Carson smiled slightly. “I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner. I’m afraid it really couldn’t wait.” He stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind him.
Before June could make any reply, Cal appeared in the hall. “Josiah! What are doing out here?”
“Going on a housecall. I’d have phoned, but I was already in the car before I thought of you. Want to come along?”
“I gather it’s not an emergency,” June observed.
“Well, certainly nothing that would require an ambulance. In fact, I doubt that it’s anything much at all. It’s Sally Carstairs. She’s complaining about a sore arm, and her mother asked me to have a look. And then I had a thought.” He paused, and glanced toward the dining room. “Is Michelle here?”
Cal’s voice betrayed his curiosity as he repeated his daughter’s name. “Michelle?”
“Sally Carstairs is the same age as Michelle, and it occurred to me that your daughter might do her more good than either you or I. Making a new friend often takes a child’s mind off the pain.”
A look passed between the two doctors, a look that June almost missed. It was as if Carson had asked her husband a question, and Cal had answered. Yet, there was something more, a silent communion between them that worried June. And then Michelle appeared in the foyer, and suddenly everything was settled.
“Want to go on a housecall?” she heard Carson asking her daughter.
“Really?” Michelle glanced at her mother, then turned to her father, her eyes glistening.
“It seems Dr. Carson thinks you might be therapeutic to one of our patients.”
“Who?” Michelle asked eagerly.
“Sally Carstairs. She’s about your age, and her arm hurts. Dr. Carson wants to use you for a painkiller.”
Michelle looked to her mother for permission, but June hesitated for a moment.
“She isn’t sick?”
“Sally?” Carson said. “Good Lord, no. Just hurt her arm. But if you want Michelle to stay here—”
“No — take her, by all means. It’s time she met a girl her age. In the last two weeks, the only person she’s seen is Jeff Benson.”
“Who’s a very nice boy,” Cal pointed out.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t. But a girl needs girl friends, too.”
Michelle started toward the stairs. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared up the stairs, and a moment later reappeared with her green bookbag tucked under her arm.
“What’s that?” Josiah Carson asked.
“A doll,” Michelle explained. “I found it upstairs — in my closet. I thought maybe Sally might like to see it.”
“Here?” Carson asked. “You found it here?”
“Uh-huh. It’s really old.” Suddenly Michelle’s face clouded, and she looked up at Carson worriedly. “I guess it must belong to your family, huh?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Carson replied. “Why don’t you let me see it?”
Michelle opened the bookbag and took out the doll. She offered it to Carson, who glanced at it, but didn’t take it.
“Interesting,” he said. “I suppose it must have belonged to someone in the family, but I’ve never seen it before.”
“If you want it, you can have it,” Michelle said, disappointment plain on her face.
“Now what on earth would I do with it?” Carson replied. “You keep it, and enjoy it. And keep it at home.”
June looked at the old doctor sharply. “Keep it at home?” she repeated.
She was sure Carson hesitated, but when he spoke his voice was ingenuous. “It’s a beautiful doll, and obviously an antique. I don’t think Michelle would want anything to happen to it, would she?”
“She’d be brokenhearted,” Cal agreed. “Take it back up to your room, honey, and then we’ll get going. Josiah, shall we follow you?”
“Fine. I’ll wait in my car.” He said good-bye to June, then left the Pendletons alone together.
Cal gave June a quick hug. “Now don’t do anything you shouldn’t. I don’t want to be up all night with you in labor.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll do the dishes, then curl up with a good book.” Cal started out the door as Michelle came downstairs once more. “Be careful,” she suddenly added, and Cal turned back.
“Be careful? What could happen?”
“I don’t know,” June replied. “Nothing, I suppose. But be careful, anyway, all right?”
She waited at the open door until they were gone, then slowly started clearing the table. By the time she had finished, she knew what was bothering her.
It was Josiah Carson.
June Pendleton just didn’t like him, but she still wasn’t sure why.
Josiah Carson drove quickly, so familiar with the streets of Paradise Point that he had no need to concentrate on the road. Instead, he wondered what was going to happen when Cal Pendleton had to examine Sally Carstairs. Cal, he knew, had been avoiding children ever since that day in Boston last spring. But tonight Josiah would find out just how damaged Cal Pendleton was. Would he panic? Would the memories of what had happened in Boston paralyze him? Or had he regained his confidence? Soon, Josiah would know. He pulled up in front of the Carstairs home and waited while Cal parked behind him.
They found Fred and Bertha Carstairs, a comfortable-looking couple in their early forties, sitting nervously at their kitchen table. Carson made the introductions, then briskly rubbed his hands together.
“Well, let’s get at it,” he said. “Michelle, why don’t you keep Mrs. Carstairs company here in the kitchen, just in case we have to take Sally’s arm off?” Without waiting for a response, he turned and led Cal into a bedroom at the rear of the house.
Sally Carstairs was sitting up in bed, a book precariously balanced in her lap, her right arm lying limply at her side. When she saw Josiah Carson, she smiled weakly.
“I feel dumb,” she began.
“You were dumb the day I delivered you,” Carson deadpanned. “Why should today be different?”
Sally ignored his teasing and turned to Cal. “Are you Dr. Pendleton?”
Cal nodded, momentarily unable to speak. His vision seemed to cloud, and in the bed, Sally Carstairs’s face was suddenly replaced by another — the face of a boy, the same age, also in a bed, also in pain. Cal felt his stomach churn, and the beginning of panic welled up inside him. But he fought it down, forced himself to be calm, and tried to concentrate on the girl in the bed.
“Maybe you can teach Uncle Joe how to be a doctor,” she was saying. “And then make him retire.”
“I’ll retire you, young lady,” Carson growled. “Now what happened?”
The smile left Sally’s face, and she seemed thoughtful. “I’m not sure. I tripped out in the backyard, and it felt like I hit my arm on a rock …” she began.
“Well, let’s have a look at it,” Carson said, taking her arm gently in his large hands. He rolled up the sleeve of the child’s pajama top and peered at her arm carefully. There was no trace of a bruise. “Couldn’t have been much of a rock,” he observed.
“That’s why I feel dumb,” Sally said. “There wasn’t any rock. I was on the lawn.”
Carson stepped back, and Cal bent over to examine the arm. He prodded tentatively, feeling Carson’s eyes watching him.
“Does it hurt there?”
Sally nodded.
“How about there?”