by Jodi Picoult
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
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 slats of my own door, giving him privacy.
As I hid away my makeshift mirror, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection. Like Shay’s, my skin looked scarlet. And yet even that didn’t stop me from noticing the familiar ruby sore that had opened up once again across my forehead—a scar, a stain, a planet’s moving storm.
MICHAEL
Shay’s last foster mother, Renata Ledoux, was a Catholic who lived in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, and as I’d traveled up to meet with her, the irony of the name of the town where Shay had spent his teenage years did not escape me. I was wearing my collar and had on my gravest priest demeanor, because I was pulling out all the stops. I was going to say whatever was necessary to find out what had happened to Grace.
As it turned out, though, it hardly took any work at all. Renata invited me in for tea, and when I told her I had a message for Grace from a person in my congregation, she simply wrote out an address and handed it to me. “We’re still in touch,” she said simply. “Gracie was a good girl.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what she thought of Shay. “Didn’t she have a brother?”
“That boy,” Renata had said, “deserves to burn in hell.”
It was ludicrous to believe that Renata had not heard about Shay’s death sentence—the news would have reached up here, even in rural Bethlehem. I had thought, maybe, as his foster mother, she’d at least harbor some soft spot for him. But then again, the boy she’d raised had left her home to go to juvenile prison, and had grown up to become a convicted murderer. “Yes,” I’d said. “Well.”
Now, twenty minutes later, I was approaching Grace’s house, and hoping for a better reception. It was the pink one with gray shutters and the number 131 on a carved stone at the end of the drive—but the shades were drawn, the garage door was closed. There were no plants hanging on the porch, no doors open for a breeze, no outgoing mail in the box—nothing to indicate that the inhabitant was home.
I got out of my car and rang the doorbell. Twice.
Well, I could leave a note and ask her to call me. It would take more time—time Shay did not really have—but if it was the best I could do, then so be it.
Just then the door opened just a crack. “Yes?” a voice inside murmured.
I tried to see into the foyer, but it was pitch-dark. “Does Grace Bourne live here?”
A hesitation. “That’s me.”
“I’m Father Michael Wright. I have a message for you, from one of the parishioners in my congregation.”
A slender hand slipped out. “You can give it to me,” Grace said.
“Actually, could I just come in for a bit—use your restroom? It’s been a long drive from Concord . . .”
She hesitated—I suppose I would, too, if a strange man showed up at my door and I was a woman living alone, even if he was wearing a collar. But the door opened wide and Grace stepped back to let me in. Her head was ducked to the side; a long curtain of black hair hung over her face. I caught a glimpse of long dark lashes and a ruby of a mouth; you could tell, even at first glance, how pretty she must be. I wondered if she was agoraphobic, painfully shy. I wondered who had hurt her so much that she was afraid of the rest of the world.
I wondered if it was Shay.
“Grace,” I said, reaching for her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She lifted her chin then, and the screen of hair fell back. The entire left side of Grace Bourne’s face was ravaged and pitted, a lava flow of skin that had been stretched and sewed to cover an extensive burn.
“Boo,” she said.
“I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
“Everyone stares,” Grace said quietly. “Even the ones who try not to.”
There was a fire, Shay had said. I don’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you said that already. The bathroom’s down the hall.”
I put a hand on her arm. There were patches of skin there, too, that were scarred. “Grace. That message—it’s from your brother.”
She took a step away from me, stunned. “You know Shay?”
“He needs to see you, Grace. He’s going to die soon.”
“What did he say about me?”
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “But you’re the only family he has.”
“Do you know about the fire?” Grace asked.
“Yes. It was why he went to juvenile prison.”
“Did he tell you that our foster father died in it?”
This time, it was my turn to be surprised. A juvenile record would be sealed, which is why I hadn’t known during the capital murder trial what Shay had been convicted of. I’d assumed, when fire had been mentioned, that it was arson. I hadn’t realized that the charges might have included negligent homicide, or even manslaughter. And I understood exactly why, now, Renata Ledoux might viscerally hate Shay.
Grace was staring at me intently. “Did he ask to see me?”
“He doesn’t actually know I’m here.”
She turned away, but not before I saw that she had started to cry. “He didn’t want me at his trial.”
“He probably didn’t want you to have to witness that.”
“You don’t know anything.” She buried her face in her hands.
“Grace,” I said, “come back with me. Come see him.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I can’t. You don’t understand.”
