pirits when they please Can either sex assume, or both.

–John Milton,

Paradise Lost The first time Colin kissed me, I was a college junior, sitting in an empty gymnasium, conjugating the French verb vouloir. “To want,” I had said, a test, and I tried to concentrate on the hard plane of the bleachers beneath me, instead of the light reflecting off Colin’s face.

He was, quite simply, the handsomest boy I’d ever seen. He was from the South, a member of the good-ol’-boy network; I was a Jewish girl from the suburbs. His granddaddy had endowed a chair in the history department; I was at the school on an academic scholarship. I had learned his name from the Saturday football rosters: COLIN WHITE, QB, 5ft 11inch, 185 lbs., HOMETOWN: VIENNA,

VA. I braved the cold and my own ignorance of football to watch him flash across the deep-green field like the needle of a skilled embroiderer.

But he was just a daydream for me; our worlds were so far apart that finding common ground seemed not only unlikely, but ludicrous. Yet when the coach of the team called the Student Tutoring Service and asked for someone to help Colin pass French,

I snatched up the assignment. And then spent three days gathering the nerve to call and set up a tutoring schedule.

Colin turned out to be unfailingly polite,

always pulling out my chair and holding open doors.

He was also the worst French student I’d ever met. He ruined the melody of the language with his Virginia drawl and stumbled over the simplest forms of grammar. I was doing him no good, although I didn’t mind. It meant that I would get to keep coming back.

“Vouloir,” I had said that day. “It’s irregular.”

Colin shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t get this the way you do.”

It was one of the nicest things I’d ever been told. Although I would have been entirely out of place in Colin’s sports or social world,

I was in my element right here. “Je veux.”

I sighed. “I want.” I pointed at the book, to show him.

His hand came over mine, and I went absolutely still. Afraid to look him in the eye, I found something fascinating about that page of the textbook. But I could not stop myself from feeling the heat of his body as he leaned closer, hearing the swish of his jeans as he stretched out his legs,

imprisoning me. And then his face was all I could see.

“Je veux,” he murmured. His mouth was softer than I’d dreamed, and then he pulled away, waiting to see what I would do.

I glanced at him long enough to realize that the invincible Colin White, Star Quarterback, was nervous. My heart pounded like a timpani, so loud in my ears that for a moment I did not hear the distant sound of catcalls, of someone clapping.

I stood up and ran out of the gym.

October 27, 1999 The night after Ian and I make love, I dream that we are getting married. I’m wearing the gown from my wedding to Colin and carrying a bouquet of wildflowers. I walk down the aisle by myself and smile at Ian, and then we both face the person officiating. For some reason I am expecting Rabbi Solomon, but when I open my eyes I am standing in front of Jesus on the cross.

Faith is cuddled beside me. “How come you’re naked?” she asks. “And how come you slept out here?”

With a start I glance around the living room,

searching for Ian. When I realize he’s missing, all my doubts creep in: He is used to one-night stands. He makes a living out of seducing people in one form or another. I am one of those people, for more than one reason. I remember our discussion about a truce; was last night a way of saying that it is over?

“Ma-a!” Faith whines, yanking my hair.

“Hey!” I rub my scalp and try to focus on her. “I got hot, so I took off my nightgown. And you were snoring.”

Faith seems to accept this. “I want breakfast,” she announces.

“Get dressed and we’ll find something to eat.”

With Faith gone, a thousand thoughts run through my mind, none of them with happy endings. I am not sophisticated enough for someone like Ian. He’s left because he cannot look me in the eye. He’s gone back to New Hampshire, and he’s going to tell the world everything he has learned about Faith, from her shoe size to her bumbling experience with Michael. He does not even remember what happened last night. I close my eyes, disgusted. I have already lived this story.

I have already fallen in love with a man whom my mind inflated to such mythic proportions that I could stare right at him and still not see him clearly.

“I didn’t mean it,” Colin told me years ago, after our first kiss. He admitted that two of the wide receivers had bet twenty dollars he couldn’t seduce me before the end of that first tutoring session. Then he shook his head. “No, I take that back. I wanted to kiss you. For the money at first, but then it happened, and it wasn’t about that at all. I would really like it,” he said, “if you’d go out with me sometime.”

