e that is not with me is against me.

–Luke 1123 October 6, 1999 Ian’s grandmother had been a dyed-in-the-wool Southern belle who wore her religion like a Kevlar vest. “Thank God I’m a Christian woman,” she’d say, her litany dragged out for show when she found out that her husband had left her for the Jolly Donut waitress, or when she got word that the estate had been sold out beneath her to make way for a J. C. Penney store. And then, when God didn’t quite come through for her, she’d sneak out the bottle of bourbon she kept in the tank of the downstairs toilet and take up His slack.

The Southern Baptist miasma in which Ian had been raised was a far piece from Yankee skepticism. Down South, communities were built around their churches. In some places still,

religion had Southerners by the throat, and a man’s worth was judged by what house of God he frequented. Truth be told, Ian feels considerably more at home with the Yankees, for whom religion is an afterthought, rather than a staple of living. In the North there is room for doubt …

or so Ian had thought, until he saw the reaction to Millie Epstein’s passing and subsequent revival.

He has, through an inside source, managed to review Millie Epstein’s charts. Three distinct medical professionals signed the woman off as dead. And yet Ian himself saw her hale and hearty just days ago.

His ratings are climbing again, which will last about as long as an ice cube in July, unless he manages to add fuel to the fire. Fuel that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming from the Millie Epstein angle. He buries his head in his hands and considers his next move. One of the things he’s learned is that there are skeletons in everyone’s closet, things no one ever wants the world to discover. He, of all people, should know.

Allen McManus has just unwrapped his Twinkie when the personal line on his phone begins to ring. “Yeah?” he growls, picking up the receiver. He’s told his wife not to call him at work. Christ, it’s the only place he gets a little peace.

“Do you know about Lazarus?”

The voice is low, disguised. Certainly not his wife’s. “Who the hell is this?”

“Do you know about Lazarus?” the voice repeats. “Who else had something to gain?”

“Look, buddy, I don’t know what–” He hears a sharp click and a dial tone.

“Lazarus. What the fuck.”

It must be a Halloween prank, Halloween being just around the corner and everyone knowing, by virtue of Allen’s byline, that he writes the obits.

Certainly if some joker is going to bring up the idea of raising the dead, the call will be forwarded to Allen. He has just dismissed it from his mind when a fax begins to come in on the Obituary Department line. With a sigh, he walks over to the machine–

probably some celeb whose passing was picked up on the AP wire–and squints at the grainy picture of a woman beneath the banner of The New Canaan Chronicle, wherever the hell that is.

WOMAN DIES; COMES BACK TO LIFE.

Lazarus.

Allen sits back down. He wishes he could remember what the Bible says, exactly, about Lazarus. Then again, he doesn’t know if he’s ever really read that story in the Bible. He leans across the aisle toward a colleague. “Barb, you got a Bible?”

She laughs. “Yeah, sure, right next to my Wite-Ou. Why? You seen God?”

“Forget it,” Allen scowls. New Canaan Chronicle. A nothing paper if he’s ever seen one. Yet here is this story about a woman who came back to life right in that little pissant town.

New Canaan was where that lady psychiatrist was from, too.

Allen skims the article a second time.

Buried in the fourth paragraph–there it is–

Epstein’s granddaughter … has been communicating with God.

Well, for Christ’s sake. How many other kids in that town would fit Dr. Keller’s description? Allen considers what this means–a little girl who sees and speaks to God, who suddenly can perform miracles. That’s a front page on the New Hampshire section for sure.

Who else had something to gain?

That’s what the caller said. Resurrection is certainly in Millie Epstein’s best interests … unless it wasn’t a resurrection at all.

Allen glances at the article again. That Ian Fletcher guy is hanging around, which has to mean that he, too, senses something isn’t quite right. Who,

then, would benefit from a mock miracle? The kid, for one. But kids that age always have managers to promote their business.

In this case, it would probably be her mother.

October 7, 1999 Just after five in the morning Mariah hears the front door open. She bolts out of bed and tears down the stairs. Grabbing up an umbrella from the stand in the front parlor, she brandishes it like a bat and searches the shadows for an intruder. “Come on!” she yells, heart pounding. “You want pictures? You want an exclusive? Show yourself, you bastard!”

But nothing moves, nobody stirs. Cursing,

she tosses the umbrella down and through the sidelight catches a glimpse of Faith,

barefoot and in her nightgown, pushing a doll stroller across the grass.

Mariah glances at the small entourage at the edge of the road. The cult from Arizona remains blessedly asleep on the far side of the stone wall; the reporters who’ve waited for an appearance by Faith during the day are conspicuously absent. In fact, the only person watching Faith is Ian Fletcher, haggard and grim,

standing in the doorway of the Winnebago.

“Hi, Mommy.” Faith waves. “Want to play with me?”

Mariah swallows the protest she is about to make. “Your feet … aren’t you cold?”

“No, it’s nice out.” Faith bends toward the stroller. “Isn’t it?” she coos, and tucks a blanket around her doll.

Except the doll is moving. Its tiny brown fists beat at the morning fog, and below the curly cap of its hair is a wide, circular sore.

Faith lifts the baby out of the stroller and cuddles him to her cheek. “What a good boy.”

It is then that Mariah notices a slight woman hidden behind an ash tree at the edge of the driveway. She has a scarf wrapped around her head, and her eyes never leave the infant, although she makes no move to get him back from Faith.

