The Miracle Stealer Read Online Free Page B

choice for a wedding veil or a prom dress. (She made the one Michelle Kirkpatrick wore the night she deliberately drove her car off the cliff at McGinley’s Cove.) When Mrs. Bundower’s heart started going bad, everybody felt miserable. This was the summer after Daniel got rescued but before the fish died, so the people at the Universal Church of Paradise were still asking Daniel for favors with God. But even all those prayers didn’t slow her steady decline, and finally she ended up at St. Jude’s.
    The night my mother said she wanted us all to visit, I didn’t think too much of it, figuring Mrs. Bundower just wanted some company. At that point, I was convinced that she was going torecover. But when we walked into that dim room up on the fourth floor, Mrs. Bundower was still and gray, and I knew she wouldn’t be getting better. Her eyes were open, but they were locked on the ceiling above her with no sign of recognition. Her head sat like a heavy stone, hard and deep in the pillow. The worst thing of all was how with every breath her jaw twitched as she sucked for air. It wasn’t like the way a runner tries to catch her breath after a sprint. It was more like the way a fish washed on the rocks gasps—open-eyed, trying to fight off the inevitable.
    Chief Bundower sat with his forehead pressed to the metal rail of the bed. I guess he’d seen enough of that face. He thanked my mother for coming, gave the latest report from the doctors. I remember the phrase, “Try to keep her comfortable.” Sylvia Volpe stepped from the shadows behind the Chief to greet us. Daniel walked right over to Mrs. Bundower, just across from the Chief. He climbed up on a step stool, reached through the metal railing, and took one of her skeleton hands between his. I didn’t like him touching her. The five of us prayed silently for a while, and I tried hard not to think of what Mrs. Bundower was or wasn’t feeling. I hated the raspy wheezing of her breath and the look of her face, so, like the Chief, I just closed my eyes. That’s why I didn’t see Daniel till it was too late.
    After a while, Mrs. Bundower stopped breathing, and that silence made me look up. Everybody focused on her and on the Chief’s muffled sobbing. Volpe draped an arm over his shoulder, and my mother said, “I’m so sorry. I’ll go get someone.” She stepped into the hallway.
    When I looked to see how Daniel was reacting, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The flesh of his face was pale white and coatedin a sweaty sheen. His hands were still locked around the dead woman’s, and they were trembling, like he was trying to push something from his healthy body into her sick one. “Daniel,” I said. “Let go.”
    His eyes popped open and he didn’t seem to know who I was. I reached down and tried to pry his fingers free. “She’s gone,” I said.
    â€œGone to her just reward in heaven,” Volpe corrected.
    Daniel still didn’t seem to understand what had happened. He kept blinking his eyes, like he was trying to wake up. Even after I got his hands free, he was still a zombie. I wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and tried to get him to drink some water. Finally I shouted, “Little Man!” and he came around. He looked at Mrs. Bundower’s corpse and tore out of the room.
    It took me nearly fifteen minutes of jogging around the corridors, even checking the parking lot, but finally I noticed the cracked door of a broom closet just down the hallway. Daniel was huddled up on the floor in the dark, and he wasn’t crying at all, but his body was shaking and his eyes were wide.
    â€œI didn’t pray good?” he asked me.
    I settled down next to him. “You prayed great. Sometimes people just die.”
    â€œI didn’t pray for her to die.”
    â€œGod doesn’t always do what we pray for.” Now I had an arm around