We went to a movie three nights later. And then to another movie. And out to dinner. And soon,

as unlikely as it seemed, when Colin was walking across campus, I was wedged beneath his arm. For someone small and skinny and brainy, someone who had never moved in popular circles, it was a heady feeling. I would pretend that I did not hear cheerleaders snickering as we passed, teammates asking when he’d switched over to screwing little boys.

Colin liked me, he said, because I was sweet and could talk about nearly anything with knowledge and conviction –unlike most of the Magnolia Queen debutantes who had always been trotted out in front of him. But Colin was accustomed to that type of girl all the same. And whether it was unconscious or by intent, he turned me into one of them little by little–bringing me headbands to pull the hair off my face, introducing me to Bloody Marys on Sunday mornings, even buying me a cheap strand of fake pearls, to wear with everything from the Izod knit shirts I borrowed from his dresser to my own corduroy jumpers. I did whatever he asked, and more, intent on being as good a student at turning into a WASP as I had been at any academic subject. It never occurred to me that Colin was interested in what he could make me into, instead of what I already was. What struck me, then, was simply that he was interested.

The night of Winter Formals I put on a simple black dress and hooked on my pearls and even wore a special bra that made it look as if I had something to support. We were going to Colin’s fraternity, and I was bound and determined to pass muster. But fifteen minutes before Colin was supposed to pick me up, he called. “I’m sick. I’ve been throwing up for an hour.”

“I’ll be right over,” I said.

“Don’t. I just want to sleep for a while.”

He hesitated, then said, “Mariah, I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t. I could not be sure of myself at a fraternity dance, but I knew how to take care of someone ill. I got into my faded jeans again and walked into town, where I bought chicken soup at the grocery store, fresh flowers, and a crossword-puzzle book. Then I went to Colin’s dormitory room.

Which was empty.

I left the chicken soup still steaming on the threshold of the door and wandered aimlessly around the campus. Hadn’t I expected this, deep down?

Hadn’t I told myself this was coming? Snow began to settle on the shoulders of my coat as I turned onto Fraternity Row. The parties were loud, with steam and laughter and fumes of grain alcohol spilling through the open windows. I edged to the back of Colin’s frat house, stood on a milk crate, and looked inside.

A group of football players and their dates formed a Gordian knot–black tuxedos threaded with splashes of colored satin on a lap or draped over a neck. Colin was facing me,

laughing at a joke I had not heard. His arm was looped around the waist of a beautiful redhead. I stared for so long that it took me a moment to realize that Colin was looking at me, too.

He chased me across campus to my room.

“Mariah! You’ve got to let me explain!”

I yanked open the door. “You were sick,”

I said.

“I was! I swear!” His voice turned low and smooth. “When I woke up, I tried to call you, but you weren’t here. The guys came by and convinced me to go over to the House for a while.

Annette … well, she’s nothing. She was someone who was hanging around.”

Was I nothing? Was I someone who was hanging around?

Colin’s fingers framed my face. “But I left her to be here with you,” he said, reading my thoughts. His breath fell onto my mouth, a curious mix of mint and scotch, and I remembered how Colin had described gentling the horses he’d worked with in Virginia–by blowing into their nostrils, so that they would not fear his scent.

“Colin,” I whispered, “why me?”

“Because you’re different from them. You’re smarter,

and better, and–I don’t know–I just keep thinking that maybe if I’m with you, it’s going to rub off, so I’ll be different, too.”

It was an amazing concept–that somehow Colin had a new explanation for why I’d always remained on the fringe: not because I wasn’t good enough for others, but because I was just waiting for others to flock around me. I leaned forward and kissed him.

Later, when we were undressed and Colin was rising over me like a great bird blocking out the sun, he asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I was not only certain, I’d been waiting my whole life for this first time with a man who knew me better than I knew myself. I nodded and reached toward him, expecting magic.

When Ian comes into the cabin, we both freeze. With great precision I lay my spoon down beside my cereal bowl; he methodically closes the door behind him.

This time, I tell myself, I am not going to let it happen. I clasp my hands in my lap so that Ian cannot see them trembling. He’s not Colin, but I am just as powerless now as I was then.

