"Van Lustbader, Eric - Dark Homecoming(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Her expression changed abruptly and her mouth began to tremble. He could feel a vibration coming through her fingers where he gripped them tightly. Her eyes fluttered closed.
"Rachel-?" He pressed the spirit-stone down against her breastbone.
When he looked at her, he met her placid gaze. "I'm okay." The monitors confirmed her heartbeat and blood pressure were stable. The tip of her tongue moved over her cracked lips. "Could you get me something to drink? Like a diet Coke? I'm so thirsty."
"You're getting fluids through some tubes, honey. I don't think it's a good idea to give you anything else right now. Maybe later, after the doctor takes a look at you."
Those ice blue eyes stared up at him with a naked hunger for knowledge. "What happened between you and Matty?"
The cop in him could not resist. "I'll tell you if you'll tell me where you got the shit that's rotted out your system."
She seemed intrigued. "I've played this game before."
"What game?"
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
He wondered how sexually active she was. She was only fifteen, but these days that was no barrier to having sex. He stifled the desire to ask her; that was a Matty question, definitely to be avoided.
He smiled down at her. "Yeah. I've played the game once or twice myself."
"You good at it?"
What kind of question was that from a fifteen-year-old, he asked himself.
"I don't know," he said. "You'll have to tell me."
"Okay. You go first."
Keeping her hand in his, he stood by her bed. "Your mother and I..." He paused, unsure how to continue. "We're like, I don't know, oil and water, sometimes. She sees black, I see white, and so we butt heads over just about everything."
"You're bullshitting me," Rachel said. "Please don't do that, Uncle Lew."
So he told her as much about her father's nefarious history as he thought she could digest, how Donald managed to drive a wedge between the family. It wasn't even half of the story, but he knew it had to be enough to satisfy her.
"Parents are so like cats," Rachel said, "you never know what's on their minds. When Matty deals with me, she's so, I don't know, transparent. But when it comes to her and my father, God only knows the real story."
"Maybe the answer is that parents aren't really as transparent as they seem," he said. "They just jump when you press their buttons."
With an adolescent's disarming way of posing questions that cut to the quick, Rachel said, "Here's the thing that drives me nuts: did my father leave Matty or did I drive him away?"
Croaker leaned toward her. "Honey, what makes you even think that? The breakup had nothing to do with you."
"In this family people are always leaving-you, my father. The one constant is me."
"That's just not true."
Pain filled her eyes. "Really? After the divorce my father never came to see me. Why would he do that unless he blamed me?"
Oh, Donald, I hope you're rotting in whatever hell you've gone to, Croaker thought.
"And Matty-she talks to me too much."
Something in her tone alerted him. "About you and Matty. What's the problem?"
"It's more like what isn't the problem."
"Meaning?"
"Because she wants certain answers, she asks all the wrong questions. She hasn't a clue what's happening."
"Rachel, what has happened-to you, I mean?"
She clamped her jaws shut. The look in her ice blue eyes chilled him to the bone. Croaker could see that she had an ability to rune people out, even people who were close to her, who loved her. That was dangerous, maybe even self-destructive. Could be this dark streak was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place? he wondered.
"Okay, I told you what you wanted to know," he said. "Now it's your turn. Where did you get the bad shit?"
Rachel turned her head toward the wall.
"Honey-"
Her hand squirmed free of his.
He'd seen this attitude before. Who was she protecting? "Rachel, you promised."
"Did not."
"But the game..."
"You don't know shit about the game." Her voice was so filled with spiteful venom he was taken aback. "I didn't cut a loogie."
"What the hell is that?"
"It means spit. If I don't cut a loogie when I agree to play, I don't have to answer my part. Every dork knows that."
"Not this dork," he said. "Besides, you're in no condition to spit."
That got a reaction. She either laughed darkly or sobbed. But in any case she kept her face to the wall.
He began to feel a kind of desperation, as if something ugly and unknown was slipping like jelly through his fingers. He had to find a handle, some way to get through this thorny facade she had suddenly created.
"Rachel, listen, I'm not the enemy. Just a minute ago I was the only one you wanted to be with. Now you're shutting me out. What happened?"
For a very long time there was no sound in the room save the monotonous beeping of the monitors, the soft, pliant soughing of the machines. "You wouldn't understand," she whispered at last. "No one does." And when she rolled her head back toward him he could see that she was crying. "I'm messed up." She almost choked on her tears. "I'm so fucking messed up." She stared up at him as he dabbed her face with the edge of his sleeve. "Uncle Lew, am I going to die?"
"No, honey."
"Because if I am I want to know."