If the Witness Lied Read Online Free PDF Page B

He doesn’t often wear one.
    The day-care center is a few miles west. Jack takes a shortcut he rarely uses, because the yard is home to an unfriendly Lab. Usually there’s no such thing, but this dog is a biter. Jack knows how the dog feels. He would love to sink his teeth into the trespasser at his house. He goes through the dog’s yard so fast he figures a cheetah couldn’t catch him.
    They can film all the day care they want.
    But they are not filming Tris.
    *   *   *
    Madison flings off the blanket and gets down to the business of finding some decent TV. Grimly, she pauses at every channel.
    She is startled to find her former church on the local-access cable channel. The banner explains that each Sunday service is broadcast three times the following week. Who knew?
    The camera is positioned high in the second-floor gallery, at the rear. Even from behind, Madison recognizes some of the congregation: parents of her old friends or friends of her parents. The Fountains used to sit on the left, halfway back. After Mom died, Dad couldn’t seem to organize himself to get everybody to church. There’s something about Sunday morning that just takes more time, especially if you have to dress a baby. Church slipped away.
    On television, little kids scurry forward to sit on the chancel steps for the children’s sermon. When she was little, Madison used to feel so important up there. She used to love church. An hour in which to think of good things. But this year good things are hard to find in the Fountain family.
    Aunt Cheryl isn’t interested in church, so it’s no surprise that Tris isn’t among the children. Jack probably doesn’t go on his own. Who wants to go alone? Madison certainly doesn’t.
    The children sing “Jesus Loves Me.”
    A few months before Tris was born, when Mom could still sing(at the end, she didn’t have enough breath), she made a CD. She recorded game songs like “I’m a little teapot, short and stout,” and children’s hymns, including “Jesus Loves Me,” and read favorite picture books, so that her fourth child would hear his mother’s voice. Every night, Dad played that CD for Tris to fall asleep to. Madison couldn’t stand the CD. Her mother’s voice but not her presence? It was like an endless broken promise. She never asked Dad how he felt. There are a thousand things it’s too late to ask now.
    “Today in Sunday school,” says the minister—it’s Reverend Phillips, who christened Madison—“you’ll learn about Ruth. Ruth has her own book in the Bible. It’s only four pages long. How many pages long are the books
you
read?”
    “I read chapter books now!” shouts a little girl.
    “I can’t read yet,” says a little boy, worried.
    “But we all love books,” says Reverend Phillips. “Ruth’s story is about loyalty. Does anybody know what that word means? If you’re loyal, what kind of things do you do?”
    If there is anybody who has failed the loyalty test, it is Madison Fountain. She turns off the television before she has to hear more about Ruth, who probably does everything right, as opposed to Madison herself, who has definitely done everything wrong. Madison, the one who runs when the going gets tough.
    Madison is no longer faking it. She really is sick. In the kitchen she considers the can of chunky chicken rice soup Mrs. Emmer has left on the counter. Her own mother did not give her soup when she was sick. Laura Fountain’s theory was, who ever wanted chicken broth? Here. Have a cookie, hot from the oven. And Mom was never sick herself, so she had little sympathy forpeople who were. She’d yell, “Go to bed! Sleep it off! If you’re going to throw up, don’t miss the toilet!”
    Madison still cannot fathom how her mother got cancer. Laura Fountain always seems like the wrong person to have died young. All that energy and noise and song. All those projects and laughter. How did cancer get past those defenses?
    It’s almost lunchtime. Madison is