Faith puts the baby back in her toy stroller and moves him to the doll high chair that she’s dragged out to the front lawn, where she pretends to feed him pieces of toy fruit. The baby smiles and kicks his feet against the legs of the high chair. He laughs so loud that a photographer awakens and points a camera at Faith, taking pictures with alarming speed.

Mariah, jolted out of her stupor, steps off the porch and strides toward her daughter.

“Sweetie, I think we have to go in now.”

Faith squints at the sun pushing against the horizon. “Oh. It was just getting fun.”

Mariah touches her hair. “I know. Maybe we’ll come out later.” As she says this, her gaze roams across the sparse crowd and locks on Ian Fletcher’s impassive face. In all this time he has not moved, has done nothing more insidious than observe. Mariah forces her attention back to Faith. “I think you ought to bring him back to his mother now.”

Faith carefully lifts the baby and presses her lips against the sore on his forehead. She walks to the ash tree and gives the infant to his sobbing mother. The woman clearly wants to say something to Faith, but she cannot catch her breath to do so. Faith touches her lightly on the hand, where her fingers cradle the baby’s head. “Bring him back to play, okay?”

The woman nods and wipes her eyes. Faith slips her hand into her mother’s, and Mariah is overwhelmed by the sensation of holding on to someone she does not know at all. How can it be that she grew Faith inside her, and felt her push her way into the world, and gave her a home for seven years,

without knowing that this was coming?

She is about to step onto the porch with her daughter when she sees Ian Fletcher brazenly walking up the driveway. He’s brought back the plastic doll stroller and the little feeding chair, as well as the small basket of toy fruits and vegetables. Mariah takes the toys from him.

“Excuse us,” she says stiffly.

He falls back, regarding Faith. “I wish I could.”

After the unexpected appearance of Faith White, Ian returns to the Winnebago. He is even more sure of his suppositions now that he’s watched her play like any other seven-year-old kid. Clearly, the ringleader is the mother. The moment she showed up, the kid stopped–the healer came to heel. For whatever reason, Mariah White is the mastermind behind this show.

He’s seen charlatans before, men and women gifted at perpetuating a hoax. Usually they’re in it for the money, or the fame. And that’s the one thing that doesn’t quite add up for Ian. There’s something about Mariah’s eyes that makes him think of a victim, instead of a swindler. As if she’d really rather this whole thing not be happening.

Hell, she’s a good actress, is all.

Beauty can be a terrific disguise, because of its power of distraction. The purity of her features,

even stamped with sleep–those gorgeous legs eating up the yard as she crossed to her daughter–

why, that’s just a decoy. More smoke and mirrors,

like her little girl’s miracles. Faith White is no more seeing God and raising the dead than Ian is himself.

October 8, 1999 “This,” Rabbi Weissman says to Mariah,

“is Rabbi Daniel Solomon.”

The man in the tie-dyed shirt holds out his hand and grins. “I like to think I have the name of the wise king for a reason.” Mariah does not crack a smile. She reaches behind her, where Faith is burrowing against her hip and peeking at the strangers.

“I’m the spiritual leader of Boulder’s Beit Am Hadash Congregation,” Solomon says.

Mariah glances at his shirt, at his long,

ponytailed hair. Right, she thinks. If you’re a rabbi, I’m the queen of England.

“Beit Am Hadash,” the rabbi explains,

“means “house of a new people.” My congregation is part of the Jewish renewal movement. We draw upon Kabbalah, as well as Buddhist,

Sufi, and Native American traditions.”

He glances at Rabbi Weissman. “We’d like to know more about Faith.”

“Look,” Mariah says, “I don’t really think I have anything to say to you.” She would not have even let the rabbis inside, except for the fact that to leave them on the porch seemed inhumane. Mariah sends Faith into the playroom so that she can’t overhear the conversation.

“The last time I saw you, Rabbi Weissman,

I got the distinct impression that you weren’t very impressed with Faith. You thought this was an act I was making her perform.”

“Yes, I know,” Rabbi Weissman says.

“And I’m still not convinced. But I took it upon myself to call Rabbi Solomon. You see,

Mrs. White, after you left the synagogue, the strangest thing happened: A couple that was having marital problems reconciled.”

“What’s strange about that?” Mariah says, a familiar twinge in her chest as she lets her mind brush over Colin.

“Believe me,” Weissman says. “They were irreconcilable, until the day you visited with your daughter.” He spreads his palms. “I’m not explaining this very well. It was just that after I read the newspaper article about your mother, I was struck by the possibility that, in some people’s minds, there might be a connection between this couple’s reconciliation and Faith. It reminded me of something Rabbi Solomon had said at a rabbinic council a couple of years ago. We had posed the question of what God would say to a prophet nowadays. I said that there would have to be a message –you know, that peace is coming to Israel, or that this is the way to defeat the Palestinians–something that your daughter isn’t hearing during her conversations with God. However, Rabbi Solomon felt that a divine message wouldn’t be about ferreting out evil, but instead about how man is treating man.

Divorce, child abuse, alcoholism. Social ills. That’s what He’d want fixed.”

Mariah stares at him blankly. Rabbi Solomon clears his throat. “Mrs. White,

may I talk to Faith?”

She sizes up the man. “For a few minutes,” Mariah reluctantly allows. “As long as you don’t upset her.”

They all walk into the playroom. Rabbi Solomon kneels, so that he is at eye level with Faith. “My name is Daniel. Can I tell you a story?”

Faith creeps around Mariah’s hip, nodding shyly. “The people who come to my temple believe that before there was anything else, there was God. And God was so … well … full that creating the world meant shrinking a little bit to make space for it.”

“God didn’t make the world,” Faith says.

