Proof of Heaven by Mary Curran Hackett Page B

had a way to rationalize, explain, and defend the afterlife—and not one of them had a clue, a real clue, what they were talking about.
    In the bathroom, Cathleen stepped into the shower and marveled at how things had started to turn around. Despite the horrific diagnosis Dr. Basu delivered yesterday, she couldn’t explain it, but it felt, dare she say, “good” to know that this wasn’t all in her head—or in her son’s. That there was now a name for what was happening to Colm—and that there was a real enemy, something, anything, to actually fight against. More than that, after reading information on all the sites, she was convinced that all these doctors, scientists, and theorists were just wrong about her son’s prognosis. There was always a cure. There had to be. And yes, there were limits to what science could do, but not to what the heart could do—not to what God could do.
    Buoyed by the stories of miracles on the newly discovered Miracles Happen website, she felt more certain than ever that God was on her side for once, and that perhaps the monsignor and the website were right—miracles do happen. She was even a little surprised by Sean’s ability to step up yesterday. He actually stuck around all day at the hospital and stayed with her last night. He called in sick to work too. He had never done that for her before. She had always been the one caring for him .
    When they were teenagers living with their mom, he was always so distracted by his studies that she stepped in and took care of the details he let slip. He seemed to be so driven, drunk then only on the possibility of flight. He had had a singular purpose, and so while he was off studying or volunteering, she did his laundry, signed his forms, arranged for his tuxedos for the proms. When he was applying to college, she set up a calendar with due dates and wrote the checks for his SATs and college applications, things her mother, who never went to college, had no idea how to do.
    But then when things didn’t go as planned, and even later still, after he became a firefighter, she still kept helping him, enabling him, one of his old AA sponsors once accused her. She opened his bank account and had the rent pulled automatically to make sure they never lost the rent-controlled apartment his mother left him after she died. She ran interference with certain friends, asking them to call her if they ever saw Sean at certain bars. Sean didn’t think his sister knew that he spent a good amount of his paycheck at Eamonn’s across the river, but she was always one step ahead of him. She kept the account numbers and passwords for herself, and when she or his friends hadn’t heard from him for too long, she could log into his account to see where he had been the night before. She never went looking for him or embarrassed him by dragging him off a barstool, but she was always vigilant.
    For the first time in years, she felt relieved that she didn’t have to handle something—anything at all—on her own. She exhaled and felt good, surprisingly rested and fresh, despite the lack of sleep. She felt like she was finally turning a corner, and beyond it were some answers, some ways to fix Colm. She turned off the shower and reached for her towel. Her hand slipped out from behind the curtain and slapped the cold metal bar as she fumbled for it, and then she pulled back the curtain and looked around.
    â€œWhere in the hell . . . Hey, Sean! Would you grab me a towel from the hall closet? I don’t know what happened to mine.”
    Startled, Sean slammed the laptop shut and ran to the hall to grab his sister a towel, and he slipped it through the door.
    Cathleen wrapped her hair, put on her robe, stepped out past him, and slid into her room.
    As she was about to shut the door, Sean yelled back at her, “Wait a minute, Sis.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDon’t get mad, but I was snooping