Pickin Clover by Bobby Hutchinson Read Free Book Online

matter. This is terrible. Surely you’re angry or worried or.. .or desperate or something?”
    A grimace flashed across his handsome features, then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “I’m not overjoyed about it, but I don’t see that getting crazy will solve anything. And there’s no point worrying until I find out the extent of the damage, is there?”
    She wanted to scream at him, beat him with her fists, somehow find a way to break through the wall that divided them and liberate the passion she knew was trapped there. But she’d done all those things at different times in the past months, trying to elicit some honest reaction, and nothing worked.
    The man she’d known for more than a dozen years, husband, lover, friend, father to her beloved daughter, was gone, replaced by this automaton, this man who looked like Michael and sounded like Michael, even smelled like Michael, but wasn’t him at all.
    Whatever this thing was between them, it was killing their marriage as surely as the tumor had killed her daughter.
    She gave up. “Okay. I guess there’s nothing anyone can do right at this moment anyway. I’m tired, Michael.”
    It was all too true. A bone-deep weariness had rolled over and through her. “I’m going up to bed. Coming?”
    “In a while, love. I have some charts to do, letters to write.”
    The faint hope that had lingered in her faded. She knew it would be hours before he came to lie beside her, if he did at all. Some nights—all too many nights—he slept in the spare bedroom, always with the excuse that he’d had to work late and he knew how difficult it was for her to get to sleep so he didn’t want to disturb her. They rarely ate dinner together because he was always working late. If she so much as mentioned their daughter’s name, he got up and left the room. It had been three weeks since they’d made love, if that’s what the joyless coupling she’d instigated could be called.
    She’d insisted Frannie give her the statistics on marriage breakdown after the loss of a child, and the high percentage hadn’t surprised her in the least.
    Up in their bedroom, she poured a glass of water and gratefully swallowed the tablets that would bring oblivion.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    Just as Michael suspected, the next morning’s newspaper reported Stokes’s disappearance and the plight of the clients he’d defrauded, but because of a major airline disaster in India, the story was relegated to page four. All the same, Valerie had read it before Michael arrived at the office, and she’d folded the page neatly and placed it squarely on his desk blotter.
    “I guess he stole your money along with everyone else’s, huh, Doctor?” She shoved her glasses up her nose and sniffed in disgust. “I can’t really say I ever liked Raymond Stokes, but I can’t believe he’d pull something like this,” she fumed, jerking her chin at the article as she set a brimming cup of coffee and a fat bran muffin in front of him.
    Valerie Lamb had been Michael’s office nurse since he’d first set up practice, and he often thought she was like the sister he’d never had. But then, Valerie was everyone’s sister, taking the neediest of his patients under her wing and doing whatever she could to help them. He’d watched her use her lunch hour to drive elderly patients to physio so they wouldn’t have to take the bus. She baby-sat two year olds so their mothers could talk quietly to Michael about their problems. She comforted anyone in want of comforting, young or old. It was a wonder such a tiny, stubbornly thin frame could contain such an immense heart.
    For months now she’d been bringing Michael home baked muffins each morning. She knew he left the house at six to do hospital rounds, and that he usually didn’t bother taking time to eat.
    “Raymond did all our accounts, didn’t he?” Her voice was troubled, and Michael thought she was probably worried about her check, which was due this