Free The Miracle Stealer by Neil Connelly Page B

Daniel said.
    I glanced up at the house. “We weren’t fighting,” I told him.
    â€œSure you were. You’re mad at her and she’s mad at you. Don’t lie, Andi.”
    â€œLook,” I said. “Sometimes grown-ups have a hard time working things out.”
    He nodded, like this was a fact he knew already. Then he pressed one of his sneaker toes into the ground and said, “Are you gonna leave?”
    I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him in to me, squeezed both arms around him. “No, I’m not gonna leave. I’m your big sister and I love you.”
    With his face pressed sideways, he said, “Didn’t Dad love me too?”
    I felt a sickness in my gut. “Of course Dad loved you. He loved all of us.”
    â€œThen why did he go?”
    I thought of all the reasons I’d come up with since my father’s departure: that he was weak, a coward; that he figured we’d be happier without him; that he didn’t think the same way as the people around here; that the place, or maybe the curse of Irene McGinley, just drove him crazy. But I didn’t believe any of these things, so I told my brother the absolute truth. “I don’t know, Daniel. I just don’t know.”
    After that I walked him around to the porch and sent him inside for his bath. I headed down to my cabin but, rather than getting ready for bed myself, I tugged my sleeping bag from the closet and grabbed a pillow. I pulled an old aluminum bat from a hall closet, then marched back up to the main house. I dragged one of the Adirondack chairs to the corner of the porch, giving me a view of the road, the cabins, and the lake. Later, I planned on rolling out my bag by the front door so the Scarecrow would have to step over my body if he came back for Daniel. For now though, I laid the aluminum bat on my lap and kept watch as long as the fading sun would allow, and my thoughts floated back to the summer before my father left us.
    After my brother’s rescue, things seemed to get stranger week by week. I don’t know who first used the term Miracle Boy , butpretty soon it was all over the TV. Even before Daniel was released from the hospital, he and that miner were on magazine covers and some guy from Hollywood called to say he wanted to buy the rights to make a movie.
    The very first Sunday following the accident, while my dad was up at St. Jude’s with Daniel still in intensive care, my mother and I attended a standing-room-only service at the UCP. By then there were a dozen reporters in town. Volpe was probably one of them, though I don’t remember seeing her. Mrs. Wheeler let them all set up their cameras by Mrs. Krupchak’s piano, so they had a good view and everything. The citizens, packed in the pews and spilling into the aisles, applauded when we walked in, and everyone was weeping with joy through the opening songs.
    It’d been decades since the UCP had an official leader like normal churches. Instead, each Sunday a different member of Paradise would read from the Bible and reflect on Christ’s will. There’d be another song or two, and then we’d move on to the main event, when people would offer their testimony.
    The testimony at the Universal Church of Paradise was divided into two parts: the praises and the petitions. The praises always came first, where people shared their good news and thanked God for the week’s blessings. As a child, the praises had been my favorite part of the service. I’d wait my turn and say something good like, Thank you, God, for my new baby brother , or Praise God for the B-plus I got on my report about FDR . Whatever. Surrounded by so much good fortune, you had the impression that the world was simply a wonderful place, like nothing could ever go wrong. That summer day when it was just me and my mother, the praises were just one after the next different versionsof “Thank you, God, for saving our