“It was a big explosion. I learned in school.”

Rabbi Solomon smiles. “Ah, I’ve learned that, too. And I still like to think that maybe God was the one who made that explosion, that God was watching it happen from somewhere far away. Do you think it could have happened like that?”

“I guess.”

“Well, like I was saying. There was God,

sucking in to make some room for the world, filling vessels with energy and light and setting them into the new space. But during Creation, the vessels couldn’t hold all the energy, and they broke. And all the sparks of light from God in these vessels got scattered around the universe. Pieces of the broken vessels fell, too, and became the bad things in the world–we call that clipot. My friends and I believe that our job is to clean up all the clipot and get rid of them, and to gather up all the bits of light that are scattered and get it back to God. So maybe when you say a blessing and eat a kosher chicken at Shabbat, the holy sparks in the chicken are released. If you perform a mitzvah for someone else–help them out a little –more sparks get released.”

“We don’t keep kosher,” Mariah says to Rabbi Solomon. “We’re not traditional Jews.”

He plucks at his T-shirt and grins wryly. “Neither am I, Mrs. White. But Kabbalah–Jewish mysticism–can even explain why a little girl who has never gone to temple or said a prayer might be closer to God than someone else. No one can lift up all those sparks by himself. In fact, the ability to find sparks at all may be buried so deep in you that you stop believing there’s a God. Until someone else comes along, with so much light in her that you can’t help but see your own, and when you’re together that light grows even brighter.” He touches the top of Faith’s head. “God may be talking to Faith because of all the people she’s going to reach.”

“You believe?” Mariah breathes, almost afraid to say it aloud. “You haven’t even spoken to her, and you think she’s telling the truth?”

“I’m a little more open-minded than Rabbi Weissman. The couple he was counseling …

well, that all could be a coincidence with your daughter’s visit. But then again, it may not be, and Faith may have the answers. If God was going to show up in 1999, I don’t think He’d grandstand or preach. I think He’d be just as low-key as your daughter’s suggested.”

Faith tugs on the rabbi’s sleeve.

“He’s a She. God is a girl.”

“A girl,” Solomon repeats carefully.

Mariah crosses her arms. “Yes, according to Faith, God is a woman. Can Jewish mysticism explain that?”

“Actually, Kabbalah is founded on the premise that God is both male and female.

The female part, the Shekhinah, is the presence of God. It’s what was broken when all those vessels shattered. If Faith is seeing a woman, it makes perfect sense. The presence of God is exactly what would make her able to heal and to have people congregate around her. What she may be seeing is a reflection of herself.”

Mariah watches Faith scratch her knee,

uninterested, and then asks the question she’s been holding tight inside. “Boulder’s a long way away, Rabbi Solomon. Why are you here?”

“I’d like to take Faith to Colorado with me,

to learn more about her visions.”

“Absolutely not. My daughter’s not a spectacle.”

The rabbi glances toward the windows that look out the front of the house. “No?”

“I didn’t invite them here.” She fists her hands at her sides and looks at Faith. “I didn’t ask for this to happen.”

“For what to happen, Mrs. White? God?”

He shakes his head. “The Shekhinah doesn’t go where she’s not wanted. You have to be open to the presence of God before it comes to dwell.

Which is maybe why you’re having such a hard time with this in the first place.” His eyes are like amber,

holding the past preserved. “What happened to you,

Mariah,” he asks softly, “that makes you fight so hard to not be a Jew?”

She remembers the one time she went to church as a little girl, with a friend, how she was surprised by the fact that Jesus supposedly loved everyone,

even people who made mistakes. The Jewish God, you had to make yourself worthy of. Mariah wonders, not for the first time, why a religion that prides itself on being open-minded makes you jump through so many hoops.

She is suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of two rabbis in her house. “I’m not Jewish. I’m not anything.” She looks at Faith. “We’re not anything. I think you should go.”

Rabbi Solomon holds out his hand. “Will you think about some of the things I said?”

Mariah shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t look at my daughter and see the presence of God, Rabbi Solomon. I don’t look at her and think she’s full of divine light. I just see someone who’s getting more and more upset with what’s going on around her.”

Rabbi Solomon straightens. “Funny.

That’s what many Jews said two thousand years ago about Jesus.”

October 10, 1999 The last thing Father Joseph MacReady does before donning his vestments is exchange his battered cowboy boots for the soft-soled black shoes of a priest. He’s anticipating a full house.

Early-morning mass on Sunday in New Canaan tends to be packed, most of the Catholic inhabitants of the town preferring to lose a few hours’ sleep on the weekend if it means getting the rest of the day to relax in their gardens or on the golf courses in neighboring towns. Today, he thinks, might be the day.

He braces his hands on the scarred table and lifts his gaze to the frieze of the crucifixion.

He thinks back to the moment years ago when he was drifting cross-country and suddenly realized that he could have taken his Harley into the Pacific and still gotten nowhere.

Now, even after decades of leading mass, he prays before each one for a sign that he made the right decision, a sign that God is with him. He stares at the crucifix for another second,

hoping. But, as for the past twenty-eight years,

nothing happens.

Father MacReady closes his eyes for a moment,

trying to gather the Holy Spirit before walking into the church to his congregation.

There are eight people there.

Clearly stunned, he steps up and begins to deliver the mass, his mind whirling. There is no single reason he can think of to cause his flock to dwindle from eighty to eight over the course of a single week. He rushes through the Holy Eucharist and the sermon, shocking his altar boy, who is usually fidgeting less than ten minutes into the service. After the final “Amen,”

he hurries to remove the vestments and stand at the rear doors of the church to say good-bye to the faithful few. But by the time he gets there, half are already in the parking lot.

