Comes the Blind Fury Read Free Page B

the old refrigerator would make an ideal wine cellar: perfectlyinsulated, though prohibitively expensive to use for its original purpose.
    June walked over to the sink and tried the tap. The pipes rattled for a few seconds, coughed twice, then produced a gushing stream of clear, unchlorinated water.
    “Lovely,” June murmured. Her eyes went to the window, and her face lit up with a smile.
    Beyond the window, some fifty feet from the house, there was an old brick building with a slate roof that had once been used as a potting-shed. It was the potting-shed that had convinced June that the house would be perfect for them. One look had told her that it could easily be changed into a studio—a studio where she could spend endless blissful hours with her canvases, developing a style that would be truly her own, something she had never been able to accomplish in Boston.
    Seeing the smile on her face, Cal once more read his wife’s mind.
    “Let’s see,” he said thoughtfully, brushing his hair back from his brow. “There’s the butler’s pantry to change into a dining room, and the potting-shed to change into a studio. Then I suppose I could change the barn into a workshop, the front parlor into a sauna, and the study into a surgery. Once that’s finished—”
    “Oh, stop it!” June cried. “I promise you, I’ll do everything in the studio myself, and most of the butler’s pantry, too, All you have to do is unpack—and then get on with your country doctor act!”
    “Promise?”
    “Promise,” June said softly, coming into his arms and hugging him close. “Everything will be all rightnow. I’m sure it will.” She wished she truly believed her own words.
    Cal kissed his wife, then let his hand rest for a second on her rounded belly. Under his fingers, he could feel the baby move. “We’d better get upstairs and figure out where the nursery is going to be. Seems to me like this little critter is about to make its debut.”
    “Not for six weeks yet, at least,” June replied. But she happily followed her husband upstairs, eager to decide which room could best be changed into a nursery. There’s that word again , she thought. This seems to be our year to change .
    They found Michelle on the second floor, in a corner bedroom commanding a sweeping view of the bay, Devil’s Passage, and the ocean beyond. To the northeast, the village of Paradise Point stood in silhouette, the spires of its three tiny churches thrusting upward, while its neat white frame buildings huddled close together, as if to protect each other from the furies that raged constantly in the waters around them. June and Cal joined their daughter, and for a moment the small family stood together, examining their new world. Their arms slipped around each other, and for a long moment, they reveled in a closeness and warmth they hadn’t felt for a long time. It was June who finally brought them back to reality.
    “We’d thought this might be the nursery,” she said tentatively. Michelle, seeming to come out of a trance, turned to them.
    “Oh, no,” she said. “I want this room. Please?”
    “But there’s a much bigger room on the other side of the house,” June objected. “This one’s so small …”
    “But all I need is my bed and a chair,” Michellepleaded. “Can’t I have this one? I could sit on the window seat forever, just looking out.”
    June and Cal looked at each other uncertainly, neither of them able to think of a reasonable objection. Then Michelle went to the closet, and the question was settled. Michelle reached up and groped around at the back of the closet shelf.
    “There is something here,” she said triumphantly. “I had a feeling there was something in this closet, and I was right Look!”
    In her hand, Michelle held a doll. Old and dusty, it had a porcelain face framed by hair almost as dark as her own and a little lace bonnet. Its gray dress, faded and torn, must once have been covered with ruffles, and on its