"Kate Wilhelm - The Happiest Day Of Her Life(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

thing would be changed. Uncle Walt, the only father she had ever known, her
mother's brother, would walk her down the aisle, not the New Guy, whose name
Reba couldn't even remember.

During her entire life she had lived with her mother for a total of six years
off and on; the first two years she and her mother had lived here in Aunt
Rebecca's house. After that she had been shipped off to Aunt Rebecca now and
then while her mother and the current New Guy tried to work things out, or while
her mother was in pursuit of a new New Guy, or for some other reason. When she
was twelve she had come to stay.

According to Sonya, Reba's father had been a prince, a beautiful young man who
had swept her off her feet, loved her passionately, and then mysteriously
disappeared without realizing she was pregnant. She didn't know his last name.
Just Cary. Like Cary Grant, only much, much better looking. Sonya, of course,
had been a lovely naive girl, ready to be swept up, one who, Reba suspected, had
always exuded clouds of pheromones. She never had any trouble landing a New Guy,
and, pretty as she always had been and still was, never kept any of her catches
more than a few years. Throwaway fish who didn't measure up to the Prince.

The problem was that the New Guys too often seemed to be intent on getting Reba
killed. The first one, Harvey Wilson, had died in a stupid wreck that threw Reba
out of the car into a shallow pond with a nice cushiony mud bottom. A different
New Guy had fallen asleep on the couch and dropped a cigarette; a neighbor had
dragged him out, but neither of them had remembered there was a child sleeping
in the house. Reba had crawled out a dog door, following the poodle to safety. A
miracle, everyone had declared. How had she managed to fit through? Later, a new
New Guy had gone skiing with Sonya and Reba; the gondola lift had jerked; he had
lurched forward and managed to push Reba over the side down to where she should
have been killed on jutting basalt boulders. Instead, she had landed in a deep
new-powder drift between rocks.

Reba continued to sit on the side of her bed, brooding about her mother, and her
new New Guy. An omen, she thought bleakly. She had avoided her mother's New Guys
for years, purposely had never paid them a visit. There had been a number of
parental visits over the years, when Sonya would appear by herself, rearrange
things for a few days, buy Reba some clothes or trinkets, try to curl her hair,
give her advice about how to walk, how to sit, how to eat, what to eat; then she
would leave, and Reba and Aunt Rebecca, sharing quiet relief, would restore
order and get on with their lives.

And now there was a new New Guy in the house, an evil omen, certain to doom her
wedding, doom her in all likelihood.

By the time Reba dragged herself into the shower, dressed and went downstairs,
she had a grade-A headache. She stifled a groan when she saw that her mother was
making a list....

"Darling, good morning!" Sonya cried. "Are you ill? Just nervous? You shouldn't
drink coffee, if you're nervous. And it's perfectly normal to feel a bit