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She felt quite certain that she would never be happy again. How can people be happy, and act as if nothing has happened, when they have been so horrible and caused so much grief for other people? Mrs. Milligan kept telling her that everything would be all right, that it wasn’t her fault that her little brother and her cousin were lying in hospital beds far away in Calgary. But she knew better. And worst of all, Uncle Morley had gone missing since going to look for her dad.
They didn’t realize that she knew this last part – about Uncle Morley. But last night, when she got up to go to the bathroom, she heard Mr. and Mrs. Milligan talking in the living room downstairs.
Mr. Milligan had been on the phone for a while and now he was saying to his wife, “Arthur said he’ll do all he can to help us find Morley. He’ll go to Medicine Hat if he has to. He’ll go see Tyne to find out if she knows the exact area where Morley planned to look for Rachael’s dad.”
Rachael had heard Mrs. Milligan sigh, and it sounded almost like a sob. “But he’s been gone for five days now without a word to anyone. I can’t help it, Jeff, I just feel something terrible has happened to him.”
Remembering their words, Rachael’s eyes filled with tears. That was another sin to add to all her other terrible ones. God would never forgive her. If she had not run away from Auntie Ruby’s, if she had put up with the ill treatment, none of this other would have happened. She could have left Bobby there … she didn’t have to drag him along. Uncle Bill had never mistreated Bobby except to yell at him some of the time, or ignore him most of the time. And if she hadn’t run off, Ronnie wouldn’t have run away, too … at least not in the middle of winter when a storm was coming.
She wasn’t quite sure how Uncle Morley’s disappearance fit in but she knew it, too, was her fault. If she’d been a better kid, a bigger help to her mom and dad, her dad wouldn’t have got drunk all the time, and he would have kept them at home and looked after them after their mom died.
Several times, since she had awakened in the Emblem hospital, she had tried to talk to God about it. But she didn’t feel anything like she always used to feel when she prayed. Why would God do anything to…
Libros Libertad 