June pulled away from me. 'I wish you could have, too.'
'I didn't ask you here to hurt you all over again. Shay truly does want to make amends. He knows the one good thing to come out of his life might be his death.' I looked at the Constantine wire running along the top of the prison fence: a crown of thorns for a man who wanted to be a savior. 'He's taken away the rest of your family,' I said. 'If nothing else, let him help you keep Claire.'
June ducked into her car. She was crying again as she lurched out of the parking spot. I watched her pause at the exit of the prison, her blinker marking time.
Then, suddenly, her brake lights came on. She sped backward, stopping beside me with only inches to spare. She unrolled the window on the driver's side. TU take his heart,' June said, her voice thick. TU take it, and I'll watch that son of a bitch die, and we still won't be even.'
Too stunned to find any words, I nodded. I watched June drive off, her taillights winking as red as the eyes of any devU.
Maggie
'Well,' I said when I saw Father Michael walking back into the prison, dazed, 'that sucked.'
At the sound of my voice, he looked up. 'She's taking the heart.'
My mouth dropped open. 'You're kidding.'
'No. She's taking it for all the wrong reasons... but she's taking it.'
I could not believe it. Following the debacle in the restorative justice meeting, I would have more easily accepted that she'd gone out to buy an
Uzi to exact her own justice against Shay Bourne. My mind began to kick into high gear: if June Nealon wanted Shay's heart-for whatever reason-then there was a great deal I had to do.
'I'll need you to write an affidavit, saying that you're Shay's spiritual advisor and that his religious beliefs include donating his heart.'
He drew in his breath. 'Maggie, I can't put my name on a court document about Shay-'
'Sure you can. Just lie,' I said, 'and go to confession afterward.
You're not doing this for you; you're doing it for Shay. And we'll need a cardiologist to examine Shay, to see if his heart's even a match for
Claire.'
The priest closed his eyes and nodded. 'Should I go in and tell him?'
'No,' I said, smiling. 'Let me.'
After a slight detour, I walked through the metal detectors again and was taken to the attorney-client room outside I-tier. A few minutes later, a grumbling officer showed up with Shay. 'He keeps getting moved around like this, the state's going to have to hire him a chauffeur.'
I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together, the worlds smallest violin.
Shay ran his hands through his hair, making it stand on end; the shirt of his prison scrubs was untucked. 'I'm sorry' he said immediately.
'I'm not the one who could have used the apology,' I replied.
'I know.' He squinched his eyes shut, shook his head. 'There were eleven years of words in my head, and I couldn't get them out the way I wanted.'
'Amazingly, June Nealon is willing to accept your heart for Claire.'
A few times in my career, I'd been the messenger of information that would change a clients life: the victim of a hate crime whose store was destroyed, receiving reparation and damages that would allow him to build a bigger, better venue; the gay couple who were given the legal stamp of approval to be listed as parents in the elementary school directory. A smile blossomed across Shay's face, and I remembered, at that moment, that gospel is another word for good news.
'It's not a done deal yet,' I said. 'We don't know, medically, if this is viable. And there are a whole bunch of legal hoops to jump through... which is what I need to talk to you about, Shay.'
I waited until he sat down across from me at the table, and was calm enough to stop grinning and look me in the eye. I had gotten to this point with clients before: you drew them a map and explained where the exit hatch was, and then you waited to see if they understood you needed them to crawl there on their own. That was legitimate, in law; you were not telling them to alter their truth, just explaining the way the courts worked, and hoping they would choose to massage it themselves. 'Listen carefully,' I said. 'There's a law in this country that says the state has to let you practice your own religion, as long as it doesn't interfere with safety in the prison. There's also a law in New Hampshire that says even though the court has sentenced you to die by lethal injection, which wouldn't allow you to donate your heart... in certain circumstances, death row inmates can be hanged instead. And if you're hanged, you'd be able to donate your organs.'
It was a lot for him to take in, and I could see him ingesting the words as if they were being fed on a conveyor.
'I might be able to convince the state to hang you,' I said, 'if I can prove to a judge in federal court that donating your organs is part of your religion. Do you understand what I'm saying?'
He winced. 'I didn't like being Catholic.'
'You don't have to say you're Catholic.'
'Tell that to Father Michael.'
'Gladly.' I laughed.
'Then what do I have to say?'
'There are a lot of people outside this prison, Shay, who have no trouble believing that what you're doing in here has some sort of religious basis. But I need you to believe it, too. If this is going to work, you have to tell me donating your organs is the only way to salvation.'
He stood up and started to pace. 'My way of saving myself may not be someone else's way.'
'That's okay,' I said. 'The court doesn't care about anyone else. They just want to know if you think that giving your heart to Claire Nealon is going to redeem you in God's eyes.'
When he stopped in front of me and caught my eye, I saw something that surprised me. Because I had been so busy crafting an escape hatch for Shay Bourne, I had forgotten that sometimes the outrageous is actually the truth. 'I don't think it,' he said. 'I know it.'
'Then we're in business.' I slipped my hands into my suit pockets and suddenly remembered what else I had to tell Shay. 'It's prickly,' I said. 'Like walking on a board full of needles. But somehow it doesn't hurt. It smells like Sunday morning, like a mower outside your window when you're trying to pretend the sun's not up yet.'
As I spoke, Shay closed his eyes. 'I think I remember.'
'Well,' I said. 'Just in case you don't.' I withdrew the handfuls of grass I'd torn from outside the prison grounds and sprinkled the tufts onto the floor.
A smile broke over Shays face. He kicked off his prison-issued tennis shoes and began to move back and forth, barefoot, over the grass. Then he bent down to gather the cuttings and funneled them into the breast pocket of his scrubs, against a heart that was still beating strong. 'I'm going to save them,' he said.
'I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish He didn't trust me so much.'
- MOTHER TERESA
June
Everything comes with a price.
You can have the man of your dreams, but only for a few years.
You can have the perfect family, but it turns out to be an illusion.
You can keep your daughter alive, but only if she hosts the heart of the person you hate most in this world.
I could not go straight home from the prison. I was shaking so hard that at first, I couldn't even drive; and even afterward, I missed the exit off the highway twice. I had gone to that meeting to tell Shay Bourne we didn't want his heart. So why had I changed my mind? Maybe because I was angry. Maybe because I was so shocked by what Shay Bourne had said. Maybe because if we waited for UNOS to find Claire a heart, it could be too late.
Besides, I told myself, this was all likely a moot point. The chance of Bourne even being a good physical match