“Marjorie,” he calls to an elderly woman whose husband died the year before. “Where are you off to this morning in such a hurry?”

“Oh, Father,” she says, dimpling. “To the Whites’ house.”

Well, that only confuses him more. “You’re going to Washington?”

“No, no. The little girl. Faith White.

The one who’s seeing God. I didn’t think it made up for missing mass, myself.”

“What about this little girl?”

“Haven’t you read the Chronicle this week?

People are saying she’s got God talking to her.

Even had some miracles come to pass. Brought a woman back from the dead, I hear.”

“You know,” Father Joseph says, considering,

“I just might like to tag along.”

Mariah turns the cylinder of cherry on the lathe, watching the ribbons of wood fly like streamers as she touches the rich block with a sculpting tool. It will be the fourth leg of a Queen Anne dining-room table for the current dollhouse. Her eyes wander to her work station, where the intricately carved trio of legs sits beside the oval island of the miniature tabletop.

Today is not the day for making furniture. In fact, she is not supposed to be working at all,

at least according to her self-imposed calendar. But these days nothing has gone according to schedule.

Yesterday was spent getting her mother discharged from the hospital, after over a week of testing and examination by cardiac experts. Mariah had wanted her mother to stay at the farmhouse, but Millie was having none of it. “You’re five minutes away,” she told Mariah. “What could go wrong?” Mariah had finally given in, knowing that she could cajole her mother into spending days, at least, at the farmhouse simply by saying that Faith needed company. She’d helped her mother get settled at home again, facing only one awkward moment when they both stopped suddenly at the coffin table. Without any complaint from her mother, she’d dragged it out to the garage, out of sight and out of mind.

Mariah is devoting today to making up for lost time. She pulls a ruler from her breast pocket and examines the leg on the lathe. It is off by two millimeters; she will have to start over.

Sighing, she discards the wood and then hears the doorbell ring.

It is an unexpected sound–no one’s ventured past the police block at the end of the driveway lately. Maybe it’s the mailman with a package, or the oil-delivery truck.

She opens the front door and finds herself staring at a priest. Her mouth tightens. “How come the police let you pass?”

“A professional perk,” Father Joseph admits, unruffled. “When God locks a door, He opens a window. Or at least sets a good Catholic officer at the end of your driveway.”

“Father,” Mariah says wearily, “I appreciate your coming here. I can even understand why you’d want to. But–“

“Do you? Because I’m not sure I do.” He laughs. “St. Elizabeth’s was empty this morning. Apparently your daughter is fierce competition.”

“Not intentionally.

“I don’t think we’re ready for another religious onslaught,” Mariah says. “There were some rabbis here Friday, talking about Jewish mysticism–“

“You know what they say about mysticism: Starts in mist, ends in schism.”

A grin tugs at Mariah’s mouth. “We’re not even Catholic.”

“So I hear. Episcopalian and Jewish,

right?”

Mariah leans against the doorjamb. “Right. So why would you even be interested?”

Joseph shrugs. “You know, when I was a chaplain in Vietnam, I met the Dalai Lama. There were a bunch of us, and we spent a great deal of time beforehand talking about what we should give him to eat, to drink, what we should call him. “His Holiness,” that was what someone suggested, although that was also what we called the pope, and let me tell you we fought tooth and nail over that one. But you know what, Mrs.

White? The Dalai Lama had this … this energy around him, the likes of which I’d never felt before. Now, he isn’t Catholic, but I won’t rule out the possibility that he’s a figure of profound spiritual enlightenment.”

A dimple appears in Mariah’s cheek.

“Careful, Father. That’s probably grounds for excommunication.”

He smiles. “His Holiness has a lot more on his plate than to follow my transgressions.”

There is something so secular about him that Mariah thinks–under different circumstances–she would ask this stranger to sit down, to share a pot of coffee.

“Father …”

“Joseph. Joseph MacReady.” He grins. “Willing and able, too.”

Mariah laughs out loud. “I like you.”

“I like you, too, Mrs. White.”

“However, now I think you ought to go.” She shakes his hand, well aware that he has not once asked to speak to Faith. “If I need you,

I’ll call the church. But no one’s really proved that any miracles have occurred.”

“Yes, it’s only word of mouth. Then again,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were just telling what they saw as well.”

Mariah crosses her arms. “Do you really believe that God would speak through a child? A technically Jewish child, at that?”

“Far as I’ve been told, Mrs. White,

He has before.”

October 11, 1999 “Move that leaf a quarter inch to the right,” the producer says, tilting his head toward the shot lined up in the monitor. The lights that the electrician and lighting director have set up make Teresa Civernos squint and instinctively cover little Rafael’s eyes with her hand. He bats it away, and for the hundredth time that day she glories in his strength and his coordination.

Hugging him close, she touches her lips to the smooth, unbroken skin of his brow.

“We’re ready, Ms. Civernos.” The voice is as rich as honey, and it belongs to Petra Saganoff, the star reporter for Hollywood Tonight!.

In the background, the producer glances up.

“Can you bring the baby up a little closer? Oh,

that’s perfect.” He makes an okay sign with his hand.

Petra Saganoff waits for a makeup artist to do one last touchup on her face. “You remember what I’m going to ask you, now?”

Teresa nods and looks nervously at the second camera, fixed on her and the baby. She forces herself to remember that this was her idea, not theirs. She was going to take out a novena to St.

