"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Beautiful Damned" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

Arielle always had an ethereal, other-worldly quality. My sensible aunt, with
her thick ankles and dish-water blonde hair, must have recognized that quality
in the newborn she had given birth to in New Orleans, and committed the only
romantic act of her life by deciding that Arielle was not a Mary or a Louise,
family names that had suited Carraways until then.

I had never known Arielle well. At family reunions held on the shores of Lake
Superior, she was always a beautiful, unattainable ghost, dressed in white
gauze, with silver blonde hair that fell to her waist, wide blue eyes, and
skin
so pale it seemed as fragile as my mother's bone china. We had exchanged
perhaps
five words over all those reunions, held each July, and always I had bowed my
head and stammered in the presence of such royalty. Her voice was sultry and
musical, lacking the long "a"s and soft "d"s that made my other relations
sound
like all their years of education had made no impression at all.
Why she called me when she and her husband Tom discovered that I had bought a
house in a village only a mile from theirs I will never know. Perhaps she was
lonely for a bit of family, or perhaps the other-worldliness had absorbed her,
even then.

CHAPTER II

I Drove To Arielle and Tom's house in my own car, a BMW, navy blue and
spit-polished, bought used because all of my savings had gone into the house.
They lived on a knoll in a mock-Tudor style house surrounded by young saplings
that had obviously been transplanted. The lack of tall trees gave the house a
vulnerable air, as if the neighbors who lived on higher hills could look down
upon it and find it flawed. The house itself was twice the size of mine, with
a
central living area flanked by a master bedroom wing and a guest wing, the
wings
more of an architect's affectation than anything else.

Tom met me at the door. He was a beefy man in his late twenties whose athletic
build was beginning to show signs of softening into fat. He still had the
thick
neck, square jaw and massive shoulders of an offensive lineman which, of
course,
he had been. After one season with the Green Bay Packers -- in a year
unremarked
for its lackluster performance-- he was permanently sidelined by a knee
injury.
Not wanting to open a car dealership that would forever capitalize on his one
season of glory, he took his wife and his inheritance and moved east. When he
saw me, he clapped his hand on my back as if we were old friends when, in
fact,
we had only met once, at the last and least of the family reunions.