Wesley Barefoot, The Cuckoo Clock
“ Jim looked down at the dark eyes, misted now, the straight brown hair, and the little snub nose with its dusting of freckles. She's all we have left, poor kid, and not even ours, really. Helen's baby.He looked up as the battered cuckoo clock on the mantel clicked warningly. "Time for little girls to be in bed, Joanna. Run along now like a good girl, and get washed." ”
Wesley Barefoot, The Cuckoo Clock
“ Now hold on a minute, Jim. You've taken Jean's reaction to this last death, plus a random association with a cuckoo clock, and here you are with a perfectly wild hypothesis. You've always been rational and analytical, old man. Surely you can realize that a perfectly normal urge to rationalize Jean's conclusions is making you concur with them against your better judgment. ”
Wesley Barefoot, The Cuckoo Clock
“ Helen—what creatures were these? Helen—not dead, not poor,—carefully planting ostensible proof of her death and going on to a new role, a new life, in London or Paris or Rome. A free, untrammelled life. And her child—if child was the word—in his home, repeating the pattern. Eliminating competition as her mother undoubtedly had done. The competition—his and Jean's children! Changeling, changeling— No, not that. ”
