Deep in the Valley Read Online Free Page B

doctor. And she still relied heavily on her dad for professional and personal support. Since June’s mother’s death nine years earlier, they had been very dependent on each other.
    Second, if you’re going to stay in Grace Valley, live and work there all your life, then you’d better have picked out a husband in the ninth grade. What had she been thinking when she’d chosen this life, this town? That some handsome young bachelor would trip andthey’d fall in love while she wrapped his ankle? June was thirty-seven now, and her two best friends were her dad and Tom Toopeek. She had close ties to her quilting circle, the Graceful Women, and kept up with friends from school. She wasn’t exactly lonely, but she hadn’t had a real date in about five years. Elmer seemed to think she was a virgin—a dubious if not ludicrous distinction. It wasn’t true, thank God. But it was true she was now dangerously set in her ways. Perhaps too independent to become the prettier half of a couple. Still, she wouldn’t mind a little romance.
    Grace Valley had originally been a fishing and farming village. It sat on the corner of three counties, just barely more on the Mendocino side than Trinity and Humboldt. There was a small hospital in Rockport, a larger one in Eureka, and when June and Elmer had opened the clinic ten years ago, it had been considered an extravagance for a town of nine hundred. Now it was a necessity for a town of fifteen hundred and sixty-four…with Julianna Dickson about to make it sixty-five.
    June parked behind the clinic, next to Charlotte Burnham’s car. Charlotte, aged sixty, had been June’s father’s nurse. As nurses went, it would be hard to find one tougher or more efficient. Or grouchier. The only person Charlotte ever seemed to make a real effort to be sweet to was Elmer, even though her husband, Bud, fairly doted on her. June had been the doctor here for some time now, but Charlotte had never quite made the transition. Oh, she’d take orders, but she always treated June more like the girl who hung around her father’s office than the boss. It was past annoying. June hadenjoyed no act of vengeance so much as hiring Jessica Wiley, the bane of Charlotte’s existence, to work in the clinic.
    Charlotte was just making her way out the back door, shaking out a Marlboro, as June got out of her Jeep. There was no smoking allowed in the clinic. Charlotte would smoke the extra long cigarette, cough, get back to work, and need another one before long. There was a coffee can half full of butts beside the back step. June had begged her for years to quit.
    “Having your spite smoke?” June asked.
    Charlotte inhaled deeply. “I need it more today than usual,” she replied shortly.
    “Ah. Jessie dress up for you?”
    “Wait till you see.” She puffed again.
    Jessica, age twenty, was the clerk-receptionist. Despite the fact that she had cut her formal education short by quitting school, she was the best office person June had ever had. A brilliant girl, resourceful and quick, she was also odd as a duck—a fashion extravaganza who never wore a dull outfit. June felt a surge of excitement as she entered the clinic. Stodgy Charlotte and avant-garde Jessica made for interesting days. They did not exactly get along like mother and daughter.
    Or…maybe they did…
    June knocked the caked mud off her boots and left them by the back door where the sun would dry them. Old Mikos Silva’s place was on her way to the clinic, and she had stopped by to check his blood pressure. His idea of “taking it easy” was to sleep in till 4:30 a.m. and do only half his chores, so she’d had to slog herway out to the barn to find him. Old farmers like Mikos were typically afraid that if they sat down for too long, they might drop dead, doctor’s orders notwithstanding.
    She slipped on her clogs and headed for the front of the clinic. She would have said good morning, but she was frozen silent by the dizzying sight of