"Mary Rosenblum - California Dreaming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

She had found her, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. She had
reshaped Julia DeMarco into Laura Sorenson, as innocent and destructive as the
Quake that had reshaped California.

“I’ll fix yours,” Beth said gravely. “Do you want honey and milk on it?”

“Thank you,” Ellen said. She picked up the tray, carried it into the bedroom.

“I could eat at the table with you.” Laura sat up straighter as Ellen put the tray
down on her lap. “I’m feeling much better.”

She wore a gold wedding ring on her left hand. “You can get up any time.”
Was Joseph searching frantically for Julia DeMarco, praying that she was still alive?

“I’ll come eat with you.” Beth came in with her bowl, her eyes bright with
love.

How many days had Beth huddled behind the barbed wire of a refugee camp,
filling the black hole of her loss with the Quake’s power, waiting for a mother who
would never come? Ellen tiptoed into the kitchen. In the bedroom, Beth laughed and
Laura joined in tentatively. Maybe Julia had been a volunteer at the refugee center, or
had been hired to untangle the miles of legal red tape. Ellen wondered why Beth had
chosen her. Perhaps the choice had been as random as the Quake’s violence.

She’s not dying, Beth had said and those words had been an incantation. This
woman couldn’t die any more than she could remain Julia DeMarco. Beth needed
her mother. Julia DeMarco had had no choice at all.

A bowl of oatmeal cooled on the table, flanked neatly by spoon and napkin.
With honey and milk. Sunlight streamed through the window into the cluttered room,
and the watercolor Rebecca smiled gently from the wall. “I will always love you,”
Ellen whispered to her. Standing on her toes, she took the bottle of pills down from
the cabinet shelf.

The helicopter from Eureka landed at dusk. The blades flattened the grass in
the front yard and whipped a small sandstorm into the air. “In here,” Ellen told the
tired-looking paramedics who climbed out of the hatch. “She’s unconscious.” She
had put three of the sleeping capsules into Laura’s hot chocolate, had been terrified
that it might be too much.

The paramedics took Laura’s blood pressure, shone a light into her eyes,
frowned, and asked Ellen questions. “She seemed to be getting better,” Ellen told
them. “And then, all of a sudden, she just collapsed. I had Jack call you right
away.”

“Does she have any ID?” the taller of the two men asked her. He had black
hair and dark circles beneath his eyes.

“She had this.” Ellen handed them Julia DeMarco’s handbag. “Off and on,
she’d forget who she was. She was confused. I don’t know how she ended up out