Suddenly I realize why I could not have turned Colin away years ago. I realize why I am getting involved, once again, with a man bound to hurt me. In my experience, falling in love has little to do with wanting someone. It is much more enticing to me to be wanted.

Without saying a word, Ian meets me halfway across the kitchen and pulls me into his arms. Inside, I am tumbling. He doesn’t kiss, or stroke, or do anything but hold me,

until I give in to the urge to close my eyes and let him lead.

Ian hands Mariah his cell phone and watches her disappear into the bedroom for privacy while she calls her mother. He can’t blame her. As wonderful as it is to touch her, they are still strangers of a sort. He has not told her about his morning visit to Michael; she prefers to be alone when she speaks to Millie.

“So,” he says amiably to Faith, “how about a game of gin?”

She looks up from her coloring book, wary.

Well, he can respect that, too. The last time he was with her–at Lockwood–he’d practically snarled. He widens his grin a little,

determined to be charming, if only for Mariah’s sake.

Suddenly Mariah is standing at the doorway of the living room, her face white.

“We have to go home,” she says.

Boston, Massachusetts In the Vatican there is an official whose sole responsibility is to find the holes in each proposed case of sainthood. He examines every action and writing and word spoken by the allegedly virtuous person in an effort to find one slip, one swear, one lapse from the faith that might prevent canonization. For example, he might unearth the fact that Mother Teresa missed vespers on July 9, 1947. Or that she took the Lord’s name in vain when seized with fever.

The Catholic Church even has a certain name for this position: Promoter of the Faith, or more irreverently, the Devil’s Advocate.

It is a job Father Paul Rampini thinks he’d fill splendidly.

He doesn’t live in Rome, though. And he is hardly important enough to be chosen for such a critical job, since he’s only taught at seminary in Boston for sixteen years. But still,

Father Rampini has met his fair share of the falsely venerated. As one of the foremost theologians in the Northeast, he’s been called in to consult on many occasions when visionaries began spouting claims. Of the forty-six cases he’s examined, not one received a favorable report to the bishop from Father Rampini. And most of them only chattered on about the usual: glowing images of Mary, a crucifix appearing in the mist over a valley, Jesus telling people the hour of reckoning was at hand.

The idea of a female God does not sit well with Father Rampini.

He turns off the ignition in his Honda and opens his briefcase. The pink pamphlet from the MotherGod society lies on top. Father Rampini can barely stand to look at it. It is one thing for someone like him–a priest who teaches at seminary, a man who has devoted his life to theology–to reconsider the procession of persons in the godhead. It is another thing entirely for a seven-year-old girl–Jewish,

at that!–to start proclaiming God as a mother.

It is said that she’s a healer. Well, that he might even accept, with the proper sorts of proof.

And that she has stigmata–again, he’d like to see it with his own eyes. But to say that God is visiting her in a clearly female form …

certainly it is heresy.

Father Rampini checks his reflection in the rearview mirror before opening the door of his car.

He tucks the leather portfolio beneath his arm and steps out, smoothing the placket of his black shirt and adjusting the white collar.

The door to the rectory sweeps open, and Father MacReady stands on the threshold. For the briefest of moments they size each other up:

parish priest to seminary priest, confessor to researcher, Irish to Italian. Father MacReady steps forward, filling the doorway,

making it impossible for the visiting priest to enter.

Just as quickly, he steps back. “Father.” He nods. “I hope your trip was all right?”

“A little bit of rain near Brattleboro,”

Paul says, the mutual antagonism vanishing into professional politesse like smoke.

“Come in,” Father MacReady says, glancing around. “Can I get your bag for you?”

“That’s all right. I don’t imagine I’ll be staying.”

This is news to Father MacReady. Although he isn’t thrilled to share his home with some pompous,

published yahoo from St. Joseph’s, he knows that it will reflect poorly on himself if he fails to offer enough hospitality. “It’s no trouble.”

“No, of course not. I just believe I’ll be able to wrap this case up in a matter of hours.”

At that, Joseph MacReady laughs. “Do you? Maybe you’d better come inside.”

