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

sort of way.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Mastriani," Mrs. Lippman said. I gathered from her slightly
harassed tone that, in accepting my mother's invitation to Thanksgiving dinner,
Mr. and Mrs. Lippman had not known what they were getting themselves into.
Clearly, no warning had been issued about Great-aunt Rose. "I don't know what
you mean."
"Denial," Great-aunt Rose said, snapping her fingers triumphantly. "I saw that
onOprah . I suppose you're just going to let Jessica pick at that dressing,
Antonia, and not make her eat it, just like you let her get away with
everything. Those disgraceful dungarees she goes around in, and that hair … and
don't even get me started on that whole business last spring. You know, nice
girls don't have armed federal officers following them around—"
Thankfully, at that moment, the doorbell rang. I threw my napkin down and got up
so fast, I nearly knocked over my chair.
"I'll get it!" I yelled, then tore for the foyer.
Well, you would have run out of there, too. I mean, who wanted to hear that
whole thing—about how I'd been struck by lightning and consequently developed
the psychic power to find missing people; how I'd been more or less kidnapped by
a less-than-savory arm of the government, who'd wanted me to come work for them;
and how some friends of mine sort of had to blow up a few things in order to get
me safely back home—again? I mean, hello, that subject is way tired, can we
change it, please?
"Now, who could that be?" my mother wondered, as I rushed for the door.
"Everyone we know is right here at this table."
This was pretty much true. Besides Great-aunt Rose and me and my mom and dad,
there were my two older brothers, Douglas and Michael, Michael's new girlfriend
(it still felt weird to call her that, since for years Mikey had only dreamed
that Claire Lippman might one day glance in his direction, and now, flying in
the face of societal convention, they were going together—the Beauty and the
Geek), and her family, as well as my best friend Ruth Abramowitz and her twin
brother Skip and their parents. In all, there were thirteen people gathered
around our dining room table. It sure didn't seem to me like anyone was missing.
But when I got to the door, I found out someone was. Oh, not from our dinner
table. But from someone else's.
It was dark outside—it gets dark early in November in Indiana—but the porch
light was on. As I approached the front door, which was partly glass, I saw a
large, African-American man standing there, looking out onto the street while he
waited for someone to answer the bell.
I knew who he was right away. Like I said, our town is pretty small, and up
until a few weeks ago, there hadn't been a single African American living in it.
That had changed when the old Hoadley place across the street from our house was
finally bought by Dr. Thompkins, a physician who'd taken a job as chief surgeon
at our county hospital, relocating his family, which included a wife, son, and
daughter, from Chicago.
I opened the door and said, "Hey, Dr. Thompkins."
He turned around and smiled, "Hello, Jessica. Er, I mean, hey." In Indiana, hey
is what you say instead of hello. Dr. Thompkins, you could tell, was still
trying to adjust to the lingo.
"Come on in," I said, moving out of the way so he could get out of the cold. It
hadn't started to snow yet, but on the Weather Channel they'd said it was going