Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

“I heard about something. Someone, I mean. There is a little girl in New Hampshire who people say is talking to God. My neighbor, she visits shrines and places like that, and she asked if I wanted to go with her. I figured I had nothing to lose.” Teresa smooths the hair over Rafael’s head. “Rafael was running a fever when we got there, so I was walking with him just before dawn when this girl–her name is Faith–came outside. She brought a doll stroller, and she asked if she could play with my son. She walked him and laughed with him and pretended to feed him for about an hour.” Teresa looks up, tears in her eyes. “She touched him. She kissed him here,

  where he had an open sore. And then we went back to Boston.

  “The doctors–we went in the next day–did not recognize him. Overnight his sores were healed. His infections were gone. His T-cell count was twenty-two thousand.” She beams at Petra. “They tell me it is all medically impossible. Then they say that Rafael is not an AIDS patient anymore.”

  “Are you saying your son was cured of AIDS,

  Mrs. Civernos?”

  “I think so,” Teresa says. “God has touched this little girl, this Faith. It’s a miracle. There is nothing I can say to make her understand how much I want to thank her.” She nuzzles her cheek against Rafael’s head.

  The producer motions to the cameraman, who stops filming. Petra taps a cigarette out of a silver holder and confers with her producer, their backs to Teresa. “Yeah,” he says, laughing at something Petra’s said. “You collect more nuts than a squirrel.”

  Teresa overhears. “This is no joke. This really happened.”

  “Sure.” Petra grins. “And I’m the Virgin Mary.”

  “It’s true. She brought her own grandmother back to life.” Furious, Teresa gets up and grabs her big leather handbag. She rummages for the directions to New Canaan, the ones she’d carefully plotted out with her neighbor on an intricately folded map of New Hampshire,

  and throws it at the famous anchorwoman. “Go ask her yourself,” she says, and, turning on her heel, she escapes to the bathroom with Rafael and locks herself in until she hears Petra Saganoff and her entourage leave.

  October 12, 1999 On the plane, Ian sets his headphones to the channel for the in-flight newsmagazine. With a satisfied sigh he turns his attention to the screen centered over the business-class cabin.

  But instead of seeing CNN, Ian finds himself staring at Petra Saganoff, the talent for some entertainment fluff show. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he says, flagging down a flight attendant. “Don’t you have anything else?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, sir.

  We get whatever tape they give us.”

  Scowling, Ian whips off his headphones and tucks them into the seat pocket in front of him. He bends forward for his briefcase,

  figuring that he can at least run the numbers of his latest Q-rating and see where in the nation he was most recognizable. As he sits up again, he notices the woman that Petra Saganoff is interviewing.

  She looks vaguely familiar.

  He shuffles through the pile of papers in his hands and–the baby. Ian glances at the small screen and watches the child in the woman’s arms kick and squirm. He reaches for the earphones he’s discarded. “… his sores were healed. His infections were gone. …” Ian hears, and suddenly remembers where he has seen the woman before. On the front lawn at the New Canaan farmhouse, watching her son get jostled around in a doll stroller by Faith White.

  A muscle jumps in Ian’s jaw. Now she’s raised the dead and cured AIDS?

  “God has touched this little girl …” he hears the woman say.

  “Oh, shit,” Ian murmurs. He should hop on the next return flight. He should mount a campaign, he should double his efforts. He should blow Faith White’s ridiculous succession of miraculous cures for the incurable right out of the water.

  And he also knows that he won’t–that, as planned, he’ll continue, on to see Michael before returning to New Canaan.

  He forces his attention back to the papers in his lap, but envisions a pair of hands turning cards:

  red, black, red, black. On the screen, the AIDS baby who was limp as a rag two days ago is laughing and animated in his mother’s arms.

  The question is only in his mind for a moment before it’s squelched. And yet Ian can still hear it ringing in his ears, as joyful and resonant as a long note that a choir has stopped singing: What if, this time,

  I’m wrong?

