"WILHELM, KATE - THE BEST DEFENSE" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

doorway.

"Packing. Leaving. I told you."

"You're not going anywhere! Don't give me this shit."

"Leaving."

She closes her eyes and drifts away. Leaving. He took the money out
of the bank. She sees herself on the floor, stunned, clutching the
door frame because the floor tilts crazily. There was no pain, she
realizes, puzzled, because now there is so much pain. She watches
herself watching him as if from a terrible distance. He picks up Lori
and throws her down on the bed.

"Next time, out the window," he says.

Her eyes jerk open. In her head Lori screams and screams.

There was a fire, she remembers, seeing it again through a window, a
kitchen blazing, flames licking against the door. Running. She took a
taxi, but not to that house, another house. No suitcase. She could
not lift the suitcase because something was broken, and she had to hold
Lori's hand. She drifts again.

She is on the edge of a woods waiting for Lori. An other little girl
comes running out.

"She's sleeping," she says, and from somewhere else a second child
calls, "Annie, come here. Look what I'm making." Annie darts away.

Sleeping, she thinks, standing against a tree, using it for support.
She is so tired; and she hurts so much.

Sleeping. What if Lori wakes up alone? What if she screams, in there
alone?

"If she wakes up alone, she'll be afraid. I'd better go back." There
is someone by her, she remembers, walking away from her, a woman.

"Whatever you want."

The woman is heading toward the children playing under a big bouquet.
Paula moves slowly; every step brings a stabbing pain through her side,
across her shoulder, down her arm. Two cracked ribs, they said.

"I won't go to the hospital," she remembers crying.

"I