“Sally!” June said. She’d thought the children had left long ago. She glanced at Cal. He appeared to have calmed down slightly — enough, anyway, that she was able to shift her concentration to Sally. “Are you all out there? Come in.”
“There’s only me,” Sally said half-apologetically as she let herself into the kitchen. “Everybody else went home.” She stopped uncertainly, then: “Is Michelle all right?”
“She will be,” June said with an assurance she didn’t feel. She offered Sally a glass of lemonade, and invited her to sit down. “Sally,” she began as she poured the lemonade, “what happened down on the beach? Why was Michelle coming home early?”
Sally fidgeted at the table, decided there was no reason not to tell what had happened.
“Some of the Kids were teasing her. Susan Peterson, mostly.”
“Teasing her?” June kept her voice level, curious but not condemning. “What about?”
“About her being adopted. Susan said that — that—” She fell silent with embarrassment.
That what? That we wouldn’t love her anymore, now that we have Jennifer?”
Sally’s eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know?”
June sat down at the table, her eyes meeting Sally’s. “It’s the first thing everyone thinks of,” she said quietly. “But it’s not true. Now we have two daughters, and we love both of them.”
Sally’s eyes fell to her glass, and she seemed intent on its contents. “I know,” she whispered. “I never said anything to her at all, Mrs. Pendleton. Really, I didn’t.”
June could feel herself slipping. She wanted to cry, wanted to lay her head on the table, and weep. But she couldn’t let herself. Not now. Not yet She stood up, struggling to maintain her self-control, and made herself smile at Sally.
“Maybe you should come back tomorrow,” she said. “I’m sure by tomorrow, Michelle will want to see you.”
Sally Carstairs finished her lemonade, and left.
June sank back onto her chair and stared at the bottle, wishing she dared have a drink, wishing there was some way she could make Cal see that whatever had happened to Michelle wasn’t his fault. She watched him refill his glass, started to say something to him. But as she was about to speak, she suddenly had the feeling that she was being watched. She turned quickly.
Josiah Carson was standing in the kitchen door. How long had he been there? June didn’t know. He nodded at her, then he stepped into the room and placed his hand on Cal’s shoulder.
“Want to tell me what happened?” he asked.
Cal stirred slightly, as though Carson’s touch had brought him back to some kind of reality.
“I hurt her,” he said, his voice almost childish. “I tried to help her, but I hurt her.”
June stood up, deliberately shoving the table against Cal. The sudden movement distracted him from what he was saying. June spoke quickly.
“She’s in pain, Dr. Carson,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “Cal says she hurts more than she should.”
“She fell off a cliff,” Josiah said bluntly. “Of course she hurts.” His eyes moved from June to Cal. “Trying to drown her pain in alcohol, Cal?”
Cal ignored the question. “I may have injured her myself, Josiah,” he said.
“Perhaps so. Or perhaps not. Suppose I go up and have a look at her. And just what is it you think you did to her?”
“I brought her home. I didn’t wait for a stretcher.”
Carson nodded curtly and turned away, but just as his face disappeared from her line of sight, June thought she saw something.
She thought she saw him smile.
Michelle lay awake in bed, listening to the voices below. She had heard Sally a while ago, and now she could hear Dr. Carson.
She was glad Sally hadn’t come up, and she hoped Dr. Carson wouldn’t either. She didn’t want to see anybody, not right now.
Maybe not ever.
Then the door to her room opened, and Dr. Carson stepped in. He closed the door and came close to the bed, leaned over her.
“Want to tell me what happened?” he asked. Michelle looked up at him, and shrugged.
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“Not much. Just—” She hesitated, but Dr. Carson was smiling at her, not forcing himself to, as her father had, but really smiling. “I don’t know what happened. I was running up the trail, and then all of a sudden it was foggy. I couldn’t see, and — and I tripped, I guess.”
“So it was the fog, was it?” There had been fog the day Alan Hanley fell, too. He could remember it clearly. It had come on suddenly, the way it did sometimes with sudden changes in temperature.
Michelle nodded.
“Your father thinks he hurt you. Do you think so?”
Michelle shook her head. “Why would he?”
“I don’t know,” Carson said softly. His eves moved to the doll on the pillow next to Michelle. “Does she have a name?”
“Amanda — Mandy.”
Josiah paused, then smiled, more to himself than to Michelle. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You lie here, and let Amanda take care of you. All right?” He patted Michelle’s hand, then stood up. A second later he was gone, and Michelle was alone once more.
She pulled her doll closer to her.
“You’re going to have to be my friend now, Mandy,” she whispered into the empty room. “I wish you were a real baby. I could take care of you, and we could be friends, and show each other things, and do things together. And you’d never say bad things to me, like Susan did. You’d just love me, and I’d just love you, and we’d take care of each other.”
Fighting against the pain, she moved the doll around until it lay on her chest, its face only inches from her own.
“I’m glad you have brown eyes,” she said softly. “Brown eyes, like mine. Not blue, like Jenny’s and Mom’s and Dad’s. I’ll bet my mother — my real mother — had brown eyes, and I’ll bet yours did, too. Did your mama love you, Mandy?”
She fell silent again, and tried to listen, tried to hear whatever voices might be talking in the house. Then she began wishing that Jenny were in the room with her. Jenny couldn’t talk to her, but at least Jenny was alive, was breathing, was — real.
That was the trouble with Mandy. She wasn’t real. Try as she would, Michelle couldn’t make her be anything but a doll. And now, as she lay alone, her whole body throbbing with pain, Michelle wanted somebody — somebody who would be hers alone, belong to her, be a part of her.
Somebody who would never betray her.
Slowly, the drug began to take effect. In a little while, Michelle drifted back to the darkness.
The darkness, and the voice.
The voice that was out there, calling to her.
Now, as she slept, the darkness no longer frightened her. Now she only wanted to find the voice, or have the voice find her.
CHAPTER 11
For the Pendletons, there was a sense of waiting for something — something unforeseen and unknowable,
