She lifted her chin then, and the screen of hair fell back. The entire left side of Grace Bourne's face was ravaged and pitted, a lava flow of skin that had been stretched and sewed to cover an extensive burn.
'Boo,' she said.
' I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean...'
'Everyone stares,' Grace said quietly. 'Even the ones who try not to.'
There was a fire. Shay had said. I don't want to talk about it.
I m sorry.
'Yeah, you said that already. The bathroom's down the hall.'
I put a hand on her arm. There were patches of skin there, too, that were scarred. 'Grace. That message-it's from your brother.'
She took a step away from me, stunned. 'You know Shay?'
'He needs to see you, Grace. He's going to die soon.'
'What did he say about me?'
'Not a lot,' I admitted. 'But you're the only family he has.'
'Do you know about the fire?' Grace asked.
'Yes. It was why he went to juvenile prison.'
'Did he tell you that our foster father died in it?'
This time, it was my turn to be surprised. A juvenile record would be sealed, which is why I hadn't known during the capital murder trial what Shay had been convicted of. I'd assumed, when fire had been mentioned, that it was arson. I hadn't realized that the charges might have included negligent homicide, or even manslaughter. And I understood exactly why, now, Renata Ledoux might viscerally hate Shay.
Grace was staring at me intently. 'Did he ask to see me?'
'He doesn't actually know I'm here.'
She turned away, but not before I saw that she had started to cry.
'He didn't want me at his trial.'
'He probably didn't want you to have to witness that.'
'You don't know anything.' She buried her face in her hands.
'Grace,' I said, 'come back with me. Come see him.'
'I can't,' she sobbed. 'I can't. You don't understand.'
But I was beginning to: Shay had set the fire that had disfigured her. 'That's all the more reason to meet with him. Forgive him, before it's too late.'
'Forgive him? Forgive him?' Grace parroted. 'No matter what I say, it won't change what happened. You don't get to do your life over.' She glanced away. 'I think... I just... you should go.'
It was my dismissal. I nodded, accepting.
'The bathroom's the second door on the right.'
Right-my ruse to get inside. I walked down the hall to a restroom that was floral, overpowering in a scent of air freshener and rose potpourri.
There were little crocheted toilet paper holders, a crocheted bra for the toilet tank, and a crocheted cover for the Kleenex box. There were roses on the shower curtain, and art on the walls-framed prints of flowers, except for one of a child's drawing-a dragon, or maybe a lizard. The room felt like the kind of abode for an elderly lady who'd lost count of her cats. It was stifling; slowly, Grace Bourne was suffocating herself to death.
If Shay knew that his sister forgave him for the fire, then maybeeven if he wasn't allowed to donate his heart-it would be enough to let him die in peace. Grace was in no condition to be convinced right now, but I could work on her. I'd get her phone number and call her, until I'd worn down her resistance.
I opened the sliding mirrored medicine cabinet, looking for a prescription with Grace's phone number so that I could copy it down.
There were lotions and creams and exfoliants, toothpaste and floss and deodorant. There was also a medicine bottle of Ambien, with Grace's phone number across the top of the label. I wrote it on the inside of my palm with a pen and set the pills back on the shelf, beside a small pewter frame. Two tiny children sat at a table: Grace in a high chair with a glass of milk in front of her, and Shay hunched over a picture he was drawing. A dragon, or maybe a lizard.
He was smiling, so wide it looked like it might hurt.
Every inmate is someone's child. And so is every victim.
I walked out of the bathroom. Handing Grace a card with my name and number on it, I thanked her. 'Just in case you change your mind.'
'Mine was never the one that needed changing,' Grace said, and closed the door behind me. Immediately I heard the bolt slide shut, the curtain in the front window rustle. I kept envisioning the dragon pic hire, which was carefully matted and framed in the bathroom, TO GRACIE, it had said in the upper left-hand corner.
I was all the way to Crawford Notch before I realized what had been niggling in my mind about that photo of Shay as a child. In it, he'd been holding a pen in his right hand. But in prison-when he ate, when he wrote-he was a lefty.
Could someone change so radically over a lifetime? Or could all of these changes in Shay-from his dominant hand to his miracles to his ability to quote the Gospel of Thomas-have come from some... possession?
It sounded like some bad science fiction movie, but that wasn't to say it couldn't happen. If prophets could be overtaken by the Holy
Spirit, why not a murderer?
Or, maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe who we were in the past informed who we chose to be in the future. Maybe Shay had intentionally shifted his writing hand. Maybe he cultivated miracles, to make up for a sin as horrible as setting a fire that took the lives of two people-one literal, one metaphorical. It struck me that even in the
Bible, there was no record of Jesus's life between the ages of eight and thirty-three. What if he'd done something awful; what if his later years were a response to that?
You could do a horrible thing, and then spend your whole natural life trying to atone.
I knew that better than anyone.
Mdggie
The last conversation I had with Shay Bourne, before putting him on the stand as a witness, had not gone well. In the holding cell, I'd reminded him what was going to happen in court. Shay didn't deal well with curves being thrown at him; he could just as likely become belligerent as curl up in a ball beneath the wooden stand. Either way, the judge would think he was crazy-and that couldn't happen.
'So after the marshal helps you into the seat,' I had explained,
'they're going to bring you a Bible.'
'I don't need one.'
'Right. But they need you to swear on it.'
'I want to swear on a comic book,' Shay had replied. 'Or a Playboy magazine.'
'You have to swear on a Bible,' I'd said, 'because we have to play by their rules before we're allowed to change the game.'
Just then, a U.S. marshal had come to tell me that court was about to convene. 'Remember,' I had said to Shay, 'focus only on me. Nothing else in that courtroom's important. It's just us, having a chat.'
He had nodded, but I could see that he was jittery. And now, as I watched him being brought into the courtroom, everyone else could see it, too. He was bound at the ankles and the wrists, with a belly chain to link the others; the links rattled as he shuddered into his seat beside me.
His head was ducked, and he was murmuring words no one but I could hear. He was actually cursing out one of the U.S. marshals who'd led him into the courtroom, but with any luck, people who watched his mouth moving silently would think he was praying.
As soon as I put him on the witness stand, a quiet pall fell over the people in the gallery. You are not like us, their silence seemed to say. You never will be. And there, without me asking a single question, was my answer: no amount of piousness could erase the stain on the hands of a murderer.
I walked in front of Shay and waited until he caught my eye. Focus, I mouthed, and he nodded. He gripped the front of the witness box railing, and his chains clinked.