But I was beginning to: Shay had set the fire that had disfigured her. “That’s all the more reason to meet with him. Forgive him, before it’s too late.”
“Forgive him? Forgive him?” Grace parroted. “No matte
r what I say, it won’t change what happened. You don’t get to do your life over.” She glanced away. “I think . . . I just . . . you should go.”
It was my dismissal. I nodded, accepting.
“The bathroom’s the second door on the right.”
Right—my ruse to get inside. I walked down the hall to a restroom that was floral, overpowering in a scent of air freshener and rose potpourri. There were little crocheted toilet paper holders, a crocheted bra for the toilet tank, and a crocheted cover for the Kleenex box. There were roses on the shower curtain, and art on the walls—framed prints of flowers, except for one of a child’s drawing—a dragon, or maybe a lizard. The room felt like the kind of abode for an elderly lady who’d lost count of her cats. It was stifling; slowly, Grace Bourne was suffocating herself to death.
If Shay knew that his sister forgave him for the fire, then maybe—even if he wasn’t allowed to donate his heart—it would be enough to let him die in peace. Grace was in no condition to be convinced right now, but I could work on her. I’d get her phone number and call her, until I’d worn down her resistance.
I opened the sliding mirrored medicine cabinet, looking for a prescription with Grace’s phone number so that I could copy it down. There were lotions and creams and exfoliants, toothpaste and floss and deodorant. There was also a medicine bottle of Ambien, with Grace’s phone number across the top of the label. I wrote it on the inside of my palm with a pen and set the pills back on the shelf, beside a small pewter frame. Two tiny children sat at a table: Grace in a high chair with a glass of milk in front of her, and Shay hunched over a picture he was drawing. A dragon, or maybe a lizard.
He was smiling, so wide it looked like it might hurt.
Every inmate is someone’s child. And so is every victim.
I walked out of the bathroom. Handing Grace a card with my name and number on it, I thanked her. “Just in case you change your mind.”
“Mine was never the one that needed changing,” Grace said, and closed the door behind me. Immediately I heard the bolt slide shut, the curtain in the front window rustle. I kept envisioning the dragon picture, which was carefully matted and framed in the bathroom. TO GRACIE, it had said in the upper left-hand corner.
I was all the way to Crawford Notch before I realized what had been niggling in my mind about that photo of Shay as a child. In it, he’d been holding a pen in his right hand. But in prison—when he ate, when he wrote—he was a lefty.
Could someone change so radically over a lifetime? Or could all of these changes in Shay—from his dominant hand to his miracles to his ability to quote the Gospel of Thomas—have come from some . . . possession? It sounded like some bad science fiction movie, but that wasn’t to say it couldn’t happen. If prophets could be overtaken by the Holy Spirit, why not a murderer?
Or, maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe who we were in the past informed who we chose to be in the future. Maybe Shay had intentionally shifted his writing hand. Maybe he cultivated miracles, to make up for a sin as horrible as setting a fire that took the lives of two people—one literal, one metaphorical. It struck me that even in the Bible, there was no record of Jesus’s life between the ages of eight and thirty-three. What if he’d done something awful; what if his later years were a response to that?
You could do a horrible thing, and then spend your whole natural life trying to atone.
I knew that better than anyone.
Maggie
The last conversation I had with Shay Bourne, before putting him on the stand as a witness, had not gone well. In the holding cell, I’d reminded him what was going to happen in court. Shay didn’t deal well with curves being thrown at him; he could just as likely become belligerent as curl up in a ball beneath the wooden stand. Either way, the judge would think he was crazy—and that couldn’t happen.
“So after the marshal helps you into the seat,” I had explained, “they’re going to bring you a Bible.”
“I don’t need one.”
“Right. But they need you to swear on it.”
“I want to swear on a comic book,” Shay had replied. “Or a Playboy magazine.”
“You have to swear on a Bible,” I’d said, “because we have to play by their rules before we’re allowed to change the game.”
Just then, a U.S. marshal had come to tell me that court was about to convene. “Remember,” I had said to Shay, “focus only on me. Nothing else in that courtroom’s important. It’s just us, having a chat.”
He had nodded, but I could see that he was jittery. And now, as I watched him being brought into the courtroom, everyone else could see it, too. He was bound at the ankles and the wrists, with a belly chain to link the others; the links rattled as he shuddered into his seat beside me. His head was ducked, and he was murmuring words no one but I could hear. He was actually cursing out one of the U.S. marshals who’d led him into the courtroom, but with any luck, people who watched his mouth moving silently would think he was praying.