  October 13, 1999 With the intense focus of a seven-year-old,

  Faith packs the canvas tote bag her mother usually takes to the library with the things she needs to run away. These include her teddy bear, a change of underpants, and a box of Ritz crackers she’s stolen from the pantry. Also her Wonder Woman Superfriend Membership Certificate and a glowing plastic ring that she found in the sandbox at the park and has always believed to be a little bit magic. She waits until she hears her mother turn on the shower in the master bath, and then she creeps from her bedroom.

  She puts on a dark-green Polarfleece jacket, rust-colored leggings, and a purple turtleneck. A pair of red woolen gloves,

  to hide her hands.

  Faith tiptoes down the stairs. She’s not running away, not really, since she’s going to call her mother as soon as she figures out where there’s a phone. She knows the number by heart. In case someone is listening, she will disguise her voice the way Inspector Gadget sometimes does and tell her mom to come to the movie theater where they saw Tarzan, because who will be expecting that? And then they’ll go away, just the two of them and maybe Grandma, too, and leave all those dumb people sitting on the front lawn.

  She is silent as a firefly when she sneaks out the sliding door.

  Well, where the hell is she going now?

  For once Ian’s insomnia is a boon.

  Staring out the window of the Winnebago, he sees a bright flash that disappears into the woods around the White property. Carefully opening the door of the recreational vehicle, he steps outside. As he approaches the perimeter of the woods, he breaks into a run, trying to tune his senses to the sound of small feet falling like snow.

  There–he sees again the flash that drew him to her in the first place, and he recognizes it as light bouncing off something. A triangle. The moon is reflecting off her jacket or sweatshirt, some safety device of L. L. Bean’s.

  “Hey!” he calls softly, and Faith freezes. She turns, spies him, and runs off again. With one swift leap, Ian tackles her and rolls simultaneously, so that she lands on the cushion of his body and knocks the breath out of him. He tightens his hold on the girl, who is kicking his shins. “Cut it out!” he says,

  shaking her. “You’re hurting me.”

  “You’re hurting me, too!” Faith cries.

  He relaxes his grip. “If I let you go,

  will you run away?” When she solemnly shakes her head, he releases his arms. Immediately Faith scrambles to her feet and takes off into the forest.

  “Goddamn!” He follows her and snags the sleeve of her fleece pullover,

  reeling Faith in like an angry, struggling fish.

  “You lied.”

  “No,” Faith says, the fight going out of her. “I never did.”

  Ian realizes that they are now talking about something entirely different. “Isn’t it a little late for you to be playing outside?”

  “I’m running away. I don’t like it here anymore.”

  Ian feels his chest tighten. The end, he reminds himself, justifies the means. “I guess your mom is okay with your leaving like this?”

  Faith hangs her head. “I’m going to tell her. I promise.” She glances around at the trees. “Do you know where there’s a phone?”

  “In my pocket. Why?”

  She looks at Ian as if he is very, very stupid. “To call my mother when I get there.”

  Ian brushes his hand over his coat, feeling the slender bulk of his cellular. At last he has a bargaining chip. “If you want to call your mother when you get to where
ver you’re going, then you’re going to have to keep my phone with you. And I don’t go anywhere without my phone.” He pauses, making sure that she’s following his logic. “Besides, you probably shouldn’t be wandering around alone in the dark.”

  Faith looks down. “I’m not supposed to go anywhere with strangers.”

  Ian laughs. “Haven’t I been hanging around long enough to not be a stranger?”

  She thinks about this. “My mom says you’re a menace.”

  “Ah, you see. She didn’t say I’m a stranger.” He holds out the cell phone, then drops it back in his pocket. “Deal?”

  “I guess,” Faith mutters. She begins to walk, and Ian strikes off beside her. He is thinking of all the things he is missing–sound and camera crew, foremost among them–but surely an off-the-record interview is better than none at all. If he figures out the catch in this story, he can blow it open publicly the next day.

  They have been walking only a few moments when Faith, winded, sits down on a rotting log.

