Shay today,” Maggie said. “He said you’d lied to him.”

I nodded. “Did he go into detail?”

“No. He said I deserved to hear it firsthand.” She crossed her arms. “He also said he didn’t want you testifying on his behalf.”

“Right,” I mumbled. “I don’t blame him.”

“Are you really a priest?”

I blinked at her. “Of course I am—”

“Then I don’t care what you’re lying about,” Maggie said. “You can unburden your soul
after
we win Shay’s case.”

“It’s not that simple …”

“Yes it is, Father. You are the only character witness we’ve got for Shay; you’re credible because you’re wearing that collar. I don’t care if you and Shay had a fight; I don’t care if you moonlight as a drag queen; I don’t care if you have enough secrets to last a lifetime. It’s don’t ask, don’t tell until the trial starts, okay? All I care about is that you wear that collar, get on the stand, and make Shay sound like a saint. If you walk, the whole case goes down the toilet. Is that simple enough for you?”

If Maggie was right—if my testimony was the only thing that would help Shay—then how could I tell her something now that would ruin the case? A sin of omission could be understandable if you were helping someone by holding back. I could not give Shay his life back, but I could make sure his death was what he wanted.

Maybe it would be enough for him to forgive me.

“It’s normal to be a little freaked out about going to court,” Maggie said, misreading my silence.

During my testimony, I was supposed to explain in layman’s terms how donating a heart to Claire Nealon was one of Shay’s spiritual beliefs. Having a
priest
say this was a stroke of genius on Maggie’s part—who wouldn’t believe a member of the clergy when it came to religion?

“You don’t have to be worried about the cross-exam,” Maggie continued. “You tell the judge that while a Catholic would believe that salvation comes solely through Jesus Christ, Shay believes organ donation’s necessary for redemption. That’s perfectly true, and I can promise you that lightning isn’t going to crash through the ceiling when you say it.”

My head snapped up. “I can’t tell the court that Shay will find Jesus,” I said. “I think he might
be
Jesus.”

She blinked. “You think
what
?”

The words began to spill out of me, the way I always imagined it felt to be speaking in tongues: truths that tumbled before you even realized they’d left your mouth. “It makes perfect sense. The age, the profession. The fact that he’s on death row. The miracles. And the heart donation—he’s literally giving himself away for our sins, again. He’s giving the part that matters the least—the body—in order to become whole in spirit.”

“This is
way
worse than having cold feet,” Maggie murmured. “You’re crazy.”

“Maggie, he’s been quoting a gospel that was written two hundred years after Christ’s death—a gospel that most people don’t even know exists. Word for word.”

“I’ve listened to his words, and frankly, they’re unintelligible. Do you know what he was doing yesterday when I briefed him on his testimony? Playing tic-tac-toe. With himself.”

“You have to read between the lines.”

“Yeah, right. And I bet when you listen to Britney Spears records backward, you hear ‘Sleep with me, I’m not too young.’ For God’s sake—no pun intended—you’re a Catholic
priest
. Whatever happened to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? I don’t remember Shay being part of the Trinity.”

“What about everyone camped outside the prison? Are they all crazy, too?”

“They want Shay to cure their kid’s autism or reverse their husband’s Alzheimer’s. They’re in it for
themselves,
” Maggie said. “The only people who think Shay Bourne is the Messiah are so desperate that they’d be able to find salvation beneath the lid of a two-liter bottle of Pepsi.”

“Or through a heart transplant?” I countered. “You’ve worked up a whole legal theory based on individual religious beliefs. So how can you tell me, categorically, that I’m wrong?”

“Because it’s not a matter of right or wrong. It’s life or death—namely, Shay’s. I’d say whatever I had to to win this case for him; it’s my job. And it was supposed to be
yours
, too. This isn’t about some revelation; it’s not about who Shay might have been or might be in the future. It’s about who he is right now: a convicted murderer who’s going to be executed unless I can do something about it. It doesn’t matter to me if he’s a vagrant or Queen Elizabeth or Jesus Christ—it just matters that we win this case for him, so that he can die on his own terms. That means that you will get on that damn stand and swear on that Bible—which, for all I know, might not even be relevant to you now that you’ve found Jesus on I-tier. And if you screw this up for Shay by sounding like a nut job when I question you, I will make your life miserable.” By the time Maggie finished, she was red in the face and breathless. “This old gospel,” she said. “Word for word?”