Crying Child by Barbara Michaels Read Free Book Online Page B

day before, the least I could do was meet him halfway.
    “Okay,” I said.
    We walked across the lawn in silence while Will finished the muffin he had carried off, and I eyed his lean figure with unwilling amusement.
    “Do you always eat like this?”
    “I do when I can get it,” Will said. “I’m not much of a cook. And—though you may find this difficult to believe—I have a fairly sizable practice. On the mainland and some of the other islands as well as here. Keeps me busy.”
    “Does it?”
    “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
    “You’re entitled to your opinion.”
    “But I’m not entitled to foist it on other peopleso loudly. I—well, to tell the truth, I’d been up all night. Lost a patient. I was in a bad mood.”
    “I’m sorry. About the patient.”
    He gave me a quick, sidelong glance and then his somber face lightened in one of those smiles.
    “You really are sorry, aren’t you?”
    “I’m sorry for the whole sad, sad world,” I said. “But at the moment I’m concentrating on Mary.”
    “Look, let’s take the morning off, okay? Forget about Mary for a couple of hours.”
    “You’d like to forget her altogether.”
    “I don’t provoke,” Will said calmly. “Not on a day like this, when I’ve had a couple of hours sleep. I promise, I will reobserve and reconsider and anything else you want. Maybe I was wrong about Mary—and, by God, you won’t get a concession like that from me very often. But this morning I want to relax. Okay?”
    “Well…”
    When he said “walk,” he wasn’t kidding. We didn’t follow the road, but struck off into the woods. There was a path of sorts, but it was badly overgrown. Will admitted that it was seldom used; the old ladies hadn’t been much given to hiking after they passed seventy, and he usually drove. Even with Will preceding me, fending off the worst of the overhanging branches, I was winded and disheveled by the time we reached the edge of the woods.

    I understood then why trees and vines had seemed so thick, so twisted together. Without mutual support they could not have survived. Only a few hundred yards away, the ground ended, with breathtaking abruptness, in a cliff that seemed to drop off into empty space. As soon as I stepped out of the woods I could feel the force of the wind. During a winter storm it would howl through the eaves of the forest like a banshee.
    The house huddled close to the shelter of the trees. I could see the necessity for that, though I wondered whether I would like living so close to the dark pines.
    The house itself was a gem, a classic example of a home-grown architectural style. I knew it must be quite old. The New England saltbox style was at its best in the mid-eighteenth century, which would make this house about two hundred years old. It wore its age well. The silvery gray surface had been weathered by that unique blend of salt sea air that is found only along this coast. Two small one-story additions had been built out from the back, and a deep porch jutted out to protect the front door. Vines covered its latticed sides, but I could see wooden benches set at right angles to the house. A single massive chimney jutted up from the center of the roof. The windows were good-sized, and the wooden shutters looked as if they had been designed for use. Even with thewoods behind it, the house would endure bitter weather; except for a pair of tall pines by the front gate, it was completely exposed to the wind from the sea.
    The only flaw in the scene of picturesque charm was Will’s battered blue station wagon, parked at the end of what could only be described as a track. Unpaved and rocky, it curved off to the right and vanished behind the trees.
    “How on earth do you get out of here to make house calls in the winter?” I asked.
    “Oh, I board in town during the worst months. But you could live here all right if you didn’t have to answer emergency calls. A jeep with four-wheel drive would get you in and out