  This surprises him; he thought kids had more stamina than that. He tries to see her face by the moonlight that filters through the trees, but she looks pale and ghostly. “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” she says, her voice tiny. “I’m just tired.”

  “Past your bedtime. How’d you get by your mom anyway?”

  “She’s taking a shower.”

  Ian is impressed. “I ran away from home once, when I was five. I hid underneath the canvas cover of the barbecue for three hours before anyone found me.”

  “That isn’t really running away.”

  Her voice is so weary, so rough with wisdom,

  that Ian again feels a pang of guilt.

  “Don’t you like being … important to so many people?”

  Faith looks at him as if he is crazy.

  “Would you?”

  Well, actually, he would … that’s the whole point of increasing his ratings share. But,

  admittedly, not everyone embraces that goal.

  Certainly not a child who’s an unwilling pawn in someone else’s machinations. He wonders if he might make an ally out of Faith White.

  “Hey, can you help me with something?” Ian pulls a deck of cards out of his pocket–solitaire sometimes gets him through a long night. “I’m working on this trick, and I’m not sure I’m doing it right.” He shuffles the deck, then asks her to pick a card. Faith slides it from the pack,

  the fingers of her gloves slipping. “Now,

  remember which card you’ve got? You’re sure?

  Slide it right into the middle again.”

  Giggling, Faith does what he’s asked.

  Ian silently thanks Uncle Beauregard for teaching him the one and only magic trick he’s ever had the inclination to learn. He shuffles the deck impressively, making cards leap from palm to palm, and then tells Faith to tap the top of the deck. “That’s the seven of diamonds,”

  he announces. “Your card.”

  She lifts it and gasps. “How’d you do that!”

  “I’ll tell you the secret to my magic,”

  he says, “if you tell me the secret to yours.”

  Faith’s face falls. “I don’t know any magic.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure.” Ian sinks down beside Faith, clasping his hands between his knees. “For starters–how did you heal your grandmother?”

  He can feel Faith bristle beside him. “I don’t want to learn your stupid card trick anyway.”

  “You know, I’ve met other people who think they can heal. Some of ‘em were just hypnotists. They convinced the sick people that they were feeling better, when in fact their bodies weren’t. And some of them really did manage to make people feel better, through some kind of electricity they just happened to carry along their skin.”

  “Electricity?”

  “A charge. Like the shock you get sometimes when you touch a TV set. Bzzt. You know.”

  Faith stands up and stretches out her hands.

  “Touch me,” she challenges.

  Slowly, his eyes never leaving her face,

  Ian reaches toward her. “You have to take off your gloves.”

  Immediately Faith ducks her hands behind her back. “I can’t.”

  Ian shrugs: I told you so.

  “I really can’t,” Faith pleads.

  It has been a long time since Ian was seven. He tries to remember what worked in the playground. “Liar.”

  “I am not!” Faith insists, agitated.

  “Ask me something else!”

  “Okay.” Ian is not fighting fair–for Christ’s sake, he’s outsmarting a seven-year-old–but then again, he’s never been known for his good sportsmanship. He has Faith right where he needs her to be: face upturned and eager, so desperate for a chance to prove herself that she can’t help but slip up and reveal the ruse.

  “Ask me,” she begs again.

  Ian thinks of everything he wants to know: Who is in on this, who will profit, how did they manage to fool a medical staff? But when he opens his mouth, what he says surprises even himself. “What does God look like?”

  Faith’s lips part on the answer. “God–“

  she begins, and then she faints.

  Quick reflexes make Ian reach out and catch the girl before she strikes her head on the log or a rock or tree root. “Faith,” he says,

  shaking her gently. “Wake up!” He lays her on the ground carefully and checks her pulse.

  He brushes leaves away from her face.

  Then he goes to wipe off his hands on his raincoat and realizes it’s smeared with blood.

  Heart pounding, Ian checks his own chest and side. But he is fine, and a perfunctory examination of Faith’s torso reveals no wounds. His gaze falls on her red gloves, bright against the mossy dirt and scattered leaves.

  Gently he peels one away from her hand.