On the plane home from Kansas City Ian sits apart from Faith and me, since we don’t want to attract attention by being seen together. An hour into the flight, while Faith is busy listening to the movie, I hesitantly creep into the darkened first-class cabin and take the seat beside him. He reaches over the seat divider and squeezes my hand. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How’s everything back there?”

“Fine. We had cereal for breakfast. You?”

“Waffles.”

“Oh,” I answer politely, thinking that this is not the conversation two people who made love so magically the night before ought to be having.

“Have you thought about the hearing?”

I’ve told Ian everything my mother told me: Joan Standish has received word that Colin’s suing me for custody of Faith. “What can I do? He’ll say that Faith shouldn’t have to live with a hundred people shoving to take her picture and ask her questions every time she leaves the house. Who’s going to disagree with that?”

“You know I’ll do what I can to help,” Ian says, but I do not know that, not at all. Now that we are headed home, the differences between us have sprung up, a minefield that makes it impossible to recall the seamless landscape of the night before. When we step off this plane,

by necessity, Ian and I will be on very different sides of a controversial issue.

We both sit silently, brooding. Then Ian reaches for my hand, turning it over in his own before he starts to speak. “I have to tell you something,

Mariah. I wanted Faith to fail. I thought you were putting her up to this … prophet show for the attention. I deliberately set out to win your sympathy, so that you’d take her to Michael.”

“You already said this to me the other–“

“Hear me out, all right? I did and said whatever I could to get you there–including when I told you I was starting to believe in Faith. That was a lie, just one more thing to make sure you’d go to Lockwood. I was hot-miked that night. I taped you saying that Faith would give her healing powers a try. And when we got to Lockwood,

I taped that whole damned fiasco. I was going to show the way you two ran your sting.”

Stricken, I have to force my lips to move.

“There’s your proof, then.”

“No. After Michael pitched his fit and I realized Faith hadn’t been able to work a miracle, I was furious. I had my story, and it didn’t make a heap of difference so long as Michael was still rocking back and forth. I lied to you, Mariah, but I lied to myself, too. I didn’t want Faith to be a fraud, not when it came to my brother.” He looks at me. “I tossed the tape into the pond in Lockwood’s garden.”

I glance into my lap, one question tumbling through my mind. I have to know, I have to. “Last night … were you lying to me, then, too?”

Ian lifts my chin. “No. If you believe nothing else I’ve told you, believe that one thing.”

I let out the breath I’ve been holding and pull away from him. “I would just ask you one favor–if you could hold off on your show until after the preliminary hearing …”

“I’m not going to get on the air and say Faith couldn’t work a miracle.”

His voice is so soft that I realize what I’ve overlooked: Any reference to Faith is going to circle right back to Ian’s own brother.

“You don’t want anyone to know about Michael.”

“That’s not why. It’s because Faith did work one.”

I sit back, stunned. “She did not. I was there. I watched you leave the room.”

“When I went back this morning, Michael and I had a real conversation. He made fun of me.

And he reached right up and hugged me.”

“Oh, Ian.”

“It didn’t last for long, and at first I thought I’d just dreamed it. But I didn’t. I really had that minute with him, Mariah. One minute in twenty-five years.” He smiles sadly.

“One hell of a minute.” His expression clears as he turns to me. “Autism … it isn’t like that. It doesn’t switch on and off like a faucet. Even on Michael’s good days, he’s always been … apart. But this morning he was the brother I’d always wanted to have–and that’s beyond the power of science. I can’t tell you that I believe in God. But, Mariah … I do believe Faith can heal.”

The wheels of my mind turn. I imagine Ian stepping onto the front lawn and convoking the press. I imagine them hanging on his every word.

I imagine the furor that will ensue when Ian, the most influential doubting Thomas of them all,

announces that he’s found the real thing.

They will never let go of Faith.

“Lie,” I say quickly. “Tell everyone Faith couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t lie. That’s the whole point of the show.”

By now I am on the verge of tears. “You have to lie. You have to.”

Ian takes my hand and brings it to his mouth,

kisses each finger. “Hush, now. We’ll figure it all out.”

“We?” I shake my head. “Ian, there is no “we.” There’s you and your show, and there’s me and custody. If one of us wins, the other one loses.”

