Suffer the Children - By John Saul Page 0,19

for a moment. Rose was still staring out the window. The van was moving slowly, but it was picking up speed on the slight incline that led to the garage. She judged that if it hit the garage, it would stop with little damage. But if it missed the garage…

Her eyes moved across the wide lawn, and the unobstructed path that led directly to the edge of the cliff.

“The door,” George yelled. “It’s stuck!”

“Push down,” Rose snapped. “It jams at the top.” She glanced out the window again, and the van seemed to be veering a little to the left. It would miss the garage.

She heard George grunt, and spun to see him still struggling with the door. Behind her she could hear the terrified screams of the children as they realized what was happening.

“Let me do it,” she cried, pushing him aside and grasping the knob. She lunged at the door and gave a quick yank. It flew open, and George was through it and running for the front door, a few feet away. In the middle of the doorway, Mrs. Goodrich stood frozen, her hand covering her mouth as if to stifle a scream. George shoved her aside, and she would have fallen if Rose hadn’t moved quickly to catch her.

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Goodrich snapped. “Don’t worry about me. Help Mr. Diller.”

But it was obvious that there was nothing she could do. She watched as George raced after the coasting van. From where she stood it appeared that even if he caught up with it, he wouldn’t have any way of stopping it before it shot off the edge of the cliff.

The driver’s door was flapping wildly as George caught up with the van. He hurled himself into the driver’s seat, and his left hand groped for the emergency brake as his right hand pulled the wheel around. He felt the rear wheels lock, and the van pulled around to the left and began to skid. There was nothing more he could do. He held his breath and waited. Behind him, the children screamed wildly, except for Sarah, who sat placidly in the front passenger’s seat, staring out of the window.

It stopped only inches from the edge. If the door hadn’t been open, George thought—but then he realized that there were too many ifs. He sat behind the wheel and waited for his nerves to calm down. By the time he was ready to begin guiding the children out of the van, Rose was there. One by one, they got the children out of the van, and Rose led them up to the house. Mrs. Goodrich, having seen that the van didn’t go over the edge, had already disappeared into the kitchen. By the time all the children were safely in the house, she had produced a pitcher of hot cocoa. Rose left the children in her charge and went back to the van. George had climbed into the driver’s seat again, and was preparing to jockey it away from the precipice.

“Be careful,” Rose warned him.

With Rose waving him directions, he eased the van inward from the edge and, when it was far enough back, turned it around. He called to Rose to join him, and eased the vehicle back up to the driveway. When he parked it, he carefully left it in gear and checked the hand brake twice.

“What happened?” Rose asked him as they reentered the house.

George shook his head. “I don’t know. I must have forgotten to set the brake. But I was sure I had. It’s almost a reflex with me.” He thought a moment, then shook his head. “I can almost see myself setting it, but I must not have.”

An hour later, with the children calm once more, George Diller herded them all back into the van. If Rose noticed that George made sure that Sarah was in the back seat this time, she didn’t comment on it. She simply stood on the porch and watched the van make its way down the driveway. Then she returned to her office and tried to concentrate on her work. It wasn’t easy.

George Diller drove even more carefully than usual on his way back to the school, and he kept one eye on the rear-view mirror. But it wasn’t the road behind him that he was watching. It was the children. Particularly, he watched Sarah Conger.

She sat in the back seat, and as they drove along the Conger’s Point Road she seemed to be looking

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