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

juice to orange froth. She carried the glass back to the bedroom and found Beth
already there, her arms around her mother.

“Mom, it’s me,” Beth was saying in a broken voice.

“It’s . . . coming back.” Laura stroked her daughter’s back. “Beth. Honey,
it’ll be all right.”

There was a tentative quality to the gesture and a frightened expression in her
eyes. “Here’s your juice,” Ellen said, holding out the glass. “How are you doing?”

Beth almost snatched the glass from Ellen’s hand. “I told you she’d get well,”
she said.
 Voyeur, outsider, Ellen watched Beth help her mother drink. Side by side,
they looked even less alike. There was a protective possessiveness to Beth’s
posture; a confidence that was lacking in Laura. Beth might be the mother; Laura the
fragile child.

“Thank you.” The woman sank back on the pillows, trying for a smile.
“Thank you for taking us in. We must be a horrible burden.”

“Not at all.” Ellen collected the empty glass. “I’m just glad you’re better.”

Laura stroked her daughter’s hair. “Beth said I was in our apartment when it
happened. I’m . . . starting to remember.” She spoke hesitantly, like an actor groping
for half-learned lines. “What about . . . Joseph? Oh . . . God, Joseph!”

“What’s wrong? Who’s Joseph, Mom?” Beth stroked a strand of hair back
from her mother’s face. “Someone at the office?”

“No. I . . . don’t know. I don’t know a Joseph, do I? It was a . . . dream, I
guess. From the fever.” She squeezed Beth’s hand, her fingers trembling.

“You’ll sort it out.” Ellen touched Laura’s shoulder, moved by the anguish in
her face. “I’ve got to run into town.” She had almost forgotten the helicopter. “I’ll
be back in an hour. There’s more water in the jugs beside the kitchen counter.”

Laura nodded weakly, but her eyes never left her daughter’s face. She is
afraid, Ellen thought.

Of what?

At the store, Jack eyed her over the fake tortoiseshell rim of his glasses as he
called Eureka and canceled the helicopter. “They were busy anyway,” he drawled.
“Guess the storm hit real bad up there. Your visitor wasn’t too sick, huh?”

Dumb woman, his expression said. Don’t know just sick from dying.

“She was dying,” Ellen snapped, but she hadn’t died, had she? “I guess I was
wrong” she said lamely. “Thanks for calling Eureka.” She turned away from Jack’s