Free God Project by John Saul Page B

all right?”
    “I want to go home,” Sally whispered, the last of her energy drained by her outburst “I want to go home, andget away from here. Please? Take me home.” She moved once more toward the nearby car, Steve by her side, Jason trailing along behind them. Only Phyllis Paine stayed behind to speak to Wiseman, and there was an anger in her voice that he had rarely heard in the long years of their friendship.
    “Arthur, what did you say to her?” she demanded. “What did you say to my daughter?”
    “Nothing, Phyllis,” Wiseman replied tiredly. “Only that maybe someday we’ll have some idea of what causes SIDS.”
    “At the funeral?” Phyllis asked, her voice reflecting her outrage. “You came to the funeral to talk about what killed Julie?”
    Wiseman groaned inwardly, but was careful to maintain a calm façade. “That’s hardly what I was doing, Phyllis, and when you think about it, I know you’ll realize I would never do something like that. But it’s important that Sally understand what happened, and I wanted to let her know that if there’s anything I can do, either as her doctor or her friend, I’ll do it.”
    As Wiseman spoke, Steven Montgomery came back to escort his mother-in-law to the waiting car. “There is something you can do, Dr. Wiseman,” he said. “Just try to let us forget about it. It’s over, and nothing can be done. We have to try to forget.”
    He led Phyllis to the car, helped her in, then turned back to face the doctor once again. “You understand, don’t you?” he asked with a bleakness in his voice that Wiseman had rarely heard before. “There’s nothing we can do now. Nothing at all.” Then Steve, too, got into the car, and Wiseman watched as the Montgomery’s drove away. When they were gone, the agony of Sally’s eyes and Steve’s words remained.
    As he left the cemetery, Wiseman pondered the true depth of the tragedy that had befallen the Montgomerys.
    For Julie, the tragedy was over.
    For her parents, it had just begun.
    * * *
    Jason Montgomery jammed the shovel into the ground, jumped on it, then pulled on the handle until the clod of earth came loose. He repeated the process again and again, then stopped to inspect his work.
    There was a square, four feet on a side, from which he’d stripped the topsoil. He’d been working for almost an hour—ever since he’d gotten home from his sister’s funeral. So far, no one had come out to tell him to stop.
    Maybe today, no one would.
    If it happened that way—and Jason thought the chances were pretty good—then he would have his fort done by suppertime. It would be four feet deep and covered over with some planks he’d found behind the garage last week. His father had said they were going to be used for a chicken coop, but Jason had decided that since they had no chickens, he might as well use them for the roof of his fort. Besides, all he had to do was lay them on the ground side by side. They wouldn’t even have to be nailed. The work was all in the digging. He wished Bandy Corliss were there to help him, but he hadn’t even been allowed to call Randy today, so now he had to build the fort all by himself.
    He picked up the shovel once more and plunged it deep into the softer earth that lay beneath the surface. He felt the shovel hit something and pushed harder. It gave a little, then a lot. Putting the shovel aside, he knelt down in the dirt and began digging at the loose soil with his bare hands.
    A moment later he hit the broken bottle.
    It had been whole when the shovel struck it, but now its sharp edges slashed at him, cutting deep into the index finger on his left hand. Reflexively, Jason jerked his hand out of the dirt and stuck the finger in his mouth. He sucked hard, tasting the sweet saltiness of the blood, then spat onto the ground.
    He inspected his finger carefully. Blood was oozing thickly from the cut, running down his hand, then dripping slowly onto the pile of loose dirt. He squeezed