Free Revival by Stephen King

suffering will only be a shadow,” Andy said, as if this ended the matter. For him I suppose it did.
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    The wind howled , the old panes of glass in the bedroom’s single window rattled, and my mother said, “I’m so thin, so thin now. I was a pretty bride, everyone said so, but now Laura Mackenzie is so thin.” Her mouth drew down in a clown-moue of sorrow and pain.
    I had three more hours in the room with her before Terry was due to spell me. She might sleep some of that time, but she wasn’t sleeping now, and I was desperate to distract her from the way her body was cannibalizing itself. I might have seized on anything. It just happened to be Charles Jacobs. I asked if she had any idea where he’d gone after he left Harlow.
    â€œOh, that was a terrible time,” she said. “A terrible thing that happened to his wife and little boy.”
    â€œYes,” I said. “I know.”
    My dying mother looked at me with stoned contempt. “ You don’t know. You don’t understand. It was terrible because it was no one’s fault. Certainly not George Barton’s. He simply had a seizure.”
    She then told me what I have already told you. She heard it from the mouth of Adele Parker, who said she would never get the image of the dying woman out of her head. “What I’ll never get out of mine,” Mom said, “was the way he screamed at Peabody’s. I didn’t know a man could make a sound like that.”
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    Doreen DeWitt, Fernald’s wife , called my mother and gave her the news. She had a good reason for calling Laura Morton first. “You’ll have to tell him,” she said.
    My mother was horrified at the prospect. “Oh, no! I couldn’t!”
    â€œYou have to,” Doreen said patiently. “This isn’t news you give over the phone, and except for that old gore-crow Myra Harrington, you’re his closest neighbor.”
    My mother, all her reticence washed away by the morphine, told me, “I gathered up my courage to do it, but I was caught short as I was going out the door. I had to turn around and run to the toidy and shit.”
    She walked down our hill, across Route 9, and to the parsonage. She didn’t say, but I imagine it was the longest walk of her life. She knocked on the door, but at first he didn’t come, although she could hear the radio inside.
    â€œWhy would he have heard me?” she inquired of the ceiling as I sat there beside her. “The first time, my knuckles barely grazed the wood.”
    She knocked harder the second time. He opened the door and looked at her through the screen. He was holding a large book in one hand, and all those years later she remembered the title: Protons and Neutrons: The Secret World of Electricity .
    â€œHello, Laura,” he said. “Are you all right? You’re very pale. Come in, come in.”
    She came in. He asked her what was wrong.
    â€œThere’s been a terrible accident,” she said.
    His look of concern deepened. “Dick or one of the kids? Do you need me to come? Sit down, Laura, you look ready to faint.”
    â€œAll of mine are all right,” she said. “It’s . . . Charles, it’s Patsy. And Morrie.”
    He set the big book carefully on a table in the hall. That was probably when she saw the title, and I’m not surprised that she remembered it; at such times one sees everything and remembers it all. I know from personal experience. I wish I did not.
    â€œHow badly are they hurt?” And before she could answer: “Are they at St. Stevie’s? They must be, it’s the closest. Can we take your station wagon?”
    St. Stephen’s Hospital was in Castle Rock, but of course that wasn’t where they had been taken. “Charles, you must prepare yourself for a terrible shock.”
    He took her by the shoulders—gently,