Jude in the Globe, but realized that there was a way to reach more people. Her cousin Luis worked in L.a. on the Warner Brothers lot, where the Hollywood Tonight!’s studio was located.

He was dating the girl who did Petra Saganoff’s wardrobe. Teresa had told him to ask. And within twenty-four hours of Rafael’s being released from Mass General with a clean bill of health, Petra Saganoff was in Teresa’s tiny apartment in Southie, prerecording a segment for later broadcast.

“Three,” the cameraman says. “Two. One … and–” He points to Petra.

“Your baby didn’t always look this healthy,

is that right?”

Teresa feels herself flush. Petra had told her not to flush. She must remember.

“Yes. Just days ago Rafael was a pediatric AIDS patient at Massachusetts General Hospital,” Teresa says. “He contracted the virus from a blood transfusion at birth.

Last week he was pale and listless; he was fighting thrush and PCP and esophagitis. His CD-FOUR cell count was fifteen.” She clutches the baby tighter. “His doctor said he would die within the month.”

“What happened, Mrs. Civernos?”

“I heard about something. Someone, I mean. There is a little girl in New Hampshire who people say is talking to God. My neighbor, she visits shrines and places like that, and she asked if I wanted to go with her. I figured I had nothing to lose.” Teresa smooths the hair over Rafael’s head. “Rafael was running a fever when we got there, so I was walking with him just before dawn when this girl–her name is Faith–came outside. She brought a doll stroller, and she asked if she could play with my son. She walked him and laughed with him and pretended to feed him for about an hour.” Teresa looks up, tears in her eyes. “She touched him. She kissed him here,

where he had an open sore. And then we went back to Boston.

“The doctors–we went in the next day–did not recognize him. Overnight his sores were healed. His infections were gone. His T-cell count was twenty-two thousand.” She beams at Petra. “They tell me it is all medically impossible. Then they say that Rafael is not an AIDS patient anymore.”

“Are you saying your son was cured of AIDS,

Mrs. Civernos?”

“I think so,” Teresa says. “God has touched this little girl, this Faith. It’s a miracle. There is nothing I can say to make her understand how much I want to thank her.” She nuzzles her cheek against Rafael’s head.

The producer motions to the cameraman, who stops filming. Petra taps a cigarette out of a silver holder and confers with her producer, their backs to Teresa. “Yeah,” he says, laughing at something Petra’s said. “You collect more nuts than a squirrel.”

Teresa overhears. “This is no joke. This really happened.”

“Sure.” Petra grins. “And I’m the Virgin Mary.”

“It’s true. She brought her own grandmother back to life.” Furious, Teresa gets up and grabs her big leather handbag. She rummages for the directions to New Canaan, the ones she’d carefully plotted out with her neighbor on an intricately folded map of New Hampshire,

and throws it at the famous anchorwoman. “Go ask her yourself,” she says, and, turning on her heel, she escapes to the bathroom with Rafael and locks herself in until she hears Petra Saganoff and her entourage leave.

October 12, 1999 On the plane, Ian sets his headphones to the channel for the in-flight newsmagazine. With a satisfied sigh he turns his attention to the screen centered over the business-class cabin.

But instead of seeing CNN, Ian finds himself staring at Petra Saganoff, the talent for some entertainment fluff show. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he says, flagging down a flight attendant. “Don’t you have anything else?”

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, sir.

We get whatever tape they give us.”

Scowling, Ian whips off his headphones and tucks them into the seat pocket in front of him. He bends forward for his briefcase,

figuring that he can at least run the numbers of his latest Q-rating and see where in the nation he was most recognizable. As he sits up again, he notices the woman that Petra Saganoff is interviewing.

She looks vaguely familiar.

He shuffles through the pile of papers in his hands and–the baby. Ian glances at the small screen and watches the child in the woman’s arms kick and squirm. He reaches for the earphones he’s discarded. “… his sores were healed. His infections were gone. …” Ian hears, and suddenly remembers where he has seen the woman before. On the front lawn at the New Canaan farmhouse, watching her son get jostled around in a doll stroller by Faith White.

A muscle jumps in Ian’s jaw. Now she’s raised the dead and cured AIDS?

“God has touched this little girl …” he hears the woman say.

“Oh, shit,” Ian murmurs. He should hop on the next return flight. He should mount a campaign, he should double his efforts. He should blow Faith White’s ridiculous succession of miraculous cures for the incurable right out of the water.

And he also knows that he won’t–that, as planned, he’ll continue, on to see Michael before returning to New Canaan.

He forces his attention back to the papers in his lap, but envisions a pair of hands turning cards:

red, black, red, black. On the screen, the AIDS baby who was limp as a rag two days ago is laughing and animated in his mother’s arms.

The question is only in his mind for a moment before it’s squelched. And yet Ian can still hear it ringing in his ears, as joyful and resonant as a long note that a choir has stopped singing: What if, this time,

I’m wrong?

October 13, 1999 With the intense focus of a seven-year-old,

Faith packs the canvas tote bag her mother usually takes to the library with the things she needs to run away. These include her teddy bear, a change of underpants, and a box of Ritz crackers she’s stolen from the pantry. Also her Wonder Woman Superfriend Membership Certificate and a glowing plastic ring that she found in the sandbox at the park and has always believed to be a little bit magic. She waits until she hears her mother turn on the shower in the master bath, and then she creeps from her bedroom.

She puts on a dark-green Polarfleece jacket, rust-colored leggings, and a purple turtleneck. A pair of red woolen gloves,

to hide her hands.

