Free The God Project by John Saul

right,” she said, more to herself than to her husband. “I’ll get dressed, and I’ll come downstairs, and I’ll eat breakfast I’ll take each moment as it comes, and I’ll get through.” She took a deep breath, then went once more to her dresser. This time she kept her eyes carefully averted from the picture of Julie as she opened the drawer and took out a soft silk blouse. Then, taking her pantyhose with her, she disappeared into the bathroom.
    Steve stayed on in the bedroom for a while, his eyes fixed on the picture of his daughter, then suddenly he turned the picture face down on the dresser top. A moment later he was gone, back to the kitchen where his son was waiting for him.

Chapter 7
    T HE CAR MOVED SLOWLY through the streets of Eastbury, and Sally found herself looking out at the town and its people with a strange detachment she had only felt a few times before. The last time had been when her father had died, and she had been driven through these same streets toward the same cemetery. On that day, as their car passed through the center of town, where the charm of old New England had still been carefully preserved, the people of Eastbury had nodded respectfully toward Sally and her mother. They had understood the death of Jeremiah Paine and been able to express their sympathy toward his family.
    But today, Eastbury looked different. People seemed to turn away from the car. What Sally had always perceived as Yankee reserve, today seemed like icy aloofness. Even the town had changed, Sally realized. It had begun to take on a look of coldness, as if along with the new technology had come a new indifference. Where once the town and its inhabitants had seemed to fit each other comfortably, now the people Sally saw moving indifferently through Eastbury’s picturesque streets were mostly newcomers who looked as if they had been cut from a mold, then assigned to live in Eastbury. Cookie-cutter people, Sally thought, who could have lived anywhere, and nothing in their lives would change. The new breed, she reflected sadly. It seemed to her that there was some vital force lacking in them, and as the car moved into the parking lot next to the First Presbyterian Church and its adjoining cemetery, she wondered if she, too, had become infected by the malaise that seemed to have chilled the town.
    A few minutes later, as she stood in the cemetery where her father was buried, and where, she supposed, she herself would someday lie, Sally Montgomery still felt the chilly, though she knew the day was unseasonably warm. There were few people gathered around the grave. Apparently most of Sally’s friends were feeling the same way she was feeling: numb and unable to cope. Funerals were to pay final respects to old people and to comfort the living for the loss of someone who had been part of their lives for years. What did you say when an infant died?
    Suddenly all the soft murmurings sounded hollow.
    “Perhaps it was a blessing …” for someone who has been sick for years.
    “At least it happened quickly …” for someone who had never been sick a day in her life.
    “I know how you’ll miss her …” for a mother or a sister or an aunt.
    “I don’t know what I’ll do without her …” to share the burden of loss.
    But for a six-month-old baby? Nothing. Nothing to be said, nothing to be offered. And so they stayed away, and Sally understood.
    She watched the tiny coffin being lowered into the ground, listened as the minister uttered the final words consigning Julie Montgomery to the care of the Lord, moved woodenly toward the grave to deposit the first clod of the earth that would soon hide her daughter from the sight of the living, then started toward the car, intent only on getting home, getting away from the ceremony that, far from easing her pain, was only intensifying it.
    From a few yards away, Arthur Wiseman watchedSally’s forlorn figure and wondered once again why he had come to Julie Montgomery’s