As soon as I put him on the witness stand, a quiet pall fell over the people in the gallery. You are not like us, their silence seemed to say. You never will be. And there, without me asking a single question, was my answer: no amount of piousness could erase the stain on the hands of a murderer.
I walked in front of Shay and waited until he caught my eye. Focus, I mouthed, and he nodded. He gripped the front of the witness box railing, and his chains clinked.
Dammit. I’d forgotten to tell him to keep his hands in his lap. It would be less of a reminder to the judge and the gallery that he was a convicted felon.
“Shay,” I asked, “why do you want to donate your heart?”
He stared right at me. Good boy. “I have to save her.”
“Who?”
“Claire Nealon.”
“Well,” I said, “you’re not the only person in the world who can save Claire. There are other suitable heart donors.”
“I’m the one who took the most away from her,” Shay said, just like we had practiced. “I have the most to give back to her.”
“Is this about clearing your conscience?” I asked.
Shay shook his head. “It’s about clearing the slate.”
So far, I thought, so good. He sounded rational, and clear, and calm.
“Maggie?” Shay said just then. “Can I stop now?”
I smiled tightly. “Not quite yet, Shay. We’ve got a few more questions.”
“The questions are bullshit.”
There was a gasp in the rear of the gallery—probably one of the blue-haired ladies I’d seen filing in with their Bibles wrapped in protective quilted cozies, who hadn’t stumbled across a cuss word since before menopause. “Shay,” I said, “we don’t use that language in court. Remember?”
“Why is it called court?” he asked. “It’s not like a tennis court or a basketball court, where you’re playing a game. Or maybe you are, and that’s why there’s a winner and a loser, except it has nothing to do with how well you make a three-point shot or how fast your serve is.” He looked at Judge Haig. “I bet you play golf.”
“Ms. Bloom,” the judge said. “Control your witness.”
If Shay didn’t shut up, I was going to personally cover his mouth with my hand. “Shay, tell me about your religious upbringing as a child,” I said firmly.
“Religion’s a cult. You don’t get to choose your own religion. You’re what your parents tell you you are; it’s not upbringing at all, just a brainwashing. When a baby’s getting water poured over his head at a christening he can’t say, ‘Hey, man, I’d rather be a Hindu,’ can he?”
“Shay, I know this is hard for you, and I know that being here is very distracting,” I said. “But I need you to listen to the question I’m asking, and answer it. Did you go to church when you were a kid?”
“Part of the time. And part of the time I didn’t go anywhere at all, except hide in the closet so I wouldn’t get beat up by another kid or the foster dad, who’d try to keep everyone
in line with a metal hairbrush. It kept us in line, all right, all the way down our backs. The whole foster care system in this country is a joke; it ought to be called foster don’t care, don’t give a shit except for the stipend you’re getting from the—”
“Shay!” I warned him with a flash of my eyes. “Do you believe in God?”
This question, somehow, seemed to calm him down. “I know God,” Shay said.
“Tell me how.”
“Everyone’s got a little God in them . . . and a little murder in them, too. It’s how your life turns out that makes you lean to one side or the other.”
“What’s God like?”
“Math,” Shay said. “An equation. Except when you take everything away, you get infinity, instead of zero.”
“And where does God live, Shay?”
He leaned forward, lifted his chained hands so that the metal chinked. He pointed to his heart. “Here.”
“You said you used to go to church when you were a kid. Is the God you believe in today the same God you were taught about at church?”
Shay shrugged. “Whatever road you take, the view is going to be the same.”
I was nearly a hundred percent certain I’d heard that phrase before, at the one and only Bikram yoga class I’d attended, before I decided that my body wasn’t meant to bend in certain ways. I couldn’t believe Greenleaf wasn’t objecting, on the grounds that channeling the Dalai Lama wasn’t the same as answering a question. Then again, I could believe Greenleaf wasn’t objecting. The more Shay said, the crazier he appeared. It was hard to take someone’s claims about religion seriously when he sounded delusional; Shay was digging a grave big enough for both of us.
“If the judge orders you to die by lethal injection, Shay, and you can’t donate your heart—will that upset God?” I asked.
“It’ll upset me. So yeah, it’ll upset God.”
“Well, then,” I said, “what is it about giving your heart to Claire Nealon that will please God?”
He smiled at me then—the sort of smile you see on the faces of saints in frescoes, and that makes you wish you knew their secret. “My end,” Shay said, “is her beginning.”
