"Cabot, Meg - 1-800-Where-R-You 04 - Sanctuary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cabot Meg)

And at that moment, I was more glad than I'd been in a long, long time to be me.
I didn't wonder, not even for a second, what it might be like to be Tasha, much
less her brother Nate.
Except of course if I had—if I had bothered to think, even for a minute, about
Nate Thompkins—he'd probably still be alive today.
C H A P T E R
3
"Gosh, Mrs. Wilkins," I said. "That was the best pumpkin pie I ever had."
Rob's mom brightened. "You really think so, Jess?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, meaning it. "Better than my dad's, even."
"Well, I doubt that," Mrs. Wilkins said with a laugh. She looked pretty in the
soft light over the kitchen sink, with all her red hair piled up on top of her
head. She had on a nice dress, too, a silk one in jade green. She didn't look
like a mom. She looked like she was somebody's girlfriend. Which she was, in
fact. She was this guy Gary-No-Really-Just-Call-Me-Gary's girlfriend.
But she was also my boyfriend Rob's mom.
"Isn't your dad a gourmet cook?" Just-Call-Me-Gary asked, as he helped bring in
the dishes from the Wilkinses' dining room table.
"Well," I said. "I don't know about gourmet. But he's a good cook. Still, his
pumpkin pie can't hold a candle to yours, Mrs. Wilkins."
"Go on," Mrs. Wilkins said, flushing with pleasure. "Me? Better than a gourmet
cook? I don't think so."
"Sure is good enough for me," Gary said, and he put his arms around her waist,
and sort of danced her around the kitchen.
I noticed Rob, watching from the kitchen door, kind of grimace, then turn around
and walk away. Maybe Rob had a right to be disgusted. He worked with
Just-Call-Me-Gary at his uncle's auto repair shop. It was through Rob that Mrs.
Wilkins had met Just-Call-Me-Gary in the first place.
After watching Gary and Rob's mom dance for a few seconds more—they actually
looked pretty good together, since he was all lean and tall and good looking in
a cowboy sort of way, and she was all pretty and plump in a dance hall girl kind
of way—I followed Rob out into the living room, where he'd switched on the TV,
and was watching football.
And Rob is not a huge sports fan. Like me, he prefers bikes.
Motorbikes, that is.
"Hey," I said, flopping down onto the couch next to him. "Why so glum, chum?"
Which was a toolish thing to say, I know, but when confronted with six feet of
hot, freshly showered male in softly faded denim, it is hard for a girl like me
to think straight.
"Nothing." Rob, normally fairly uncommunicative, at least where his deepest
emotions were concerned—like, for instance, the ones he felt for me—aimed the
remote and changed the channel.
"Is it Gary?" I asked. "I thought you liked him."
"He's all right," Rob said.Click. Click. Click . He was going through channels
like Claire Lippman, a champion tanner, went through bottles of sunscreen.
"Then what's the matter?"
"Nothing," Rob said. "I told you."
"Oh."
I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. It wasn't like I'd expected him
to propose to me or anything, but I had sort of thought, when he'd invited me to