Jodi Picoult - Change of heart

He hesitated. "No," he said. "But I was hoping to change that."

My natural inclination was to slam the door. (Was that a mortal sin? Did it matter, if you didn't even believe in mortal sins?) I could tell you the exact moment I had given up on religion.

Kurt and I had been raised Catholic. We'd had Elizabeth baptized, and a priest presided over their burials. After that, I had promised myself I would never set foot in a church again, that there was nothing God could do for me that would make up for what I'd lost. However, this priest was a stranger. For all I knew, though, this was not about saving my soul but about saving Claire's life. What if this priest knew of a heart that UNOS didn't?

"The house is a mess," I said, but I opened the door so that he could walk inside. He stopped as we passed the living room, where Claire was still watching television. She turned, her thin, pale face rising like a moon over the back of the sofa. "This is my daughter," I said as I turned to him, and faltered-he was looking at Claire as if she were already a ghost.

I was just about to throw him out when Claire said hello and propped her elbows on the back of the sofa. "Do you know anything about saints?"

"Claire!"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm just asking, Mom."

"I do," the priest said. "I've always sort of liked St. Ulric. He's the patron saint who keeps moles away."

"Get out."

"Have you ever had a mole in here?"

"No."

"Then I guess he's doing his job," he said, and grinned.

Because he'd made Claire smile, I decided to let him in and give him the benefit of the doubt. He followed me into the kitchen, where I knew we could talk without Claire overhearing. "Sorry about the third degree," I said. "Claire reads a lot. Saints are her latest obsession. Six months ago, it was blacksmithing." I gestured to the table, offering him a seat.

"About Claire," he said. "I know she's sick. That's why I'm here."

Although I'd hoped for this, my own heart still leapfrogged.

"Can you help her?"

"Possibly," the priest said. "But I need you to agree to something first."

I would have become a nun; I would have walked over burning coals. "Anything," I vowed.

"I know the prosecutor's office already asked you about restorative justice-"

"Get out of my house," I said abruptly, but Father Michael didn't move.

My face flamed-with anger, and with shame that I had not connected the dots: Shay Bourne wanted to donate his organs; I was actively searching for a heart for Claire. In spite of all the news coverage from the prison, I had never linked them. I wondered whether I had been naive, or whether, even subconsciously, I'd been trying to protect my daughter.

It took all my strength to lift my gaze to the priest's. "What makes you think I would want a part of that man still walking around on this earth, much less inside my child?"

"June-please, just listen to me. I'm Shay's spiritual advisor. I talk to him. And I think you should talk to him, too."

"Why? Because it rubs your conscience the wrong way to give sympathy to a murderer? Because you can't sleep at night?"

"Because I think a good person can do bad things. Because

God forgives, and I can't do any less."

Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears-a rush of blood, of consequence?

Do you know how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it? "Nothing he says to me could make any difference."

"You're absolutely right," Father Michael said. "But what you say to him might."

There was one variable that the priest had left out of this equation:

I owed Shay Bourne nothing. It already felt like a second, searing death to watch the broadcasts each night, to hear the voices of supporters camping out near the prison, who brought their sick children and their dying partners along to be healed. You fools, I wanted to shout to them. Don't you know he's conned you, just like he conned me? Don't you know that he killed my love, my little girl?

"Name one person John Wayne Gacy killed," I demanded.

" I... I don't know," Father Michael said.

"Jeffrey Dahmer?"

He shook his head.

"But you remember their names, don't you?"

He got out of his chair and walked toward me slowly. "June, people can change."

My mouth twisted. "Yeah. Like a mild-mannered, homeless carpenter who becomes a psychopath?"

Or a silver-haired fairy of a girl whose chest, in a heartbeat, blooms with a peony of blood. Or a mother who turns into a woman she never imagined being: bitter, empty, broken.

I knew why this priest wanted me to meet with Shay Bourne. I knew what Jesus had said: Don't pay back in kind, pay back in kindness.

If someone does wrong to you, do right by them.

I'll tell you this: Jesus never buried his own child.

I turned away, because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry, but he put his arm around me and led me to a chair. He handed me a tissue. And then his voice, a murmur, clotted into individual words.

"Dear St. Felicity, patron saint of those who've suffered the death of a child, I ask for your intercession that the Lord will help this woman find peace..."

With more strength than I knew I had, I shoved him away.

"Don't you dare," I said, my voice trembling. "Don't you pray for me. Because if God's listening now, he's about eleven years too late." I walked toward the refrigerator, where the only decoration was a picture of Kurt and Elizabeth, held up by a magnet Claire had made in kindergarten. I had fingered the photo so often that the edges had rounded; the color had bled onto my hands. "When it happened, everyone said that Kurt and Elizabeth were at peace.

That they'd gone someplace better. But you know what? They didn't go anywhere. They were taken. I was robbed."

"Don't blame God for that, June," Father Michael said. "He didn't take your husband and your daughter."

"No," I said flatly. "That was Shay Bourne." I stared up at him coldly. "I'd like you to leave now."

I walked him to the door, because I didn't want him saying another word to Claire-who twisted around on the couch to see what was going on but must have picked up enough nonverbal cues from my stiff spine to know better than to make a peep. At the threshold, Father Michael paused. "It may not be when we want, or how we want, but eventually God evens the score," he said. "You don't have to be the one to seek revenge."

I stared at him. "It's not revenge," I said. "It's justice."

After the priest left, I was so cold that I could not stop shivering. I put on a sweater and then another, and wrapped a blanket around myself, but there's no way of warming up a body whose insides have turned to stone.

Shay Bourne wanted to donate his heart to Claire so that she'd live.

What kind of mother would I be if I let that happen?

And what kind of mother would I be if I turned him down?

Father Michael said Shay Bourne wanted to balance the scales: give me one daughter's life because he had taken another's. But

Claire wouldn't replace Elizabeth; I should have had them both.

And yet, this was the simplest of equations: You can have one, or you can have neither. What do you choose?

I was the one who hated Bourne-Claire had never met him. If

I did not take the heart, was I making that choice because of what

I thought was best for Claire... or what I could withstand myself?

I imagined Dr. Wu removing Bourne's heart from an Igloo cooler. There it was, a withered nut, a crystal black as coal. Put one drop of poison into the purest water, and what happens to the rest?

If I didn't take Bourne's heart, Claire would most likely die.

If I did, it would be like saying I could somehow be compensated for the death of my husband and daughter. And I couldn't- not ever.