Faith tiptoes down the stairs. She’s not running away, not really, since she’s going to call her mother as soon as she figures out where there’s a phone. She knows the number by heart. In case someone is listening, she will disguise her voice the way Inspector Gadget sometimes does and tell her mom to come to the movie theater where they saw Tarzan, because who will be expecting that? And then they’ll go away, just the two of them and maybe Grandma, too, and leave all those dumb people sitting on the front lawn.

She is silent as a firefly when she sneaks out the sliding door.

Well, where the hell is she going now?

For once Ian’s insomnia is a boon.

Staring out the window of the Winnebago, he sees a bright flash that disappears into the woods around the White property. Carefully opening the door of the recreational vehicle, he steps outside. As he approaches the perimeter of the woods, he breaks into a run, trying to tune his senses to the sound of small feet falling like snow.

There–he sees again the flash that drew him to her in the first place, and he recognizes it as light bouncing off something. A triangle. The moon is reflecting off her jacket or sweatshirt, some safety device of L. L. Bean’s.

“Hey!” he calls softly, and Faith freezes. She turns, spies him, and runs off again. With one swift leap, Ian tackles her and rolls simultaneously, so that she lands on the cushion of his body and knocks the breath out of him. He tightens his hold on the girl, who is kicking his shins. “Cut it out!” he says,

shaking her. “You’re hurting me.”

“You’re hurting me, too!” Faith cries.

He relaxes his grip. “If I let you go,

will you run away?” When she solemnly shakes her head, he releases his arms. Immediately Faith scrambles to her feet and takes off into the forest.

“Goddamn!” He follows her and snags the sleeve of her fleece pullover,

reeling Faith in like an angry, struggling fish.

“You lied.”

“No,” Faith says, the fight going out of her. “I never did.”

Ian realizes that they are now talking about something entirely different. “Isn’t it a little late for you to be playing outside?”

“I’m running away. I don’t like it here anymore.”

Ian feels his chest tighten. The end, he reminds himself, justifies the means. “I guess your mom is okay with your leaving like this?”

Faith hangs her head. “I’m going to tell her. I promise.” She glances around at the trees. “Do you know where there’s a phone?”

“In my pocket. Why?”

She looks at Ian as if he is very, very stupid. “To call my mother when I get there.”

Ian brushes his hand over his coat, feeling the slender bulk of his cellular. At last he has a bargaining chip. “If you want to call your mother when you get to wherever you’re going, then you’re going to have to keep my phone with you. And I don’t go anywhere without my phone.” He pauses, making sure that she’s following his logic. “Besides, you probably shouldn’t be wandering around alone in the dark.”

Faith looks down. “I’m not supposed to go anywhere with strangers.”

Ian laughs. “Haven’t I been hanging around long enough to not be a stranger?”

She thinks about this. “My mom says you’re a menace.”

“Ah, you see. She didn’t say I’m a stranger.” He holds out the cell phone, then drops it back in his pocket. “Deal?”

“I guess,” Faith mutters. She begins to walk, and Ian strikes off beside her. He is thinking of all the things he is missing–sound and camera crew, foremost among them–but surely an off-the-record interview is better than none at all. If he figures out the catch in this story, he can blow it open publicly the next day.

They have been walking only a few moments when Faith, winded, sits down on a rotting log.

This surprises him; he thought kids had more stamina than that. He tries to see her face by the moonlight that filters through the trees, but she looks pale and ghostly. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice tiny. “I’m just tired.”

“Past your bedtime. How’d you get by your mom anyway?”

“She’s taking a shower.”

Ian is impressed. “I ran away from home once, when I was five. I hid underneath the canvas cover of the barbecue for three hours before anyone found me.”

“That isn’t really running away.”

Her voice is so weary, so rough with wisdom,

that Ian again feels a pang of guilt.

“Don’t you like being … important to so many people?”

Faith looks at him as if he is crazy.

“Would you?”

Well, actually, he would … that’s the whole point of increasing his ratings share. But,

admittedly, not everyone embraces that goal.

Certainly not a child who’s an unwilling pawn in someone else’s machinations. He wonders if he might make an ally out of Faith White.

“Hey, can you help me with something?” Ian pulls a deck of cards out of his pocket–solitaire sometimes gets him through a long night. “I’m working on this trick, and I’m not sure I’m doing it right.” He shuffles the deck, then asks her to pick a card. Faith slides it from the pack,

the fingers of her gloves slipping. “Now,

remember which card you’ve got? You’re sure?

Slide it right into the middle again.”

Giggling, Faith does what he’s asked.

Ian silently thanks Uncle Beauregard for teaching him the one and only magic trick he’s ever had the inclination to learn. He shuffles the deck impressively, making cards leap from palm to palm, and then tells Faith to tap the top of the deck. “That’s the seven of diamonds,”

he announces. “Your card.”

She lifts it and gasps. “How’d you do that!”

“I’ll tell you the secret to my magic,”

he says, “if you tell me the secret to yours.”

Faith’s face falls. “I don’t know any magic.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure.” Ian sinks down beside Faith, clasping his hands between his knees. “For starters–how did you heal your grandmother?”

He can feel Faith bristle beside him. “I don’t want to learn your stupid card trick anyway.”

“You know, I’ve met other people who think they can heal. Some of ‘em were just hypnotists. They convinced the sick people that they were feeling better, when in fact their bodies weren’t. And some of them really did manage to make people feel better, through some kind of electricity they just happened to carry along their skin.”

“Electricity?”

“A charge. Like the shock you get sometimes when you touch a TV set. Bzzt. You know.”

Faith stands up and stretches out her hands.