He tucks my head onto his shoulder, his voice soothing. “Ssh. Let’s pretend it’s six months from now. And I already know the name of the high school you went to, and your favorite Disney dwarf, and how you take your coffee.”

I smile hesitantly. “And we sit around on Saturday nights watching videos.”

“And I wear my boxers to breakfast. And you let me see you without makeup.”

“You already have.”

“You see?” Ian brushes his lips across my forehead, erasing the worry. “We’re halfway there.”

No. Haverhill, New Hampshire A. Warren Rothbottam likes his show tunes. He likes them so much, in fact, that he’s personally paid to have his judge’s chambers at the Grafton County Superior Court rewired with a state-of-the-art stereo system and cleverly hidden Bose speakers, which make it seem as if Carol Channing is robustly singing from behind the neat row of New Hampshire Procedural Law books. The music, however, is too big for the room, and often spills into the hall or through the walls. Most people do not mind. If anything, it gives a certain character to the courthouse that the squat, unremarkable building in the middle of nowhere does not manage by itself.

Today, before settling down behind his desk, Judge Rothbottam selected Evita. He closes his eyes and slices his hands through the air, humming loudly enough to be heard in the hall.

“Your Honor.”

The timid voice cuts through his orchestration, and Rothbottam scowls. Punching a button on his intercom, the music dulls. “What,

McCarthy? This better be good.”

The clerk of the court is shaking. Everyone knows that when Judge Rothbottam puts on an original-cast recording, he isn’t to be disturbed. Something about the sanctity of the music.

But then again, an emergency motion is an emergency motion. And Malcolm Metz is too famous a lawyer to be put off by a county clerk.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, really. It’s just that Mr. Metz called for the third time in response to his emergency motion.”

“You know what you can tell him to do with his emergency motion?”

McCarthy swallows. “I can guess, Your Honor. Would that be a denial, then?”

Scowling, Rothbottam reaches beneath his desk,

and the glorious voice of Patti LuPone cuts off in the middle of a high C. The judge has never met Malcolm Metz, but one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to move in the circles of the New Hampshire legal system and not know about him. A highly paid rainmaker in a prestigious Manchester law firm, Metz has managed to reel in case after case receiving plenty of TV coverage: the custody battle for Baby J that resulted in a nasty courtroom war between a surrogate mother and an adoptive family, the sexual harassment suit won by a secretary against her senator boss, the current fiasco involving the split between a Mafia don and his bimbo wife. Rothbottam does not care for grandstanding; he leaves that to the legitimate theater.

If his courtroom has to be violated by some asshole like Metz, the counselor will damn well play by the judge’s rules.

“Just a second,” Rothbottam says to the clerk. He thumbs through the motion to modify custody that Metz has filed that morning and the accompanying brief requesting an ex parte hearing. According to Metz, the child is in grave danger and needs to be removed from the mother’s influence immediately; the ex parte motion is necessary before the defendant even gets wind of the motion to modify custody.

Just the kind of dramatic bullshit he’d expect from Malcolm Metz.

Rothbottam scans the brief. White very.

White. He just heard the divorce a month ago, and there hadn’t been any custody issues then. What the hell is going on?

He does not realize that he’s spoken aloud until he hears McCarthy on the intercom.

“Well, Your Honor, she’s that girl. The one who’s been on the news.”

“Who is?”

“The one the father wants custody of Faith White.”

The seven-year-old who is raising the dead and speaking to God and showing stigmata. Rothbottam groans. No wonder Metz is deigning to come to New Canaan, New Hampshire. “You know,

I don’t know Metz at all. I don’t even want to know him, although I guess I’m not going to be so lucky. But I do know Joan Standish, who represented the mother in the divorce.

Call Metz and tell him to be here at three o’clock. Let him know that Joan and her client will be joining him. I’ll listen to his argument about the child being in danger, and we’ll set a date for the custody hearing.”

“All right, Your Honor.” The clerk beeps off the intercom after agreeing to find the judge the latest newspaper stories about Faith White.

Rothbottam sits at his desk for a moment, then walks to the bookshelves and extracts a new original-cast recording from the many stacks.

