Free The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult Page A

signals Rocco to take over. Then she slips her arm through mine and leads me into the kitchen. Her cheeks are glowing; her dark hair has been brushed to a high sheen—and holy cow, is she wearing makeup ? “Where have you been ?” she chides. “You’ve missed all the excitement!”
    That’s what she thinks. “Oh?”
    “Ten minutes after the midday news aired, they started coming. The old, the sick, anyone who wants to just touch the bread.”
    I think about the petri dish that the loaf must be now, if that many hands have been all over it.
    “Maybe this is a stupid question,” I say, “but why?”
    “To be healed,” Mary replies.
    “Right. Because all this time the CDC should have been looking for the cure for cancer in a slice of bread.”
    “Tell that to the scientists who discovered penicillin,” Mary says.
    “Mary, what if it has nothing to do with a miracle? What if it’s just the way the gluten happened to string together?”
    “I don’t believe that. But anyway, it would still be a miracle,” Mary says, “because it gives desperate people some hope.”
    My mind unravels back to Josef, to the Jews in the camp. When you are singled out for torture because of your faith, can religion still be a beacon? Did the woman whose son had profound disabilities believe in the God of this stupid loaf who could help him, or the God who had let him be born that way in the first place?
    “You should be thrilled. Everyone who’s come through here to see the loaf has taken away something else you’ve baked,” Mary says.
    “You’re right,” I mutter. “I’m just really tired.”
    “Then go home.” Mary looks at her watch. “Since I think tomorrow we’ll have twice as many customers.”
    But as I leave the bakery, passing someone who’s filming an encounter with the loaf on a Flip Video camera, I already know I’m going to find a sub to take over my shift.
     • • • 
    Adam and I have an unwritten agreement to not show up at each other’s place of business. You never know who’s going to be passing by, who’s going to recognize your car. Plus, his boss happens to be Shannon’s father.
    As I park my car a block away from the funeral home, for this very reason, I think again about Josef. Had a new acquaintance ever waggled a finger at him, genially saying, “I know you from somewhere . . .” and made him break out in a sweat? Did he look in every window not to see his own reflection but to make sure no one was watching him?
    And, of course, it makes me wonder whether our connection was pure chance, or if he’d been hunting for someone like me. Not just a girl descended from a Jewish family in a town with precious few Jews, but one with the added bonus of a damaged face, too self-conscious to draw attention to herself by going public with his story. I had never told Josef about Adam, but had he still recognized in me a guilty conscience, like his own?
    Luckily, there isn’t a funeral going on. Adam’s business is a steady one—he’ll always have clients—but if he were in the middle of a service I wouldn’t be rude enough to disturb him. I text Adam when I am hovering outside the back of the building, near the recycling bins and the Dumpster. I’m out back. Need to talk.
    A moment later he appears, dressed like a surgeon. “What areyou doing here, Sage?” he whispers, although we are alone. “Robert’s upstairs. ”
    Robert, the father-in-law.
    “I’m having a really bad day,” I say, close to tears.
    “And I’m having a really long one. Can’t this wait?”
    “Please,” I beg. “Five minutes?”
    Before he can reply, a tall man with silver hair appears in the doorway beside him. “Maybe you’d like to tell me, Adam, why the embalming room door is wide open with a client on the table? I thought you kicked the cigarette habit—” Spying me, he registers the Picasso half of my face and forces a smile. “I’m sorry, may I help you?”
    “Dad,” Adam says, “this is