explain it.” He smiled suddenly. “I guess I just want to know the people I’m treating.”
Michelle turned the matter over in her mind and eventually nodded. “I think I know what you mean. Boston General was weird.”
“Weird? What do you mean?”
Michelle shrugged, searching for the right words. “I don’t know. It was like they never knew who you were. And when Mom and I went there, they never even knew we were your family. That snotty one in the main lobby always wanted to know why we wanted to see you. You’d think that after this many years, she’d have recognized us.…” Michelle’s voice trailed off, and she gazed at her father, wondering if he understood. Cal nodded.
“That’s it,” he said, relieved that he wouldn’t have to tell her the truth. “That’s it, exactly. And it was the same way with the people I treated. If I saw them three days later, I wouldn’t recognize
“About what?” Michelle asked.
“Coming out here. Leaving your friends. Changing schools. All the sorts of things girls your age are supposed to worry about.”
Michelle sipped on her Coke, then looked around the kitchen. “Harrison wasn’t such a great school,” she said at last. “The one in Paradise Point is much prettier.”
“And a lot smaller,” Cal pointed out.
“And it probably doesn’t have a bunch of kids wrecking it all the time, either,” Michelle added. “And as for friends, I’d have had to make new friends next year, anyway, wouldn’t I?”
Cal looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”
Michelle stared guiltily into her glass. “I heard you and Mom talking. Were you really going to send me to boarding school?”
“It wasn’t really decided yet—” he began lamely, but when he looked at Michelle’s eyes, he gave up the lie. “We thought it would be better for you,” he said. “Harrison was just getting too rough. You told us yourself you weren’t learning anything anymore. And anyway, it wasn’t boarding school. You’d have been home every day.”
“Well, this is better,” Michelle said. “I’ll make friends here, and I won’t have to make new friends next year. Will I?” There was a sudden anxiety in her eyes that made Cal want to reassure her.
“Of course not. Unless you hate it. Come to think of it, you’d better not hate it, because I’m not sure we’d be able to send you to private school on what I’m going to be making out here. But I want you to be happy, Princess. That’s very important to me.”
Michelle suddenly grinned, breaking the seriousness of the moment. “How could I not be happy? Everybody I know would do anything to be living here. We’ve got the ocean, and the forest, and this wonderful house. What more could I want?”
In a sudden burst of affection, Michelle threw herself into her father’s arms and kissed him.
“I love you, Daddy, really I do.”
“And I love you, too, princess,” Cal replied, his eyes moistening with affection. “I love you, too.” Then he disengaged himself from Michelle’s arms and stood up. “Come on. Let’s get back to those boxes before your mother sends both of us back to the orphanage!”
• • •
“I found it!” Michelle cried triumphantly. It was a big box, marked on every side with Michelle’s name. “Let’s take it up now, Daddy, please?” Michelle begged. “Everything I own is in it. Everything! Can’t I unpack it next? I mean, we don’t know where Mom wants everything anyway, and I could put all this stuff away myself. Please?”
Cal nodded his assent and helped her drag the immense box upstairs to the corner room that Michelle had claimed as her own.
“Want some help unpacking it?” he offered. Michelle shook her head vehemently. “And let you see what’s inside? If you knew what was in here, you’d make me throw half of it away.” In her mind’s eye, Michelle saw the jumble of old movie magazines — just the sort of thing her parents didn’t approve of — and the assorted souvenirs of her departing childhood that she had not been able to give up. “And don’t you dare tell Mom I said that,” she added, enlisting her father in a collaboration of silence to help her preserve her childish treasures.
Then, as Cal left her alone in the room, Michelle began ripping the carton open to unpack all her things, first onto the bed, then carefully hidden away in the closet and dresser.
It wasn’t until she’d put the last old toy away that she noticed the doll, still propped up on the window seat where she’d left it a few hours earlier. She went over to the window and picked it up, holding it level with her eyes.
“I’ll have to think of a name for you,” she said out loud. “Something old-fashioned, as old-fashioned as you.” She thought a moment, then smiled.
“Amanda!” she said. “That’s it I’ll call you Amanda. Mandy, for short.”
Then, pleased with her choice of a name, Michelle put the antique doll back on the window seat and went downstairs to see what her father was doing.
As the afternoon light faded from the corner room, the doll seemed to be staring out the window, its sightless glass eyes fixed on the potting-shed below.
CHAPTER 2
The potting-shed had a solid feel to it, a sturdiness that made June wonder what, exactly, its builder had in mind. It seemed to her, as she went over it for the fourth time, that it must have been intended as more than a simple storage and workroom — the windows overlooking the ocean were too carefully spaced; the floor, its oak planks barely worn after a century of use, too well laid; and its proportions too perfect for it to have been used merely by a gardener. No, she decided, whoever had designed this room had planned to use it himself. It was almost as though it had been designed as a studio. The windows overlooking the sea faced as nearly north as the bluff would allow, and beneath them a long counter with beautifully crafted storage cabinets ran the length of the room. Near one end of the counter, a large sink had been installed. The brick walls, streaked with the grime of years, had once been whitewashed, and the wood trim around the doors and windows, peeling now, were painted a soft green, as if someone had tried to match the shade of the foliage outside. One end of the room held a large closet. For the moment, June chose to leave its door closed, and imagine, instead, what might be hidden there. Relics, she thought deliciously. Relics of the past, just waiting to be discovered.
She lowered her body onto a stool and automatically counted the days until the baby would be born. Thirty- seven, she reflected, was a silly age at which to be having a baby. Not only silly, but possibly dangerous for both her and the child.
She got to her feet, ignoring the heaviness of her body, and wondered how it was that a building that had been abandoned for so many years could have become so filled with junk.
In one corner she spotted a trash barrel, which was, miraculously, empty. Minutes later it was filled, and June considered the wisdom of climbing into it herself to compact its contents.
Congratulating herself on her restraint, she put the idea aside, knowing that if Cal caught her at it, he would be outraged at her carelessness. Besides, it would be just like her to break a leg and bring on a premature birth at the same time. Just now, she had entirely too much to do to risk such a thing. She settled instead for pushing the mess in the barrel as far down as it would go, then adding more until it was in danger of bursting. Then she began looking for something to clean the floor with.
Just inside the closet, disappointingly empty of long-secreted treasures, she found a broom, a pail, and a mop. Opening the window a crack in hope of freshening the stale air, June began sweeping the dust into a pile.
She was nearly halfway across the floor when the broom suddenly dragged against something. She poked at the caked dirt. When it didn’t break up, she stopped to look at it more closely.
