Jodi Picoult - Change of heart

"Well. I, uh, hope so, too..." Christian frowned, confused, and I realized that we were not speaking the same language. "Let me guess," I said. "Where you come from, that doesn't mean getting a girl pregnant?"

"Good God, no! It's, you know, rousing someone from their sleep."

I rolled onto my back and started laughing, and he sank down beside me, the towel slipping dangerously low. "But since I've knocked you up," he said, leaning down to kiss me, "maybe I could try my hand at knocking you up..."

I had morning breath and hair that felt like a rat had taken nest in it, not to mention a courtroom verdict to attend, but I wrapped my arms around Christian's neck and kissed him back. Which was about the same moment that a phone began to ring.

"Bloody hell," Christian muttered, and he swung over the far side of the bed to where he'd folded his clothes in a neat pile, his cell phone and pager resting on top. "It's not mine," he said, but by then I'd wrapped his discarded towel around me and hiked to my purse in the living room to dig out my own.

"Ms. Bloom?" a woman's voice said. "This is June Nealon."

"June," I said, immediately sobering. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes," she said, and then, "No. Oh, God. I can't answer that question."

There was a beat of silence. "I can't take it," June whispered.

"I can't imagine how difficuft all this waiting has been for you," I said, and I meant it. "But we should know definitively what's going to happen by lunchtime."

"I can't take it," June repeated. "Give it to someone else."

And she hung up the phone, leaving me with Shay's heart.

There were only seven people attending Monday morning Mass, and I was one of them. I wasn't officiating-it was my day off, so Father

Walter was presiding, along with a deacon named Paul O'Hurley. I participated in the Lord's Prayer and the sign of peace, and I realized these were the moments Shay had missed: when people came together to celebrate God. You might be able to find Him on your own spiritual journey, but it was a lonelier trip. Coming to church felt like validation, like a family where everyone knew your flaws, and in spite of that was still willing to invite you back.

Long after Father Walter finished Mass and said his good-byes to the congregants, I was still sitting in a pew. I wandered toward the votive candles, watching the tongues of their flames wag like gossips.

"I didn't think we'd see you today, with the verdict and all," Father

Walter said, walking up to me.

"Yeah," I said. "Maybe that's why I needed to come."

Father Walter hesitated. "You know, Mikey, you haven't been fooling anyone."

I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. "No?"

"You don't have to be embarrassed about having a crisis of faith,"

Father Walter said. "That's what makes us human."

I nodded, not trusting myself to respond. I wasn't having a crisis of faith; I just didn't particularly think Father Walter was any more right in his faith than Shay was.

Father Walter reached down and lit one of the candles, murmuring a prayer. "You know how I see it? There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing-light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light." We both watched the flame reach higher, gasping for oxygen, before settling comfortably. "I guess from my point of view, we can choose to be in the dark, or we can light a candle. And for me,

Christ is that candle."

I faced him. "But it's not just candles, is it? There are flashlights and fluorescent bulbs and bonfires..."

"Christ says that there are others doing miracles in His name,"

Father Walter agreed. "I never said there might not be a million points of light out there-I just think Jesus is the one who strikes the match."

He smiled. "I couldn't quite understand why you were so surprised when you thought God had showed up, Mikey. I mean, when hasn't He been here?"

Father Walter started to walk back down the church aisle, and I fell into step beside him. "You got time for lunch in the next few weeks?" he asked.

"Can't," I said, grinning. Til be doing a funeral." It was a joke between priests-you couldn't schedule anything when your plans were likely to be changed by the lives and deaths of your parishioners.

Except this time, as I said it, I realized it wasn't a joke. In days, I'd be presiding over Shay's funeral.

Father Walter met my gaze. "Good luck today, Mike. I'll be praying."

Out of the blue I remembered the Latin words that had been combined to create religion: re + ligere. I had always assumed they translated to reconnect. It was only when I was at seminary that I learned the correct translation was to bind.

Back then, I hadn't seen a difference.

When I first arrived at St. Catherine's, I was given the task of hosting a heart: St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney's, to be precise-a French priest who'd died in 1859, at the age of seventy-three. Forty-five years later, when his body was exhumed, the priest's heart had not decayed. Our parish had been chosen as the U.S. location for the heart's veneration; thousands of Catholics from the Northeast were expected to view the organ.

I remembered being very stressed out, and wondering why I had to battle police lines and roadblocks when I had turned to the priesthood to get closer to God. I watched Catholics file into our little church and disrupt our Mass schedule and our confession schedule. But after the doors were locked and the onlookers gone, I'd stare down at the glass case with the organ sealed inside. The real wonder, to me, was the course of events that had brought this ancient relic all the way across an ocean to be venerated. Timing was everything. After all, if they hadn't dug up the saint's body, they never would have known about his heart, or told others. A miracle was only a miracle if someone witnessed it, and if the story was passed along to someone else.

Maggie sat in front of me with Shay, her back straight as a poker, her wild mane of hair tamed into a bun at the base of her neck. Shay was subdued, shuffling, fidgety. I glanced down at my lap, which held a manila envelope Maggie had passed me-a piece of art left behind by

Lucius DuFresne, who'd passed away over the weekend. There had also been a note on a piece of lined paper:

June has refused the heart. Have not told Shay.

If, on a long shot, we won this case-how would we break the news to Shay that we still could not give him what he so desperately wanted?

"All rise," a U.S. marshal called.

Maggie glanced at me over her shoulder and offered a tight smile, and the entire courtroom got to its feet while Judge Haig entered.

It was so quiet that I could hear the tiny electronic gasps of the video equipment as the judge began to speak. "This is a unique case in

New Hampshire's history," Haig said, "and possibly a unique case in the federal court system. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons

Act certainly protects the religious freedoms of a person confined to an institution such as Mr. Bourne, but that doesn't mean that such a person can simply claim that any of his beliefs constitutes a true religion.

For example, imagine what would happen if a death row inmate announced that by the tenets of his religion, he had to die of old age.

Therefore, when balancing the religious rights of inmates against the compelling governmental interest of the state, this court is mindful of more than just the monetary cost, or even the security cost to other inmates."

The judge folded his hands. "That being said... we are not in the habit in this country of allowing the government to define what a church is, or vice versa. And that puts us at a standstill-unless we can develop a litmus test for what religion really is. So how do we go about doing that? Well, all we have to work with is history. Dr. Fletcher posed similarities between Gnosticism and Mr. Bourne's beliefs. However,