God Project (10 page)

“No, Mother. It was nothing.” She began guiding her mother toward the door. “I’m sorry for what I said. I’m just terribly tired right now. But you’re right—life
is
for the living. I’ll be all right” She gave her mother a quick hug, and kissed her on the cheek. “Really I will.”

The two of them paused at the front door, but there
was nothing left to say. And then Phyllis was gone, and Sally returned to her husband.

“We’re going to that meeting,” Steve said as soon as Sally had returned to the living room.

Sally looked at him, her eyes clear. “But why? It’s a meeting for SIDS parents, and that’s not us.”

“It
is
us, Sally,” Steve said quietly. “I’m going to that meeting, and you’re going with me, and that’s that. Do you understand?”

The hardness of his voice hit Sally like a blow. She searched Ins face, trying to see what had changed. He had never spoken to her that way before, never as long as she had known him. And yet his voice had left no room for doubt—he had given her an order and expected to be obeyed. Her eyes narrowed, and when she spoke, there was a hardness in her own voice that was foreign to her. “Then well go,” she said. “But I still see no purpose to it.”

A few minutes later she went into the room where Julie had lived to begin the process of clearing out all the things she would never need again. She stripped the bedding from Julie’s crib, then folded up the crib itself. She went through the chest of drawers, pausing over each tiny dress or blouse—so many of them had never been worn, and now never would be. Finally, she took down the mobile that had been drifting over Julie’s crib since the very beginning, stared at it sadly for a moment, then reluctantly dropped it into the wastebasket.

Everything was changed.

Her family was changed.

Her husband was changed.

She herself was changed.

From now on everything was going to be different.

Oh, she would do her best to be like her mother. She would accept her responsibilities. She would live for the living.

And yet, deep inside, a part of her was convinced that there was a reason for Julie’s death, and even as she put away Julie’s things, she knew that sooner or later she would have to discover that reason. And so, when she
eventually left that room for the last time, she knew that she would never be like her mother at all.

In two days Sally Montgomery had changed in ways that the people close to her had not even begun to understand.

Chapter 8

E
ASTBURY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
, its whitewashed exterior turning gray and its grounds unkempt, sat defensively huddled in the midst of a small grove of maples as if it was faying to hide. As Lucy Corliss approached it, she found herself feeling oddly sorry for the bedraggled building—it was almost as if the school itself was aware of the fact that it was on the edge of ruin, and was hoping that if no one noticed it was there, someone would forget to tear it down. As Lucy passed through the front door, she could sense that the depressing appearance of the school’s façade had permeated throughout. There was a feeling of gloom that the dim lights in the corridor did nothing to dispel. It was nearly four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, and the silence of the place made her wonder if anyone was still there. She walked purposefully toward Randy’s classroom, her heels clicking hollowly on the wood floor.

Harriet Grady, nearing sixty but carrying the strain of her thirty-five years of teaching as gracefully as anyone could, was preparing to leave for the day when Lucy appeared in her classroom. She recognized Lucy immediately and rose to her feet. “Mrs. Corliss,” she said warmly. “Please come in. Is there any news about Randy?”

Lucy glanced around the room. It, too, needed a coat of paint, and there were several cracked panes in the large casement windows that broke the west wall. She walked to one of the windows and stared out, not seeing anything really, but trying to decide where to begin. Now that she was here, she was no longer sure why she had come. “Do you think Randy ran away?” she asked at last. A moment later she felt the teacher’s hand touching her arm.

“I don’t know,” Harriet replied. “It’s so hard to know the children these days. They all seem—what? Older than their years, I suppose. So many of the children just don’t seem like children anymore. If’s almost as if there are things in their minds they don’t want you to know.”

Lucy nodded. “Randy’s been that way since he was a baby. I always have the feeling I don’t quite know him. I suppose it’s because I don’t get to spend as much time with him as I should.”

“Children need their parents,” Harriet commented, and Lucy sensed a trace of condemnation in her tone.

“Unfortunately, marriages don’t always work out.”

“Or people don’t work them out,” the teacher countered.

