Free Change of Heart by Norah McClintock

could see that she was crying. Colin put his arm around her to comfort her.
    Sean’s oldest brother, Kevin, delivered the eulogy. He talked about how Sean had driven the whole family crazy when he was a kid because he always had a hockey stick in his hand. If he wasn’t playing on the ice, he was playing ball hockey in the street. His room was plastered with hockey posters. All Sean cared about was hockey, and his obsession had paid off. It wasn’t long before he was outscoring his brothers. Kevin said that it hadn’t been easy to concede that his kid brother was a better player. But he said that they were all proud of Sean. They were proud that he had been scouted by big colleges, that he would have been offered a full scholarship wherever he went. Would have been. Morgan wiped her eyes.
    Colin and Kevin and four of Sean’s hockey teammates, including Jon Czerny, accompanied the casket down the aisle at the end of the service. Sean’s parents followed them. His mother was leaning heavily on his father. Sean was going to be cremated, so there was no trip to the cemetery. I followed everyone to a reception in the church hall.
    I’d been to a few funerals, and I always found it strange to see people eating and chatting, even laughing, afterward, while family members tried to put on a brave face. I saw some friends from school and drifted over to talk to them. I looked around for Morgan and spotted her standing next to Kevin. They were talking to Sean’s hockey coach. I was trying to work up the courage to go and talk to her when a woman I didn’t know came up to me and handed me a huge empty tray.
    â€œBe a dear,” she said. “Take this into the kitchen and bring out some more sandwiches.”
    To be honest, I was relieved to have something to do.
    I passed Jon on the way to the kitchen. Now that the service was over, he had taken off his tie and undone the top two buttons of his shirt. He winked at me as I went by. I ignored him.
    I pushed open the kitchen door and stepped right into the middle of a family scene.
    â€œYou should have been there,” Sean’s mother was saying, sobbing and angry all at the same time. She was talking to Colin. “You told me you were going to pick him up. He was waiting for you. If you’d been there like you said you would, it would never have happened. My baby would be alive.”
    â€œLaura,” said Sean’s father. “No one can say what might have happened. It’s not fair to blame Colin.”
    â€œHe’s older,” Sean’s mother said. “Kevin and Colin know, they both know—the older ones look after the younger ones.”
    â€œBut he—”
    â€œIt’s okay, Dad,” Colin said. He looked miserable.
    Sean’s mother started to cry in earnest. Sean’s father—I later found out that he and Sean’s mother were divorced—tried to put an arm around her to comfort her, but she pushed him away. That’s when Colin spotted me.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” he demanded.
    â€œYeah,” said a voice behind me. Morgan’s voice. She had opened the door to the kitchen but hadn’t closed it again. “You didn’t even know Sean.”
    Being Morgan and being angry, she was also loud. I was sure that everyone in the hall could hear her.
    â€œI’m here because I care,” I said. “And because I know Sean was important to you.”
    â€œYou went to see Billy.” She made it sound like an accusation. “His mother called me again last night. She told me you went. She asked me to go, too.”
    â€œBilly asked me to ask you—”
    â€œI told you, Robyn. I said you had to choose—and you chose Billy.”
    â€œHe didn’t do it,” I said, keenly aware that no one who was watching me believed in Billy’s innocence.
    â€œThey found the weapon in his dad’s shed. It had his fingerprints on it. What