"Alice Hoffman - Turtle Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Alice)

harder, and when it stopped she thought, for a moment, that he had
given up.

She had forgotten he still had a key, although he couldn't do much more
than reach his arm halfway inside, since the safety chain had been
fastened.

"God damn it," he called. "Bethany?"

Bethany sat on the couch while he screamed at her through the crack in
the door. She was fairly certain that she was no longer breathing.

Throughout their marriage he had never once shouted at her or called
her names; it didn't even sound like his voice. Then she realized, all
in a rush, that they were no longer the people they had been, neither
of them, and that that was what happened once you started to fight over
custody.

"I'm going to break the door down," he vowed.

She really couldn't move, that was the amazing thing. She couldn't
have let him in if she'd wanted to. When the door didn't give way,
Randy backed off. Bethany was still on the couch when she heard the
glass breaking. He had put his fist right through the living room
window. Bethany's breathing was hard and sharp as she ran into the
kitchen and went through the drawers. She had a rubbery feeling in her
legs, as though she might collapse, but instead she grabbed the bread
knife, a long one with a serrated edge, and ran back to the living
room. Randy was shouting her name, as if they didn't have neighbors or
a baby asleep in their bed. He had unlocked the window and was sliding
it up when Bethany went to the front door and flung it open. It was an
Indian summer night, and Bethany wore only shorts and a white blouse.

She stood in the doorway, her long dark hair electrified, her white
shirt illuminated by moonlight, waving the knife in front of her.
"Get out of here!" she screamed in a voice she had never heard
before.

Randy walked right toward her. There were shards of broken glass in
his hair and blood on his hand and down his arm, staining one of his
favorite blue shirts. "Go on," he said. "Act crazy.

That's what you do best."

"I mean it," Bethany told him.

The knife didn't feel the least bit heavy in her hands. A few months
before, the most she had to worry about was picking up lamb chops for
dinner and whether the gardener had planted white or purple wisteria.