Act of God by Susan R. Sloan Read Free Book Online Page A

day; Shelly after a large, boisterous Catholic service, and Denise after a small, quiet Greek Orthodox ceremony.
    In both cases, the funerals had been delayed because it hadtaken the medical examiner’s office almost a week to reconstruct the bits and pieces of the two women’s bodies. And all they
     could do was pray that they had gotten at least most of it right.
    They needn’t have worried. Both caskets were closed and both bodies were cremated. Shelly’s parents chose to scatter their
     daughter’s ashes over Puget Sound. Denise’s remains were interred in a family crypt.
    The mayor was an honored guest at the Weld funeral in Seattle. The governor startled Denise’s mourners by making a brief appearance
     at the Romanadis family church in Northgate.
    Joe Romanadis, standing with his three surviving children, was overwhelmed when the governor actually came up and hugged him.
     It was a great media opportunity. A tape of the moment topped the news broadcasts that evening, and a photograph made the
     front page of the
Post-Intelligencer
the following morning.
    “Hey dad, you’re famous,” his thirteen-year-old son said.
    “I don’t want to be famous,” Joe told him, tears in his eyes. “I just want them to catch the son of a bitch who did this.”
    Frances Stocker’s daughter drove her mother from the hospital to Whidbey Island. The psychologist’s legs were in casts up
     to her hips.
    “There are so many steel pins in those legs,” the doctor quipped, “you be sure you don’t meet up with any ’magnates.’” He
     was very proud of his handiwork. Going in, he hadn’t really been sure whether he would be able to save both legs.
    “I don’t want to be a burden on you,” Frances said to her daughter. “I’ll go home as soon as I learn how to get around.” She
     was discharged from the hospital with a quantity of antibiotics, a prescription for pain pills, and a pair of sturdy metal
     crutches.
    “Mom, you’re not a burden,” Gail Stocker replied. “You’ll stay until the doctor says you can go.”
    “The doctors are overcautious,” Frances said with a sniff. “I’ll be an expert on those stilts by the end of the week.”
    Gail sighed. Her mother had never been one to listen to anybody, least of all her daughter. “Good,” she said. “I’ll enter
     you in the Boston Marathon.”
    “I just don’t want you waiting on me,” Frances grumbled. “You have enough to do, what with your job and all your animals.
     I don’t know why you think you have to take care of me.”
    “Because I can,” the veterinarian replied. “For the first time in my life, I have the opportunity to really do something important
     for you. So let me.”
    Frances smiled to herself. Her mother’s daughter, she thought wryly—capable, independent, and stubborn. But in truth, the
     idea of being alone right now was not particularly appealing. Just simply knowing that another person was near at hand was
     what mattered most of all, especially during the night when it was dark and quiet. When she lay by the hour with eyes wide
     open, alternately perspiring and shivering, and wondered why she had been spared, when so many others had not. It was nice
     to know then that someone was there, someone to whom she was connected, someone who cared.
    It was easier to stay awake than to sleep. In her nightmares, Frances was back in her office, seeing Grace Pauley perched
     in the chair just across the desk. Why had the desk protected her, and not that poor woman who had so needed protection? For
     the rest of her life, she knew she would see that frail figure, those fragile features, that desperate expression, etched
     on the inside of her eyelids.
    It didn’t take Carl Gentry long to discover that a broken neck wasn’t necessarily fatal.
    “I thought people died when their necks got broken,” the security guard said to the doctor at Swedish Hospital a week after
     the bombing.
    “Some do,” he was told. “But many