The music from Jesus Christ Superstar fills his chambers, and Rothbottam smiles.

There is nothing wrong, nothing at all, with getting in the mood for what is yet to come.

Manchester, New Hampshire Malcolm Metz moves so gracefully in the leather swivel chair that he looks like a twentieth-century version of a centaur as he gestures to his three minions and finishes telling the joke. “So Saint Peter opens the gates of heaven and lets in a pope and a lawyer.

“Come in,” he tells them. “I’ll show you to your new quarters.”" Metz glances around. A skilled litigator, after all, is at best a superb actor.

“Saint Peter stops off at a tremendous golden penthouse, built on top of a cloud.

He leads them inside and shows them the gold faucets in the bathrooms and the silk bedding and the expensive rugs in the halls. Then he turns to the lawyer and says, “This is your new home.” He leaves with the pope, and takes him to a tiny cell with a little twin bed and a washstand.

“And this,” he says, “is where you are going to live from now on.”"

Metz adopts a lilting Italian accent.

“”Now, wait a second!” the pope cries.

“I’ve lived a pious life and led the Catholic Church–but I have to live here while that lawyer gets a penthouse?”‘ Saint Peter nods. “Yes,” he says. “See, we’ve got plenty of popes up here. But this is the first time we’ve ever had a lawyer!”"

The conference room erupts into laughter–no one likes lawyer jokes more than lawyers. But Metz is equally aware that he could have read a perfectly dull legal statute aloud,

and if he’d expected his associates to find it funny, they would have been rolling on the floor.

At the sound of the intercom, he holds up a hand,

and the younger lawyers fall silent. “Peggy,”

Metz says to his secretary, “put him through.”

They watch him with expectant faces. “All right. Yes, I see.” Metz hangs up the receiver and folds his hands on the polished table.

“Gentlemen and lady,” he says, “the ex parte motion has been denied.”

He turns to Hunstead, his first associate.

“Call Colin White. Tell him to get himself into a good suit and meet me at the Grafton County Courthouse at two-thirty P.m.

Lee,” he says to a second man, “tip off the media. I want them to know the father thinks his daughter’s in danger.”

The two associates run off, leaving Metz alone with the third. “I’m sorry, Mr.

Metz,” Elkland says. “A lucky break would’ve been nice.”

Metz shrugs, collecting his papers and files. “Actually, I never expected the judge to rule in my favor.” He taps the legal pads on their edges, aligning them. “I only filed it so that the judge could deny it, and get that out of his system. Let’s face it–no small-town judge wants someone like me cruising into his courtroom. I’d much rather have Rothbottam use this motion as a pissing contest to show me who’s boss, instead of something intrinsic to the case.”

The associate is surprised. “Then this was just strategic? Isn’t the kid in danger?”

“Hell, who knows? Filing an ex parte motion keeps the father happy. Denying it keeps the judge happy. And you know what makes me happy?”

“Knowing that you’re going to win?”

Metz pats her shoulder. “I knew I hired you for a reason,” he says.

New Canaan, New Hampshire “The mother isn’t going to let you near Faith,”

Father MacReady says, watching the visiting priest move about the rectory’s tiny guest room. “I can’t blame her.”

Father Rampini turns in a smooth motion.

“Why not?”

“She’s Jewish. We’ve got no right to be there.”

“She’s spouting heresy,” Father Rampini corrects. “If we don’t have jurisdiction over the person making the claims, we at least can control what she says that misleads good Catholics.” He lifts a jacket and hangs it in the closet. “Surely you take issue with a female apparition?”

“No. The Church has accredited plenty of visions of Mary.”

“Are we talking about Mary? No. God in a dress, God as a mother.” Rampini frowns.

“You have no problem with this?”

Father MacReady turns away. He has taken vows that hold him to helping others for the rest of his life, but that doesn’t take away the occasional urge to plant a facer. He sits at the small table and drums his fingers on its surface, casually glancing at the stack of books Rampini has placed there and the Saint-A-Day desk calendar, open to November 7. Saint Albinus, he reads. If he remembers correctly, Saint Albinus killed an evil man by breathing into his face.

