"Fielding, Joy - Whispers and Lies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fielding Joy)

I liked her, I decided, almost on the spot,
although I'm the first to admit that I'm not always the
best judge of character. Still, my first impression of the
amazingly tall young woman with the shoulder-length,
strawberry-blond curls who stood tightly
clasping my hand in the living room of my small
two-bedroom home was positive. And first
impressions are lasting impressions, as my mother
used to say.
"This is a real pretty house," Alison
said, her head nodding up and down, as if agreeing
with her own assessment, her eyes darting
appreciatively between the overstuffed sofa and the two
delicate Queen Anne chairs, the cushioned
valances framing the windows and the sculpted area
rug lying across the light hardwood floor. "I
love pink and mauve together. It's my favorite
color combination." Then she smiled, this enormous,
wide, slightly goofy smile that made me
want to smile right back. "I always wanted a
pink and mauve wedding."
I had to laugh. It seemed such a wonderfully
strange thing to say to someone you'd just met. She
laughed with me, and I motioned toward the sofa for her
to sit down. She immediately sank into the deep,
down-filled cushions, her blue sundress
all but disappearing inside the swirl of pink and
mauve fabric flowers, and crossed one long,
skinny leg over the other, the rest of her body
folding itself artfully around her knees as she leaned
toward me. I perched on the edge of the striped
Queen Anne chair directly across from her,
thinking that she reminded me of a pretty pink
flamingo, a real one, not one of those awful
plastic things you see stabbed into people's front
lawns. "You're very tall," I commented lamely,
thinking she'd probably heard that remark all her
life.
"Five feet ten inches," she acknowledged
graciously. "I look taller."
"Yes, you do," I agreed, although at
barely five feet four inches, everyone looks
tall to me. "Do you mind my asking how old you
are?"
"Twenty-eight." A slight blush suddenly
scraped her cheeks. "I look younger."
"Yes, you do," I said again. "You're lucky.
I've always looked my age."
"How old are you? That is, if you don't mind
..."