  “Holy shit,” he breathes. Then he gathers Faith into his arms and runs as fast as he can to Mariah White.

  The doorbell is ringing as she wraps a towel around her wet hair, cinches her robe at her waist, and flies down the stairs. It is ten-thirty at night, for God’s sake. She has a child who’s asleep. Who would have the nerve to bother them now?

  As she reaches for the doorknob, the person on the other side begins to knock harder. Her jaw tight, Mariah swings open the door and finds herself staring at Ian Fletcher. But all her bluster dies the moment she notices that Faith is lying limp in his arms.

  “Oh …” Mariah’s voice trembles, and she falls back to let Ian enter the house.

  “She was in the woods.” Ian watches Mariah touch Faith’s temples, her cheek.

  “She’s bleeding. We need to take her to the hospital.”

  Mariah covers her mouth, holding back a sob. She rucks up Faith’s sleeve,

  expecting to find a cut across her wrist, but Fletcher tugs down her glove instead. “Come on!” he says. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Nothing …” Mariah runs upstairs and dresses in the clothes that have already been thrown into the laundry hamper. Then she rips her car keys and purse from the Shaker pegboard beside the front door.

  The far edge of the front yard is stirring with curiosity, most of the reporters having risen from their bored stakeout to notice Ian Fletcher, of all people, carrying the girl up to the house. Video cameras begin to whir, flashbulbs pop like firecrackers, and above all this is the thready refrain of people calling out to the unconscious Faith for help.

  Mariah opens the back door of the car for Ian, and without a word of communication he climbs in with Faith, cradling her in his lap. Mariah gets into the driver’s seat, hands shaking on the wheel, and tries to back out of the driveway without hitting one of the onlookers who insist on touching the car as it passes.

  Mariah meets Ian’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “How did this happen?”

  “I don’t know.” Ian brushes Faith’s hair from her forehead; this action is not lost on Mariah. “I think she was already hurt w
hen I found her.”

  Mariah brakes down the long curve of a hill. Has Faith misguidedly been trying to kill herself? She does not ask Ian Fletcher what she wants to: Why were you with her? Why didn’t my own daughter come to me?

  She pulls into the Emergency entrance of the Connecticut Valley Medical Center. There,

  she leaves the car at the curb and precedes Ian into the building, toward the triage nurse.

  Mariah is ready to fight for Faith’s priority as a case, but the nurse takes one look at the unconscious child and the blood on Ian’s coat and immediately calls for a gurney and a doctor.

  Mariah can barely keep up with them as Faith is whisked away.

  She does not think to ask Ian to follow her,

  but she isn’t surprised to find him coming, too.

  And she is barely aware of how her body sways when the remaining glove is cut from Faith’s fingers, of how Ian’s hand reaches out to steady her.

  “Vitals?”

  “BP one hundred over sixty, thready pulse.”

  “Let’s drop a line and get bloods. I want a type and cross, a CBC, tox screen, ‘lytes.” The doctor glances over Faith’s still form. “What’s her name?”

  Mariah tries to make her voice work, but she is unable to speak. “Faith,” Ian offers.

  “Okay, Faith,” the doctor says, his face inches from hers. “Wake up for me,

  honey.” He glances up at a nurse. “Get pressure bandages,” he orders, and looks at Mariah. “Did she get into some pills? Drink something from under the kitchen sink?”

  “No,” Mariah whispers, shocked. “Nothing like that.”

  Ian clears his throat. “She was bleeding when I found her. Wearing the gloves, so I didn’t realize it at first. And then she passed out.” He glances at his watch. “About thirty minutes ago.”

  A resident runs his hands along Faith’s foot. “No Kernig’s or Brudzinski’s signs.”

  “These don’t look like punctures to me,” a nurse says, and the doctor in charge takes up a position beside her and begins to press against Faith’s upper arm. “Bleeding’s not slowing. I want a hand-surgery consult stat.” He looks at Ian. “You the father?”

  Ian shakes his head. “A friend.”

  To Mariah they seem like great vultures,