“Maybe God just looks different to a seven-year-old,” Father MacReady muses.

“Tell that to the children at Fatima,” Rampini says. “Three kids, who–unlike Faith White–all saw the same vision of Mary. They didn’t say she was wearing pants or smoking a hookah. They saw the Blessed Virgin the way she’s traditionally pictured.”

“But not everyone has traditional visions.

Saint Bernadette said the Virgin spoke to her in French patois.”

“Cultural resonance isn’t part and parcel of a vision. So what if the Virgin was speaking French to Bernadette? She was still too uneducated to know what Mary meant when she referred to herself as the Immaculate Conception.”

Rampini zips his duffel bag and slides it beneath the bed. “Everything you’ve told me and everything I’ve read suggests that this is a crock. It’s a hallucination, one the girl’s managed to pass along into a mild hysteria. If Faith White is seeing God, there’s no way He would appear in the form of a woman. Either an apparition is Jesus Christ or it is not.” He shrugs.

“I’m more likely to consider the visions satanic than divine.”

MacReady runs his finger along the tabletop,

scattering a fine layer of dust. “There’s concrete, objective proof.”

“Right. The resurrections and the healing. I’ll let you in on a little trade secret: I’ve read about Lourdes and Guadalupe and a hundred others, but in my lifetime I’ve yet to see a bona fide miracle worker.”

Joseph MacReady meets his gaze. “For a good Catholic, Father, you sound an awful lot like a Pharisee.”

I am still half asleep when I hear Ian,

speaking from the plane seat beside Faith. “I didn’t get to thank you.” I will my eyelids to stay slitted, and just listen.

Faith doesn’t answer him. “You did it,

didn’t you?” Ian presses. “You gave Michael those few minutes.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Ian shakes his head. “I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t believe a lot of stuff.”

He grins. “Call me Ian.”

“Okay.” They stare at each other. Faith smooths down the front of her shirt, and Ian uncrosses his legs. “Ian? You can hold my mother’s hand if you want.”

Ian nods gravely. “Thank you.” He hesitates for a moment. “Can I hold yours?”

Faith slowly extends her hand, with the Band-Aid at its center. Ian slips his fingers around hers carefully. He does not examine the Band-Aid, doesn’t even give the supposed stigmata a second glance.

Maybe, just maybe, Faith has worked a miracle after all.

Millie Epstein opens the front door,

expecting to see Mariah and Faith back from their flight, and instead lays eyes on yet another man in a black shirt and backward collar.

“What are they doing in Rome? Cloning you fellows?”

Father Rampini draws himself up to his full five feet ten inches. “Ma’am, I’m here to speak to Faith White at the request of His Excellency, Bishop Andrews of Manchester.”

“Who asked him?” Millie says.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I find it highly unlikely that my daughter or granddaughter called His Highness–“

“His Excellency–“

“Whoever,” Millie interrupts. “Look.

We’ve had more priests around here than the St.

Patrick’s Day parade in New York.

I’m sure that one of them has the information you want. Have a nice day.”

She begins to wedge the door closed but is stopped by the priest’s foot. “Mrs …?”

“Epstein.”

“Mrs. Epstein, you’re interfering with the process of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Millie stares at him for a moment. “And your point is?”

By now Father Rampini is sweating. He wonders if he should have taken the insufferable Father MacReady up on his offer to accompany him to Faith White’s home. At the time, the thought of twenty minutes on back roads with the ridiculously liberal priest had seemed like more penance than any man of God should have to face. Of course, he hadn’t known about this particular dragon at the gate.

“All right,” he says, “why don’t you just get it over with?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t like me, Mrs. Epstein. You don’t like priests. Go ahead and tell me why.”

“You see? You hear my name, know I’m Jewish, and assume I’m prejudiced.”

Father Rampini grits his teeth. “My apologies. Is Faith available?”

“No.”

“What a surprise,” he says dryly.

Millie crosses her arms. “Now I’m a liar? Next you’re going to assume I’m some kind of shyster moneylender, I suppose?”

“No more than I’m a Bing Crosby look-alike who drinks too much and seduces altar boys,” Rampini says tightly. “Now,

I could always go ask for the cooperation of that police captain at the end of the driveway.”

