Jodi Picoult - Change of heart

But I bet, somehow, something went wrong. That Shay was trying to save her, the way he couldn't save me."

"It's not the same," I said. "My husband would never have hurt Elizabeth like that."

"My foster mother said that, too." She met my gaze. "How would you have felt if-when Elizabeth died-someone told you that you can't have her back, but that a part of her could still be somewhere in the world? You may not know that part; you may not ever have contact with it-but you'd know it was out there, alive and well. Would you have wanted that?"

We were both standing on the same side of Claire's bed. Grace

Bourne was almost exactly my height, my build. In spite of her scars, it felt like looking into a mirror. "There's still a heart, June," she said. "And it's a good one."

We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth-from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you are a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.

How long ago had Claire decided that she couldn't fight any longer? Did she talk to a friend, a diary, Dudley, because I didn't listen? And had I done this before: ignored another daughter, because

I was too afraid to hear what she had to say?

Grace Bourne's words kept circling around my mind: My foster mother said that, too.

No. Kurt would never.

But there were other images clouding my mind, like flags thrown on a grassy field: the pair of Elizabeth's panties that I found inside a couch cushion liner when she was too little to know how to work a zipper. The way he often needed to search for something in the bathroom-Tylenol, an Ace bandage-when

Elizabeth was in the tub.

And I heard Elizabeth, every night, when I tucked her in.

"Leave the lights on," she'd beg, just like Grace Bourne had.

I had thought it was a phase she'd outgrow, but Kurt said we couldn't let her give in to her fears. The compromise he suggested was to turn off the light-and lie down with her until she fell asleep.

What happens when I'm asleep? she'd asked me once. Does everything stop?

What if that had not been the dreamy question of a seven-yearold still figuring out this world, but a plea from a child who wanted to escape it?

I thought of Grace Bourne, hiding behind her scarves. I thought of how you can look right at a person and not see them.

I realized that I might never know what had really happened between them-neither Kurt nor Elizabeth could tell. And Shay

Bourne-well, no matter what he saw, his fingerprints had still been on that gun. After last time, I did not know if I could ever bear to face him again.

She was better off dead, he'd said, and I'd run away from what he was trying to tell me.

I pictured Kurt and Elizabeth together in that coffin, his arms holding her tight, and suddenly I thought I was going to throw up.

"Mom," Claire said, her voice thin and wispy. "Are you okay?"

I put my hand on her cheek, where there was a faint flush induced by the medicine-her heart was not strong enough to put a bloom on her face. "No, I'm not," I admitted. "I'm dying."

She smiled a little. "What a coincidence."

But it wasn't funny. I was dying, by degrees. "I have to tell you something," I said, "and you're going to hate me for it." I reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly. "I know it isn't fair. But you're the child, and I'm the parent, and I get to make the choice, even though the heart gets to beat in your chest."

Her eyes filled with tears. "But you said-you promised. Don't make me do this..."

"Claire, I cannot sit here and watch you die when I know that there's a heart waiting for you."

"But not just any heart." She was crying now, her head turned away from me. "Did you think at all what it will be like for me, after?"

I brushed her hair off her forehead. "It's all I think about, baby."

"That's a lie," Claire argued. "All you ever think about is yourself, and what you want, and what you've lost. You know, you're not the only one who missed out on a real life."

"That's exactly why I can't let you throw this one away."

Slowly, Claire turned to face me.

"I don't want to be alive because of him."

"Then stay alive because of me." I drew in my breath and pulled my deepest secret free. "See, I'm not as strong as you are,

Claire. I don't think I can stand to be left behind again."

She closed her eyes, and I thought she had drifted back into sleep, until she squeezed my hand. "Okay," she said. "But I hope you realize I may hate you for the rest of my life."

The rest of my life. Was there any other phrase with so much music in it? "Oh, Claire," I said tightly. "That's going to be a long, long time."

"God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown."

- FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, THE CAY SCIENCE

When inmates tried to kill themselves, they'd use the vent. They would string coaxial cables from their television sets through the louvers, wrap a noose around their necks, and step off the metal bunk. For this reason, one week before Shay's execution, he was transferred to an observation cell. There was a camera monitoring his every move; an officer was stationed outside the door. It was a suicide watch, so that a prisoner could not kill himself before the state had its turn.

Shay hated it-it was all he talked about as I sat with him for eight hours a day. I'd read from the Bible, and from the Gospel of

Thomas, and from Sports Illustrated. I'd tell him about the plans I'd made for the youth group to host a Fourth of July pie auction, a holiday that he would not be around to celebrate. He would act like he was listening, but then he'd address the officer standing outside.

"Don't you think I deserve some privacy?" he'd yell. "If you only had a week left, would you want someone watching you every time you cried? Ate? Took a piss?"

Sometimes he seemed resigned to the fact that he was going to die-he'd ask me if I really thought there was a heaven, if you could catch stripers or rainbows or salmon there, if fish even went to heaven in the first place, if fish souls were just as good eating as the real kind.

Other times he sobbed so hard that he made himself sick; he'd wipe his mouth on the sleeve of his jumpsuit and lie down on the bunk, staring up at the ceiling. The only thing that got him through those darker times was talking about Claire Nealon, whose mother had reclaimed

Shay's heart. He had a grainy newspaper photo of Claire, and by now. he'd run his hands over it so often that the girl's pale face had become a blank white oval, features left to the imagination.

The scaffold had been built; throughout the prison you could smell the sap of the pine, taste the fine sawdust in the air. Although there had indeed already been a trapdoor in the chaplain's office, it proved too costly to decimate the cafeteria below it, which accommodated the drop. Instead, a sturdy wooden structure went up beside the injection chamber that had already been built. But when editorials in the Concord

Monitor and the Union Leader criticized the barbarism of a public execution (they speculated that any paparazzi capable of crashing Madonna's wedding in a helicopter would also be able to get footage of the hanging), the warden scrambled to conceal the scaffold. On short order, their best arrangement was to purchase an old big-top tent from a family-run Vermont circus that was going out of business. The festive red and purple stripes took up most of the prison courtyard. You could see its spire from Route 93: Come one, come all. The greatest show on earth.