Cry for the Strangers Read Free Page A

on the log.
    “It’s not even chipped,” she said softly. She held it up to the light and watched the dancing refraction of the sun through the blue glass. “It’s an omen,” she declared.
    “An omen?”
    She grinned impishly. “Of course. It means we’re going to find the right place today.”
    “We’d better,” Brad said gloomily. “If we don’t, we’re in trouble. There aren’t many more places left to look.”
    Elaine stood up decisively. “Come on,” she said. “Back to the car with you. I’m going to look at the map, and I’ll bet the first place I pick will be exactly what we’ve been looking for.”
    In the car Elaine carefully packed the sparkling blue globe in her purse, then picked up the map.
    “Clark’s Harbor,” she announced.
    “Clark’s Harbor?” Brad repeated. “Where is it?”
    “About twenty miles south.”
    Brad shrugged. “It’ll do for lunch.” He started the engine, put the car in gear, then pressed the accelerator. Beside him, Elaine settled confidently in her seat.
    “You seem awfully sure,” Brad said. “And you’re thinking about more than a place for lunch.”
    “I am.”
    “Mind telling me why?”
    “I told you—the float is an omen. Besides, it sounds right. ‘I’m in Clark’s Harbor writing a book.’ It sounds very professional. And of course you’re going to write a very professional book.”
    “I wonder,” Brad mused with a sudden sense of misgiving. “Am I making a big mistake? I mean, taking a whole year off just to write a book that might not even sell—”
    “Of course it will sell,” Elaine declared. “Millions of people will gobble it up.”
    “A book on bio-rhythms?”
    “All right,” she said, unconcerned. “So it’ll only be hundreds of thousands.”
    “Tens of tens, more likely,” Brad said darkly.
    Elaine laughed and patted his knee. “Even if it doesn’t sell at all, who cares? We can afford the year off, and I can’t imagine a better place to spend the time than out here. So even if the book is only an excuse to spend a few months at the beach—which it isn’t, of course—” she added quickly, “it’s still worth it.”
    “And what about my patients?”
    “What about them?” Elaine said airily. “Their neuroses will keep, with Bill Carpenter looking out for them. He may not be the psychiatrist you are, but he’s not going to kill your patients.”
    Brad lapsed into silence. Elaine was right. It was a comfortable silence, the kind of silence that comes only between people who love and understand each other, a silence born, not from lack of anything to say,but rather from a lack of necessity to say anything at all.
    They had been combing the peninsula for two weeks, looking for the right town in which to spend the year Brad estimated it would take him to complete his book. But there had been something wrong with every town they had seen—too commercial or too shabby, too self-consciously quaint or too self-satisfied. Today, Brad knew, they would either find the right town or give up the search, for if they continued on, they would be into the unrelieved dullness of Aberdeen and Hoquiam, having made a complete circuit of the peninsula. Maybe Elaine’s right, Brad thought. Maybe Clark’s Harbor is the right place. He rolled the name of the town around in his mind. Clark’s Harbor. Clark’s Harbor. It had a nice lilt to it, like an old New England fishing village.
    “It’s right up ahead,” Elaine said softly, breaking the silence.
    Brad realized he hadn’t been paying much attention to the road, driving more by habit than by concentration. Now he saw they were in the outskirts of a town.
    It didn’t seem to be a large town, which was fine, and it seemed to be well tended, which was even better. The houses were scattered along the road, frame houses, some neatly painted, others weathered to a silver patina by the sea wind. But even the older structures stood firmly upright, solidly built to withstand the