Michelle obeyed, and watched the strange plantlike animal tighten its tentacles around the panicked crab. A moment later the anemone was closed, and the crab had disappeared.
“What’ll happen to it?” Michelle asked.
“The anemone will eat it, then open up and dump out the shell,” Jeff explained.
“You mean I killed it?” Michelle asked, upset by the thought.
“Something would’ve eaten it anyway,” Jeff said. “As long as you don’t take anything away, or put in something that shouldn’t be here, you aren’t really hurting anything.”
Michelle had never thought of such a thing before, but Jeff’s words made sense to her. Some things belong, and some things don’t. And you have to be careful what you put with what. Yes, it made sense.
Together the two children began making their way around the tidepool, examining the strange world beneath the water. Jeff pried a starfish loose from its hold on the rocks, and showed Michelle the thousands of tiny suction cups that formed its feet and the odd pentangular mouth in the middle of its stomach.
“How come you know so much about all this?” Michelle finally asked.
“I grew up here,” Jeff said. He hesitated a moment, then continued. “Besides, I want to be a marine biologist someday. What are you going to be?”
“I don’t know,” Michelle said. “I never thought about it.”
“Your dad’s a doctor, isn’t he?” Jeff asked. “How’d you know that?”
“Everybody knows,” Jeff said amiably. “Paradise Point’s a small town. Everybody knows everything.”
“Boy, it sure wasn’t like that in Boston,” Michelle replied. “Nobody knew who anybody was. We hated it.”
“Is that why you moved here?”
“I guess,” Michelle said slowly. “That was part of the reason, anyway.” Suddenly she wanted to change the subject. “Did somebody get murdered in our house?”
Jeff looked at her sharply, as if he hadn’t heard her quite right. Then, almost too quickly, he stood up and shook his head. “Not that I ever heard of,” he said. Turning, he started picking his way back across the rocky beach. When Michelle made no move to follow him, he called out to her.
“Come on! The tide’s coming in. It’s getting dangerous!”
As Michelle stood up, an odd sensation swept over her. She was suddenly dizzy, and her vision seemed to be fading. It was as if a heavy fog was settling over her. Quickly, she dropped back to her knees.
Ahead, Jeff turned and stared at her.
“Are you all right?” he called back.
Michelle nodded, then stood up again, more slowly this time. “I guess I just stood up too fast. I got dizzy, and it seemed like it was getting dark.”
“Well, it’s going to get dark pretty soon,” Jeff said.
“We’d better get back up to the top.” He started north, and Michelle asked him where he was going.
“Home,” Jeff replied. “We have a path up to our house just like you do.” He paused a moment, then asked her if she wanted to come with him.
“I’d better not,” Michelle replied. “I told my parents I wouldn’t be gone long.”
“Okay,” Jeff said. “See you.”
“See you,” Michelle echoed. She turned away from Jeff and started up the beach. When she was at the foot of the trail that would take her home, she stopped and looked back the way she had come. Jeff Benson was no longer in sight. The beach was empty, and fog was closing in.
CHAPTER 3
“Next week we convert the butler’s pantry.”
June’s voice contained a note of determination that let Cal know that his grace period was over. And yet, during the two weeks they had been in the house, he had come to love it the way it was, and found himself less and less willing to change it at all. He had even come to appreciate the cavernous dining room, though there was something impersonal about the huge table that made their small family gather together at the end nearest the kitchen door. Michelle seemed totally unaffected by the size of the room. Indeed, as her mother spoke, she looked around appreciatively.
“I like it,” she declared. “I pretend we’re in the hall of a castle, and the servants are coming in to wait on us.”
“That’ll be the day,” Cal said. “At the rate we’re going, I’m going to have to start hiring you out as a maid.” He winked at his daughter, who winked back.
“Things will get better,” June said, though the strain in her voice belied the optimistic words. “You can’t expect everybody in town to start coming to you.” Her voice bitter, she faced her husband. “Not as long as Carson’s still around.” She put her fork down. “I wish he’d just give up and go away. How long will it be before he turns the whole practice over to you?”
“A long time, I hope,” Cal replied. Then, reading June’s face, he tried to reassure her. “Don’t look like that — he’s not taking any of the money anymore. He says I own the practice now, and he’s officially retired. Says he’s just ‘Keeping his hand in.’ And thank God he is. Without him, I’d probably have been run out of town by now!”
“Oh, come on—” June protested, but Cal held up his hand to stop her.
“It’s true. You should have seen me yesterday. Mrs. Parsons came in, and I, being a doctor, was all set to examine her. If Josiah hadn’t stopped me, I’d have had her in a gown in nothing flat. But it seems she didn’t want to be examined — all she wanted to do was to have a little ‘chat.’ Josiah listened to her, clucked sympathetically, and told her that if her symptoms persisted, he’d take a look at her next week.”
“What was wrong with her?” Michelle asked.
“Nothing. It turns out that her hobby is reading up on various ailments, and she likes to talk about them, but she doesn’t think it’s right to come into the office just to talk, so she claims she has the symptoms.”
“Sounds like a hypochondriac,” June commented.
“That’s what I thought, too, but Josiah says she isn’t It isn’t that she really feels the symptoms. She just says she does. And,” Cal continued, “it seems Mrs. Parsons not only talks about her own symptoms, she talks about other people’s as well. Josiah says that there are at least three people in town who are alive today only because Mrs. Parsons told him things that they wouldn’t tell him themselves.”
“What does he do?” Michelle interrupted. “Go out and drag them into the office?”
“Not exactly,” Cal said, chuckling. “But he does drop in on them and check them out. Apparently Mrs. P. has a particularly good eye for potential heart attacks.”
“It doesn’t sound very professional,” June muttered.
Cal shrugged. “Until a week ago, I’d have agreed with you. But now I’m not so sure.” He picked up his wineglass, sipped at the Chablis, then spoke again. “I’ve been wondering how many people would still be alive if we’d had a Mrs. Parsons at Boston General, where we only had time to look after specific complaints. Josiah says there are lots of things that people don’t complain about — instead they just die, thinking things will get better.”
“That’s creepy,” Michelle said, shuddering.
“It is,” Cal agreed. “But it doesn’t happen so much out here, because Josiah’s always had the time to get to know his patients and find out what’s wrong with them before it goes too far. He’s a great believer in preventive medicine.”
“What is he, a witch doctor?” Though she tried to keep her tone light, June was growing tired of Cal’s paean to the older doctor. Josiah says! Cal seemed to hang on every word Carson uttered. Now, he ignored June’s question and turned to Michelle, but before he could go on, the doorbell rang. June, grateful for the chance to end the talk of Josiah Carson, quickly got up to answer it. But when she opened the front door, framed in the entryway was the tall, spare figure of Josiah Carson, his mane of nearly white hair glowing in the gathering darkness of the evening. June felt herself gasp slightly, then quickly recovered. “Well, speak of the devil …”