"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Remodeling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)1996. For a moment she stared at it, black and innocent in the palm of her hand. Then she closed her fingers around it a
carried it to the laptop she'd set up in the back. If she were being honest with herself—and she was, at least today—this was the reason she had come to the shop. the fear she'd felt at home, not her anger at Rick for making the morning's attack about him instead of her, not even the she felt at the possibility the incident might happen again. No, the reason she had come here was simple: She wanted to see if Muff ler Man's accusations were correct. She scooted a metal folding chair in front of the makeshift desk, put the disk into the laptop's drive, and called up th files. She found a map to Charles Urbanick's life: his credit history; the public records of his home purchase, his marriage a previous divorce (amiable, by all accounts); newspaper articles on his success as a Little League coach; and so much more. But the file that sent a chill through her had nothing to do with Urbanick's history. It had to do with his present. In a folder marked “Plan A,” Ada found a Quicken file for a savings account Rick had promised to close a year bef The account ledger had monthly transactions, several deposits of set amounts—$1,500, $400, and some smaller ones, a less than $100. She cross-checked them with the Urbanick files, and then put her head in her hands. The sums matched the Urbanicks’ mortgage payment, their car payment, and all their credit-card payments. The Soon they would be out on the street, alone and without resources. All because of Rick. He had been stealing from them, causing all their trouble, just like Urbanick said. *** How long she sat in that back room with the pale fluorescent light, the uncomfortable chair, and the sleeping laptop screen, she did not know. Either the Tums had worked on the knot in her stomach or she had moved beyond the pain. A hundred crazy thoughts ran through her head, all of them starting with the wish that she had let Charles Urbanick charge upstairs and take care of Rick. It would have been so simple—and she craved simple, because everything had suddenly become hard. Or not so suddenly. She couldn't believe how she had deluded herself, thinking Rick was someone she could trust, someone she could love. Those mornings, listening to the car's muff ler rev and hard rock blast through the windows, sh come to realize how much she had grown to dislike her husband and how unwilling she had been to acknowledge that. Nineteen houses and a bright orange kitchen. Clients who were not allowed into her house because she couldn't aff have the showplace that interior decorators usually had. Dreams set aside, forgotten, or lost. And Rick's insistence on taking over the finances of her business, giving him the veneer of respectability—her respectability—to ruin even more lives. |
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