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enough.
    Maybe, deep inside, she still hadn’t wanted Julie.
    As she drifted slowly into a restless sleep, Sally could still hear her mother’s voice, see her mother’s eyes, accusing her.
    And her daughter was dead, and she had no way of proving that it hadn’t been her fault.
    She couldn’t prove it to her mother; she couldn’t prove it to herself.
    As she slept, a germ of guilt entered Sally Montgomery’s soul, a guilt as deadly for her soul as a cancer might be for her body.
    In one night, Sally Montgomery’s life had changed.

Chapter 3
    R ANDY CORLISS POKED AIMLESSLY at the bowl of soggy cereal. He had already made up his mind not to eat it.
    Five more minutes, and his mother would be gone.
    Then he could throw the cereal into the garbage, swipe a Twinkie, and be on his way. He stared intently at the minute hand on the clock, not quite sure if he could actually see it moving. He wished his mother would buy a clock like the ones at school, where you could really see the hands jump forward every minute, but he knew she wouldn’t. Maybe if he asked his father next weekend …
    He mulled the idea over in his nine-year-old mind, only half-listening as his mother gave her usual speech about coming right home after school, not answering the door unless he knew who was outside, and reporting his arrival to Mrs.-Willis-next-door. At last she leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and disappeared into the garage adjoining the kitchen. Only when he heard her start the car, and knew she was really gone, did Randy get up and dump the loathsome cereal.
    At five minutes after eight, Randy Corliss went out into the bright spring morning and began the long walk that would take him first to Jason Montgomery’s house,and then to school. All around him children his own age were drifting from their homes onto the sidewalks, forming groups of twos and threes, whispering and giggling among themselves. All of them, it seemed, had plenty of friends.
    All of them except Randy Corliss.
    Randy didn’t understand exactly why he had so few friends. In fact, a long time ago, when he was six, he’d had lots of friends. But in the last three years, most of them had drifted away.
    It wasn’t as if he was the only one whose parents were divorced. Lots of the kids lived with only their mothers, and some of them even lived with just their fathers. Those were the kids Randy envied—the ones who lived with their fathers. He decided to talk about that with his father this weekend too. Maybe this time he could convince him. He’d been trying for almost a year now—ever since the time last summer when he’d run away.
    Last summer hadn’t been much fun at all. Nobody would play with him, and he’d spent the first month of the summer watching the other kids, waiting for them to ask him to play ball, or go for a hike, or go swimming, or do any of the other things they were doing.
    But they hadn’t, and when he finally broke down and asked Billy Semple what was wrong, Billy, who had been his last friend, only looked at him for a long time, then stared at the cast on his leg, shrugged, and said nothing.
    Randy had known what that was all about. He and Billy had been out playing in the Semples’ backyard one day, and Randy had decided it might be fun to jump off the roof. First they had tried the garage roof, and it had been easy. Randy had jumped first, landing in the Semples’ compost heap, and Billy had followed.
    Then Randy had suggested they try the house roof, and Billy had looked fearfully up at the steep pitch. But in the end, not wanting to appear cowardly, Billy had gone along with it. The two of them had gotten a ladder and climbed to the eaves, where they had perched for acouple of minutes, staring down. Randy had been the first to jump.
    He had hit the ground, and for a second had felt a flash of pain in his ankles. But then he had rolled, and by the time he had gotten to his feet, the pain was gone. He’d grinned up at