Lucy’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Miss Grady, I didn’t come here to talk about my marriage. I came here to talk about my son.”

The two women’s eyes met and Harriet Grady’s expression softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose I’m getting to be a crotchety old lady. I can’t get used to the fact that most of my children have only one parent. It seems such a pity, and I always wonder if it isn’t one of the reasons so many of the children have problems.”

“Like Randy?” Lucy asked.

“Randy, and a lot of others.” Harriet Grady appraised Lucy Corliss carefully and decided there was no point in mincing words. “But of course you know that Randy’s been more of a problem than most.”

“How?”

Harriet moved back to her desk, sat down, and pulled
a file folder from the top drawer. She began glancing through it.

“Discipline problems. Except it’s not quite that easy.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Lucy said. She reached out to take the file, but Harriet Grady held on to it.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m afraid I’m not supposed to let you see these.”

Lucy stared at the teacher, trying to grasp what she was saying. “Not let me see them? My God, Miss Grady, my son is missing! And if there’s information about him in that file that I need to know about, you have no right to keep it from me. I’m his mother, Miss Grady, I have a right to know everything about my son.”

“Well, I really just don’t know,” Harriet Grady fretted. “You have to understand, Mrs. Corliss—files on students contain all kinds of information, much of it quite objective, but some of it purely subjective. And we just don’t like anyone to see the subjective portions. Anyone at all.”

“Except the teachers,” Lucy interjected, her voice grating with anger.

“Except the teachers,” Harriet agreed. She leaned back in her chair and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Mrs. Corliss,” she went on, “I know how you must feel and I wish I could tell you something to make you feel better. But what can I say? Randy has tried to run away before.”

“He was going to see his father,” Lucy protested. “And he was only gone a few hours.”

“But he still ran,” the teacher insisted. “There’s something about Randy—something odd. He doesn’t always seem to have good judgment.”

“Good judgment?” Lucy echoed. “He’s only nine years old. What on earth are you talking about?”

Harriet Grady sighed and fingered the file for a moment. “I wish I could tell you. It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s as if Randy thinks he can do anything any time he wants. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything, and it gets him into trouble.”

Lucy frowned. “What kind of trouble?”

“Nothing serious,” Harriet assured her. “At least not yet. But we’re always afraid that someday he’s going to hurt himself.”

“Hurt himself? How?”

Harriet Grady searched her mind, trying to think of a way to illustrate what she was trying to say. Finally, she gave up, and reluctantly handed Lucy the file. “Look at the top page,” she said. “And I suppose, if you insist, you might as well look at the rest of the file too. It’s all more or less the same.”

Lucy took the file, opened it, and quickly read the first page. Her skin began to crawl, but she forced herself to finish reading the report, then glanced through the other pages. As Miss Grady had said, it was all the same. Her hands trembling, she returned the folder to the teacher.

“Tell me what happened,” she whispered. “Tell me about that day.”

Harriet Grady cleared her throat, then began. “It was last September. One of the children brought a black widow spider into class. It was in a jar, but I kept it on my desk, and let the children come up to look at it. I warned them that it was poisonous, and they were all very careful. Most of them wouldn’t even pick up the jar. Bandy not only picked it up; he opened it and put his hand inside.”

“Good Lord,” Lucy whispered. “What happened?”

“He started poking at it, and the spider tried to get away from him. But it finally attacked. I tried to take the jar away from him, but he wouldn’t let me. He didn’t seem frightened—he seemed fascinated.”

“Even when the spider bit him?”

“Fortunately, it didn’t I finally knocked the jar out of his hands, and smashed the spider. Then I took him to the nurse and had her look at the hand. There were no bites.”

“It didn’t bite him at all?”

“Apparently not And even when the nurse explained to him what a black widow bite can do, he didn’t seem
worried. He just said he’d played with them before, and nothing had happened.”

Nausea rose to Lucy’s throat as she began to realize what might have happened to Randy. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “Why didn’t someone—”

Harriet Grady’s mouth twisted into a frosty smile. “Do what, Mrs. Corliss? Send a note home with Randy saying ‘Dear Mrs. Corliss, today Randy didn’t get bitten by a spider?’ You’d have thought I was crazy.”

