Free Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult Page B

settled back against the pillows. “I bet a saint can play softball.”
    “So can a girl with a heart transplant.”
    But Claire wasn’t listening; she knew that hope was just smoke and mirrors; she’d learned by watching me. She looked up at the clock. “I think I’ll be a saint,” she said, as if it were entirely up to her. “That way no one forgets you when you’re gone.”
     
    The funeral of a police officer is a breathtaking thing. Officers and firemen and public officials will come from every town in the state and some even farther away. There is a procession of police cruisers that precedes the hearse; they blanket the highway like snow.
    It took me a long time to remember Kurt’s funeral, because I was working so hard at the time to pretend it wasn’t happening. The police chief, Irv, rode with me to the graveside service. There were townspeople lining the streets of Lynley, with handmade signs that read PROTECT AND SERVE , and THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE . It was summertime, and the asphalt sank beneath the heels of my shoes where I stood. I was surrounded by other policemen who’d worked with Kurt, and hundreds who didn’t, a sea of dress blue. My back hurt, and my feet were swollen.I found myself concentrating on a lilac tree that shuddered in the breeze, petals falling like rain.
    The police chief had arranged for a twenty-one-gun salute, and as it finished, five fighter jets rose over the distant violet mountains. They sliced the sky in parallel lines, and then, just as they flew overhead, the plane on the far right broke off like a splinter, soaring east.
    When the priest stopped speaking—I didn’t listen to a word of it; what could he tell me about Kurt that I didn’t already know?—Robbie and Vic stepped forward. They were Kurt’s closest friends in the department. Like the rest of the Lynley force, they had covered their badges with black fabric. They reached for the flag that draped Kurt’s coffin and began to fold it. Their gloved hands moved so fast—I thought of Mickey Mouse, of Donald Duck, with their oversized white fists. Robbie was the one who put the triangle into my arms, something to hold on to, something to take Kurt’s place.
    Through the radios of the other policemen came the voice of the dispatcher:
All units stand by for a broadcast
.
    Final call for Officer Kurt Nealon, number 144.
    144, report to 360 West Main for one last assignment.
    It was the address of the cemetery.
    You will be in the best of hands. You will be deeply missed.
    144, 10-7.
The radio code for end of shift.
    I have been told that afterward, I walked up to Kurt’s coffin. It was so highly polished I could see my own reflection, pinched and unfamiliar. It had been specially made, wider than normal, to accommodate Elizabeth, too.
    She was, at seven, still afraid of the dark. Kurt would lie down beside her, an elephant perched among pinkpillows and satin blankets, until she fell asleep; then he’d creep out of the room and turn off the light. Sometimes, she woke up at midnight shrieking.
You turned it off
, she’d sob into my shoulder, as if I had broken her heart.
    The funeral director had let me see them. Kurt’s arms were wrapped tight around my daughter; Elizabeth rested her head on his chest. They looked the way they looked on nights when Kurt fell asleep waiting for Elizabeth to do that very thing. They looked the way I wished
I
could: smooth and clear and peaceful, a pond with a stone unthrown. It was supposed to be comforting that they would be together. It was supposed to make up for the fact that I couldn’t go with them.
    “Take care of her,” I whispered to Kurt, my breath blowing a kiss against the gleaming wood. “Take care of my baby.”
    As if I’d summoned her, Claire moved inside me then: a slow tumble of butterfly limbs, a memory of why I had to stay behind.
     
    There was a time when I prayed to saints. What I liked about them were their humble beginnings: they were human, once,