God Project by John Saul Read Free Book Online Page B

Randy—sometimes they don’t know what to do, and after a night or two, they turn themselves in.”
    “And if he doesn’t?” Lucy asked quietly.
    “I—Im not sure. They said something about a search, but they said searches usually don’t do much good either. If something’s happened to Randy, it’s more likely that someone will … well, that someone will find him by accident.”
    “You mean if he’s dead.” Lucy’s voice was flat, and her eyes cold, and Jim found himself unable to make any reply other than a nod of his head.
    “But he’s not dead,” Lucy said softly. “I know he’s not dead.”
    Jim swallowed. There was one more possibility the police had mentioned. “They said he might have gone to Boston …” he began, but then let his words trail off. Better to let the police try to explain to Lucy what could happen to a small boy in Boston.

Chapter 5
    A T THE SAME TIME Jim and Lucy Corliss were trying to deal with the loss of their son, Steve and Sally Montgomery were trying to deal with the loss of their daughter.
    All afternoon, and into the evening, ever since they had returned from the hospital and their talk with Dr. Malone, Sally had been strangely silent. Several times Steve tried to talk to her, but she seemed not to hear him.
    Steve had spent several hours with Jason, trying to explain to him what had happened to Julie, and Jason had listened quietly, his head cocked curiously, his brows furrowed into a thoughtful frown. He seemed, to Steve, to accept the death of his sister as simply one more fact in his young life.
    It was, indeed, not so much the fact of Julie’s death that worried Jason, but the reason for her death. Over and over, he’d kept coming back to the same question.
    “But if there wasn’t anything wrong with her, why did she die?”
    His eyes, larger and darker than his mother’s, looked up at Steve, pleading for an answer Steve couldn’t give. Still, he had to try once more.
    “We don’t know why Julie died,” he repeated for atleast the sixth time. “All we know is that it happens sometimes.”
    “But why did it happen to Julie? Was she a bad girl?”
    “No, she was a very good girl.”
    Jason’s brows knit as he puzzled over the dilemma. “But if she was a good girl, why did God kill her?”
    “I don’t know, son,” Steve replied through the sudden constriction in his throat. “I just don’t know.”
    “Is God going to kill me too?”
    Steve pulled his son to him and hugged him close. “No, of course not. It didn’t have anything to do with us, and it isn’t going to happen to you.”
    “How do you know?” Jason challenged, wriggling loose from his father’s embrace. Steve wearily stood up and began tucking Jason in.
    “I just know,” he said. “Now I want you to go to sleep, okay?”
    “Okay,” Jason agreed. Then his eyes wandered over to the far corner of his room where a black-and-white guinea pig named Fred lived in a small cage. “Can Fred come sleep by me tonight?” he asked.
    Steve smiled. “Sure.” He brought the cage over and set it down next to Jason’s bed. Inside the cage, Fred began patrolling the perimeter, examining his environment from the new perspective. Then, satisfied, he curled up and buried his nose in his own fur. “Now that’s what I want you to do,” Steve said. “Bury your nose and go to sleep.” He bent down and kissed Jason’s cheek, snapped out the light, and left the room.
    A moment later, as he came downstairs, his mother-in-law drew him into the den, and the two of them talked for a long time. At last Phyllis shook her head slowly.
    “I just don’t understand it,” she said. “It seems so strange that a perfect child like Julie could just—what? Stop living? Terrible. Terrible! There must have been a reason, Steve. There must have been.”
    But Steve Montgomery knew there was no reason, at least no reason that the doctors understood. That, he was coming to realize, was the most difficult part