“Touch me,” she challenges.

Slowly, his eyes never leaving her face,

Ian reaches toward her. “You have to take off your gloves.”

Immediately Faith ducks her hands behind her back. “I can’t.”

Ian shrugs: I told you so.

“I really can’t,” Faith pleads.

It has been a long time since Ian was seven. He tries to remember what worked in the playground. “Liar.”

“I am not!” Faith insists, agitated.

“Ask me something else!”

“Okay.” Ian is not fighting fair–for Christ’s sake, he’s outsmarting a seven-year-old–but then again, he’s never been known for his good sportsmanship. He has Faith right where he needs her to be: face upturned and eager, so desperate for a chance to prove herself that she can’t help but slip up and reveal the ruse.

“Ask me,” she begs again.

Ian thinks of everything he wants to know: Who is in on this, who will profit, how did they manage to fool a medical staff? But when he opens his mouth, what he says surprises even himself. “What does God look like?”

Faith’s lips part on the answer. “God–“

she begins, and then she faints.

Quick reflexes make Ian reach out and catch the girl before she strikes her head on the log or a rock or tree root. “Faith,” he says,

shaking her gently. “Wake up!” He lays her on the ground carefully and checks her pulse.

He brushes leaves away from her face.

Then he goes to wipe off his hands on his raincoat and realizes it’s smeared with blood.

Heart pounding, Ian checks his own chest and side. But he is fine, and a perfunctory examination of Faith’s torso reveals no wounds. His gaze falls on her red gloves, bright against the mossy dirt and scattered leaves.

Gently he peels one away from her hand.

“Holy shit,” he breathes. Then he gathers Faith into his arms and runs as fast as he can to Mariah White.

The doorbell is ringing as she wraps a towel around her wet hair, cinches her robe at her waist, and flies down the stairs. It is ten-thirty at night, for God’s sake. She has a child who’s asleep. Who would have the nerve to bother them now?

As she reaches for the doorknob, the person on the other side begins to knock harder. Her jaw tight, Mariah swings open the door and finds herself staring at Ian Fletcher. But all her bluster dies the moment she notices that Faith is lying limp in his arms.

“Oh …” Mariah’s voice trembles, and she falls back to let Ian enter the house.

“She was in the woods.” Ian watches Mariah touch Faith’s temples, her cheek.

“She’s bleeding. We need to take her to the hospital.”

Mariah covers her mouth, holding back a sob. She rucks up Faith’s sleeve,

expecting to find a cut across her wrist, but Fletcher tugs down her glove instead. “Come on!” he says. “What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing …” Mariah runs upstairs and dresses in the clothes that have already been thrown into the laundry hamper. Then she rips her car keys and purse from the Shaker pegboard beside the front door.

The far edge of the front yard is stirring with curiosity, most of the reporters having risen from their bored stakeout to notice Ian Fletcher, of all people, carrying the girl up to the house. Video cameras begin to whir, flashbulbs pop like firecrackers, and above all this is the thready refrain of people calling out to the unconscious Faith for help.

Mariah opens the back door of the car for Ian, and without a word of communication he climbs in with Faith, cradling her in his lap. Mariah gets into the driver’s seat, hands shaking on the wheel, and tries to back out of the driveway without hitting one of the onlookers who insist on touching the car as it passes.

Mariah meets Ian’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “How did this happen?”

“I don’t know.” Ian brushes Faith’s hair from her forehead; this action is not lost on Mariah. “I think she was already hurt when I found her.”

Mariah brakes down the long curve of a hill. Has Faith misguidedly been trying to kill herself? She does not ask Ian Fletcher what she wants to: Why were you with her? Why didn’t my own daughter come to me?

She pulls into the Emergency entrance of the Connecticut Valley Medical Center. There,

she leaves the car at the curb and precedes Ian into the building, toward the triage nurse.

Mariah is ready to fight for Faith’s priority as a case, but the nurse takes one look at the unconscious child and the blood on Ian’s coat and immediately calls for a gurney and a doctor.

Mariah can barely keep up with them as Faith is whisked away.

She does not think to ask Ian to follow her,

but she isn’t surprised to find him coming, too.

And she is barely aware of how her body sways when the remaining glove is cut from Faith’s fingers, of how Ian’s hand reaches out to steady her.

“Vitals?”

“BP one hundred over sixty, thready pulse.”

“Let’s drop a line and get bloods. I want a type and cross, a CBC, tox screen, ‘lytes.” The doctor glances over Faith’s still form. “What’s her name?”

Mariah tries to make her voice work, but she is unable to speak. “Faith,” Ian offers.

“Okay, Faith,” the doctor says, his face inches from hers. “Wake up for me,

honey.” He glances up at a nurse. “Get pressure bandages,” he orders, and looks at Mariah. “Did she get into some pills? Drink something from under the kitchen sink?”

“No,” Mariah whispers, shocked. “Nothing like that.”

Ian clears his throat. “She was bleeding when I found her. Wearing the gloves, so I didn’t realize it at first. And then she passed out.” He glances at his watch. “About thirty minutes ago.”

A resident runs his hands along Faith’s foot. “No Kernig’s or Brudzinski’s signs.”

“These don’t look like punctures to me,” a nurse says, and the doctor in charge takes up a position beside her and begins to press against Faith’s upper arm. “Bleeding’s not slowing. I want a hand-surgery consult stat.” He looks at Ian. “You the father?”

Ian shakes his head. “A friend.”

