"Feist, Raymond E - Faerie Tale 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feist Raymond E)

the old federal tax stamp. Without moving his head,
without taking his gaze from the door, Barney lifted the
bottle to the side of his mouth and began to drink.

ERL KING
HILL

JUNE

1

"Stop it, you two!"

Gloria Hastings stood with hands on hips, delivering
the Look. Sean and Patrick stopped their bickering over
who was entitled to the baseball bat. Their large blue eyes
regarded their mother for a moment before, as one, they
judged it close to the point of no return where her pa-
tience was concerned. They reached an accord with their
peculiar, silent communication. Sean conceded custody
of the bat to Patrick and led the escape outside.

"Don't wander too far off!" Gloria shouted after them.
She listened to the sounds of eight-year-olds dashing
down the ancient front steps and for a moment consid-
ered the almost preternatural bond between her boys.
The old stories of twins and their empathic link had
seemed folktales to her before giving birth, but now she
conceded that there was something there out of the ordi-
nary, a closeness beyond what was expected of siblings.

Putting aside her musing, she looked at the mess the
movers had left and considered, not for the first time, the
wisdom of all this. She wandered aimlessly among the
opened crates of personal belongings and felt nearly over-
whelmed by the simple demands of sorting out the hun-
dreds of small things they had brought with them from
California. Just deciding where each item should go
seemed a Sisyphean task.

She glanced around the room, as if expecting it to have
somehow changed since her last inspection. Deep-grained
hardwood floors, freshly polished—which would need
polishing again as soon as the crates and boxes were
hauled outside—hinted at a style of living alien to Gloria.
She regarded the huge fireplace with its ancient hand-
carved facade as something from another planet, a stark

contrast to the rough brick and stone ranch-house-style
hearths of her California childhood. The stairs in the