stand right here and right now.
Miriam was never more torn. But it took no more than a fraction of a second for her to know what choice she simply had to make.
Tears streaming down her face, she hurried out of the room to go to her sister’s aid.
At that moment, Walter saw the future. It was much the same as the past.
What was he to do? He could not leave Miriam. Miriam would never escape Theresa’s web. He felt as if he had been sentenced to an indeterminate purgatory.
For Miriam’s sake he would try to adjust.
THE PRESENT
Things stayed pretty much that way from that day until today,” Father Weber concluded to his two absorbed listeners. “Well, I should say until yesterday,” he amended, “when Theresa got herself a ‘miracle.’”
“Have you talked to them since yesterday?” Tully asked.
“Early this morning.”
“How’s that?” Tully asked. “Far as I knew, none of the media had reached them. Why you?”
Weber seemed undecided on exactly how to answer. “I’m what used to be called ‘their priest.’ For years I was the associate pastor at my parish. Then the pastor asked for a parish way out in the boonies. And the chancery gave it to him. And-mostly because nobody else wanted it-I became pastor by default.
“The upshot is that I’ve been with them ever since they-all three- got together right after Wally and Miriam were married and took Theresa in. They have confided in me-all three-more than in anybody else, including their parents.
“However, since I spoke with them this morning, they will be talking to the media.”
“You gave them permission?” Koesler asked.
“Yeah.” Weber wore a sly smile.
“You really are ‘their priest,’” Koesler said. “I’m surprised you weren’t able to give Theresa her miracle. She probably has enough faith in you to use you as the miraculous instrument.”
“We tend to discourage that kind of thing.”
“Something I don’t understand,” Tully said. “When Zabola said that Theresa was feeding on this secondary gain thing: How does that square with her going after a miracle? I kind of agreed with him on that. But why would she even want to be cured? If she’s cured, she loses all that attention and help at home. She gives up-loses-her secondary gain … no?”
“Good question,” Weber said. “And I don’t have an answer. All I know is that once she heard about Green, she immediately decided to go to St. Joe’s. The Zabolas couldn’t talk her out of it. She can drive now, so she could go on her own.
“But Miriam wouldn’t hear of Theresa’s going alone … not with the crowds and all. Miriam said she’d drive. Then Wally wouldn’t let Miriam go unprotected. So all three went. But your point is well taken, Lieutenant. And I don’t have an answer to that either.”
“Maybe I do,” Koesler said. “Doesn’t this just reinforce the idea that this was all happening in Theresa’s subconscious-the illness and the secondary gain?
“She wanted to be miraculously cured. That’s why she insisted on going to St. Joseph’s. That was her consciousness acting. Consciously, she didn’t want to be ill, to be a paraplegic. If her paralysis was psychosomatic, as the doctors seem to agree, it wasn’t an illness that she welcomed. If there was the secondary gain of being waited on, or in making her married sister as miserable as Theresa was by being unmarried, none of the secondary gains was consciously desired as planned.
“The fact that she wanted the miracle puts everything in perspective.
“I think we’ve been imagining that Theresa is an out and out malingerer. That she was doing her best to take advantage of everyone. The closer the relationship, the more damage she seemed to want to do.
“That sort of woman would have stayed as far from the scene of a reputed miracle as she possibly could. By its very definition, secondary gain has to outweigh every other possibility. Literally, a person would have wanted attention, care, love more than health. If Theresa were doing this consciously, she would want the service of Miriam and Wally-however reluctantly that was given-more than she wanted health.
“A deliberately ill Theresa would not have been in St. Joe’s yesterday.”
“Makes sense to me,” Tully said.
“Me too,” Weber said.
“How about that quick escape from the church after she was ‘cured’?” Tully asked. “I’d a thought she’d stick around. Maybe say thanks to whoever she was praying to. Maybe talk to people. Hell, maybe go a little crazy.
“Instead, she gets out of the church and the neighborhood as fast as she can.”
“That was Wally’s idea entirely,” Weber said. “At first, he was shocked out of his wits when she got out of that wheelchair and started crawling toward the altar. Then, in a flash, he realized what had happened. He didn’t give a thought to a miracle of any kind. He still doesn’t think this was a miracle-in the sense of a cure. The miracle was that now Theresa could … had to … take care of herself. He would be rid of the burden of her.
“And he wanted to get Theresa out of there before the crowd had a chance to love her to death and hurt her. And then she’d be right back in his house, this time as a genuine cripple. So he got her out of there before even Theresa could grasp what was happening.”
“Something like
The three men laughed heartily.
“Well, that settles that,” Koesler said. “No Church authority will ever certify this as a miracle.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you sure?” Tully asked Koesler.
“Of what?”
“This … cure of the Waleski girl … that it isn’t a miracle?”
“No,” Koesler said. “Not that it isn’t a miracle. Rather that the
“Been doing some research, Bob?” Weber was wearing a mischievous grin.
Koesler nodded. “After all, this is going on in my backyard. Sooner or later some reporter is going to pin me down no matter how many times I plead no comment or try to refer him or her to the panel that’s supposed to do a Church investigation of these events.
“Anyway, what I learned-although I knew some of this before I began looking up the process-well, what I learned is that there is a Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican that handles a lot of the miracle verification. And I take it they set the standards for accepting or rejecting claims of miracles.
“This Congregation goes all the way back to the early eighteenth century and Pope Benedict XIV. There are four criteria. The first is that the problem-the injury, the illness-is serious. Life-threatening or crippling would be in the ballpark.
“Second, that there is objective proof of the existence of the problem. X-rays, CAT scans, documented diagnoses of doctors, that sort of thing.
“Third, that other treatment has failed. I guess a miracle has to be the final attempt at healing or a cure after trying everything medical science can throw at an illness.
“Finally, the cure has to be rapid and lasting. Everybody will agree that we may never know all the body can do to heal itself. A working immune system is a force to be reckoned with.
“As much as our bodies can accomplish in a self-help effort, we know there are things that the body can’t do by itself-not even with all that medical science can do to help. A body assaulted with massive cancers one day and completely healed the next. That’s the sort of thing we’re looking for in a miracle. And a cure that is lasting is the