To Mariah they seem like great vultures,

swooping down on Faith’s small body to get whatever untouched piece remains. A nurse lifts Faith’s right hand, pressing hard on her upper arm at the brachial artery, and for a moment Mariah is able to see a pinprick of light through the wound–a tiny, clean tunnel passing right through the palm.

Suddenly Faith strikes out with her foot,

catching a resident in the chin. “Noooo!” she cries, trying to yank her arms away from the nurses who are pinning her down. “No! It hurts!”

Mariah takes a step forward, only to feel Ian’s hand on her shoulder. “They know what they’re doing,” he murmurs, as the doctor gentles Faith with his voice.

“How did you hurt your hands, Faith?” he asks.

“I didn’t. I didn’t hurt my– Ow!

They just started bleeding and the Band-aids wouldn’t stay on and– Stop! Mommy, make them stop!”

Shrugging off Ian, Mariah runs toward the gurney, her hand falling on her daughter’s thigh before she is yanked away. “Get her out of here!”

the doctor shouts, barely audible over Faith’s shrieking. But the farther she’s dragged from Faith,

the more the sobs intensify, and it takes several moments in Ian’s embrace before Mariah realizes that she is the one who’s crying.

There is an insular peace to hospitals in the middle of the night, as if beneath the moans and sighs and muted beeps those people still roaming the halls or sitting at bedsides are united in purpose.

You can meet a woman in the elevator and, just like that, know her sorrow. You can stand beside a man at the coffee-vending machine and tell he’s coming off the high of having a baby. You find yourself asking for a stranger’s story; you feel a connection to people you would ordinarily pass on the street.

Mariah and Ian stand like sentries at the foot of Faith’s bed in the pediatric ward. She is sleeping easily now, her bandaged hands fading into the white sheets. “Q-tips,” Ian murmurs.

“Excuse me?”

“Her arms look like Q-tips. It’s that puffy thing on the end.”

Mariah smiles, the movement so unlikely after these past few hours that she can feel her face crumple as it happens. Faith turns and settles again on the bed, and Ian points to the door, his brows raised in question. Mariah follows him outside and begins to walk down the hall, past the quiet patter of the nurses’ station and the elevator portal. “I haven’t thanked you for bringing her to me.” She crosses her arms,

suddenly chilled. “For not whipping out a camera and taking pictures of Faith when it happened.”

Ian meets her gaze. “How do you know I didn’t?”

Her mouth, her throat, is dry. She pictures Ian in the backseat of the car, holding Faith. “I just do,” Mariah says.

They have stopped in front of the neonatal nursery, where the newborns, pastel-wrapped and swaddled, sit side by side like grocery items on a shelf. One infant bats a hand from his blanket and unfurls the petals of his fingers.

Mariah cannot help but notice that his palm is new and pink and whole.

“Do you believe?”

Ian is staring at the newborns, but speaking to her. It is not a question she should answer; it is not a topic to discuss with Ian Fletcher, who–for all his chivalrous behavior tonight–will still be the enemy tomorrow. But there has been a connection in the past few hours, something that makes Mariah think of spiders throwing the thinnest silken line across incredible distances, something that makes her wonder if she may just owe Ian an answer.

“Yes. I don’t know what Faith’s seeing,

I don’t know why she’s seeing it–but I do believe that she’s telling the truth.”

He shakes his head almost imperceptibly.

“What I meant is, do you believe in God?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could just say,

“Oh, yes.” I wish it was as easy as all that.”

“You have your doubts, though.”

Mariah looks up at him. “So do you.”

“Yeah. But the difference is, that if you had the choice you’d want to believe. And I wouldn’t.”

He presses one palm to the glass in front of him, staring at the babies. “”Male and female created He them.” But you can watch, under a microscope, an egg being fertilized. Y’all can take a tiny camera and watch cells dividing, or a heart being formed. You can see it happen. So where is God in that?”

Mariah thinks of Rabbi Solomon in his hippie T-shirt, negotiating a path between the Bible and the Big Bang theory of creation for Faith. “Maybe in the fact that it happens at all.”

Ian turns. “But we’re talking about scientific proof here.”

She considers the circumstances that led to her placement at Greenhaven. “Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.”

Their eyes lock for a moment. Mariah blinks first. “You probably want to go home. Get some sleep.”

He massages the back of his neck and smiles faintly. “Do I ever,” he agrees,

but he makes no move to leave.

Mariah finds herself cataloging Ian Fletcher the way another woman might: the silky black hair, so straight that it spikes across his forehead; the reach of his spread fingers on the glass; the light behind his pale blue eyes.

“What were you?” she blurts out.

He laughs. “Before being reincarnated as an asshole, you mean?”

“No.” Mariah blushes. “Before you were an atheist. I mean, you were probably born something.

Episcopalian or Methodist or Catholic.”

“Baptist. Southern Baptist.”

“You have the voice for it,” Mariah says, before she can censor herself.

“Just not the stomach.” Ian leans his shoulder against the nursery’s glass wall and crosses his arms. “I didn’t take to the idea of Christ.”

“Maybe you should have tried Judaism or Islam.”

“No, it isn’t the Messiah thing. It’s the thought that any parent–including God–would make his child suffer intentionally.” He stares at the babies, nestled in a line. “I can’t worship someone who lets that happen.”

Mariah is so surprised, she is speechless.

Put that way, how can she not agree? She is still trying to come up with a response when Ian smiles at her, scattering all her thoughts. “I’ll tell you one thing I believe,” he says softly. “I believe that Faith is going to be just fine.” He leans forward, brushes a kiss against Mariah’s cheek, and starts down the hall.

KEEPING FAITH