“Fortunately, we already fought the war to separate church and state,” Millie says.

“My granddaughter isn’t home, thanks to all of you.”

Rampini feels a muscle tic at the base of his jaw. This is the resurrected grandmother? And what did she mean by “all of you”?

Who had driven the girl away?

He looks into her feisty, lined face and sees, in a flicker of her eye, a monumental sadness that it has come to this. For a moment he even feels guilty. “Mrs. Epstein, maybe if you set forth some guidelines, I can take them back to the bishop and we can compromise on the best way to examine Faith without upsetting her …

or you.”

The woman snorts. “You think I was born yesterday?”

“Actually, from what I’ve heard, that’s not so far off the mark.”

“Where’s the other one? The nice priest?”

Millie looks around the front yard for a sign of Father MacReady. “Mariah likes him.”

Then she narrows her eyes. “Are you two doing a good-copstbad-cop thing?”

By now Father Rampini has a headache. He thinks this woman might have done very well on their side, during the Inquisition. “We aren’t partners. I swear to God.”

“Oh?” Millie says. “Yours or mine?”

It has been a two-hour ride from Boston,

but the heating system in the silver rental car has not warmed me at all. In the rearview mirror I can see Ian’s rental, a black Taurus, driving behind me. We decided that it would be best to arrive separately. Otherwise,

how do we explain why we’re coming home together?

“Lies,” I mutter. “More and more lies.”

“Ma?” Faith’s voice comes, drowsy and rich.

“You have a good nap?” I capture her attention in the mirror and smile. “There’s something we have to talk about. When I get home, I’m going to have to leave you with grandma and go visit the lawyer.”

Faith sits up. “Does it have to do with Daddy again?”

“In a way. He wants you to live with him.

And I want you to live with me. So a nice judge is going to decide where you ought to be.”

“How come nobody wants to know what I think?”

“I want to know,” I say.

But now that she’s on the spot, Faith hedges.

“Do I have to pick just one of you forever?”

“I hope not, Faith.” Hesitating, I consider how best to phrase this next sentence.

“Since a lot of people are going to be watching us while the judge decides, it might be best if you … told God … that you need to keep Her a secret for a little while.”

“Like when we were at the cabin.”

Not quite, I think. Faith failed pretty miserably at keeping her light under a bushel.

“God says it’s no one’s business.”

But that’s wrong. It is a business, a booming one of donations and salvation and even atheism. “Just do this for me, Faith,” I say wearily.

“Please.”

She is quiet for a moment. Then I feel her hand slip through the narrow slat of the headrest, into my hair, to rub the muscles of my neck.

Ian arrives at the house a half hour before Mariah, having driven straight through during the time she stopped at McDonald’s to get Faith a snack. He turns his car into the street, stunned at how the crowd has grown. All the network affiliates have vans there, there’s some group with a banner, and the cult hasn’t given up its stronghold around the mailbox. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the sea of eager faces that have come to be healed or touched or blessed.

He slips into his own small knot of production personnel unobtrusively,

simply because it is so crowded. James is nowhere to be seen. His assistants fall into file behind him, but he shoos them away when he reaches the Winnebago. “Not now, y’all. Let me catch my breath.”

But inside, he only paces. He waits until the commotion outside reaches him like a current on the air, and then he exits the Winnebago and watches, from a distance, as Faith and Mariah get out of their car.

She’s dazed, he can see from here. She hustles Faith to the house, shielding her from view, although there is no way to block out the roar of a crowd that has waited on the child for a week. But she only trades her daughter off to Millie,

and then an unfamiliar woman–the lawyer?–

marches Mariah right back to the driveway and into a Jeep.

Ian pushes his way to the front of the crowd, a swarm of people who touch the fenders and doors of the Jeep as it slows to a stop at the end of the driveway. The police push them out of the way,

and the SUV inches forward. Ian stares at the passenger window, willing Mariah to look up.

As the Jeep pulls out of the driveway, she does. He smiles at her for encouragement, and she cranes her neck as the car continues to move,

turns in her seat, taps her fingers to the glass as if she would touch him.

KEEPING FAITH BOOK II THE NEW TESTAMENT