Lucy closed her eyes and nodded. “I probably would.” She thought for a moment, trying to decide what significance the teacher’s information might have for her. But there was nothing. Nothing but a history of dangerous stunts and pranks, any of which might have seriously injured or even killed Randy, but none of which, so far, had apparently harmed him. When she opened her eyes, Harriet Grady was looking at her with an expression that told Lucy the teacher was sharing her thoughts.

“I suppose it’s possible that Randy could have gone off on some kind of an adventure and it went wrong,” the teacher offered. Then she stood up and began leading Lucy to the door. “I wish I could tell you more, Mrs. Corliss, but I never knew what Randy was going to do next. Now I don’t know what to think.” She squeezed Lucy’s arm reassuringly. “He
will
be found, Mrs. Corliss. And knowing Randy, whatever’s happened, he’ll come out all right. He always has so far.”

But when Lucy left her classroom, Harriet Grady went back to her desk and scanned Randy Corliss’s file once again. To her, Randy was a hopeless case. If there ever was a boy who was going to get himself in trouble, it was Randy. She closed the file, put it back in the desk, and locked the drawer.

   Lucy was almost out of the building when she noticed the small sign identifying the nurse’s office. She hesitated, then tapped on the frosted glass panel.

“Come in,” a voice called out. Lucy opened the door and stepped inside. A woman only slightly older than
herself, dressed in a white uniform, was sitting at a desk reading a paperback novel She danced up and grinned.

“If you’re an irate taxpayer, I’m technically off duty. I just hang around most afternoons in case one of the kids hurts himself on the playground. Everyone says I’m dedicated.”

Lucy laughed in spite of herself. The nurse had an open expression that was in sharp contrast to the stern visage of Randy’s teacher.

“I’m not an irate taxpayer,” Lucy told her. “I’m a worried mother.”

Immediately the grin faded from the nurse’s face, and she stood up.

“Are you Mrs. Corliss?” she asked. “We’re all so worried about Randy. Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy admitted. “I was on my way out, and I happened to see the sign. And Miss Grady was just telling me about something that happened last fall-”

“The black widow,” the nurse interrupted. “Your boy was very lucky there.”

“That’s what Miss Grady said. She—she thinks Randy ran away. Everybody does.”

“Everybody except you, right?” The nurse gestured toward a chair. “Sit down. I’m Annie Oliphant, and I’ve heard all the possible jokes having to do with orphans and elephants.” Once more her expression turned serious. “I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for you. Randy was one boy I hardly ever saw.” She went to a filing cabinet, pulled out a thin folder, and glanced quickly through it.

“May I see that?” Lucy asked, her tone deliberately sarcastic. “Or is it confidential?”

Annie Oliphant handed her the file. “Nothing in there that’s a deep, dark secret. And I’ll bet there’s nothing in any of Randy’s other files that’s going to shake national security either. I think secrets just make everyone around here feel important.”

Lucy flipped through the pages of Randy’s medical file. The information was sparse and mostly meaningless
to her. “I don’t suppose any of this could relate to Randy’s disappearance, could it?” she asked.

“I don’t see how,” the nurse agreed. “The only thing interesting about that file is that it describes a disgustingly healthy kid. If they were all like Randy, I wouldn’t have a job. Look at this.” She took the file out of Lucy’s hands and started from the beginning. “No major illnesses. No minor illnesses. No injuries, major or minor. Tonsils intact and healthy. Appendix in place. Even his
teeth
, for heaven’s sake! The lower ones are at least crooked, but not enough to bother with braces, and there isn’t a cavity in his head. What did you do, raise him in a box?”

Again, Lucy couldn’t help laughing. “Hardly. I guess we’ve just been lucky. Up till now.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was lower. “Do you know Randy very well?”

The nurse shook her head. “All I ever did was look him over once a year. He wasn’t one for getting sick in the cafeteria or banging himself up. I’m afraid the only kids I really know are the sickly ones, and as you can see, Randy can hardly be called sickly.”