"Gardner, Lisa - The Other Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Lisa)

"Wow," the waiter exclaimed. "Your daughter looks just like you!"
"Of course," Patricia declared breezily. Melanie rolled her eyes. She didn't look like her mother any more than a yellow buttercup resembled a yellow rose.
"Are you harassing the help?" she asked her mom.
"Absolutely. Charlie here was just pouring me a drink. Orange juice. Straight up. I figured that would keep the room buzzing. 'Does she have vodka in that
or doesn't she?' 'Does she/doesn't she?' You know I love to be the life of the party."
Melanie squeezed her mother's hand. "You're doing fine."
Patricia merely smiled. She knew people still whispered such things as They found her first daughter murdered. Just four years old and her head was cut off. Isn't that horrible? Can you imagine?
And these days they were adding Her son just announced he was gay. You know he's always been, well, troubled. And get this-she's started drinking again. That's right. Fresh out of rehab . . .
"Everything looks great," Patricia said too cheerfully. Two women walked by, then whispered to each other furiously. Patricia's grip on her crystal glass grew tight.
"They'll get over it," Melanie said gently. "Remember, the first public outing is the worst."
"It was my own fault." More hesitation now, genuine remorse.
"It's okay, Mom. It's okay."
"I shouldn't have been so weak. Fifteen years of being sober. Sometimes I don't know myself. . . ."
"Mom-"
"I miss Brian."
"I know," Melanie murmured. "I know."
Patricia pinched the bridge of her nose. She had worked herself up to the point of tears, and Patricia Stokes did not cry in public. She turned, giving the room her back until the worst passed.
The waiter looked reproachfully at Melanie, as if she should be doing something. Melanie would love to do something. Unfortunately the rift between her father and brother was old, and there was little she or her mother could do. Harper looked in good spirits tonight, so maybe the end would soon be near.
"I'm . . . I'm better now," Patricia was saying. She had pulled herself together, adopting that firm

smile she'd learned in some finishing school umpteen
years earlier. >
"You can go up anytime you want," Melanie said.
"Nonsense. I just need to get through the first hour. You're right-the first public outing is always the hardest. Well, let the windbags talk. I've certainly I heard worse."
"It's going to be okay, Mom." -j
"Of course, it is." Patricia was back to her over-| bright smiles, but then she leaned over and gave her daughter a genuine hug. Her arms were strong around Melanie, the scent of Chanel No. 5 and Lancome face cream comforting. Melanie looped her arms around her mother's too-thin waist the way she had been doing since she was nine and let the embrace last for as long as her mom needed it to. When they drew back, they were both smiling. "I have to get to the kitchen," Melanie said. "Do you need help? I'm really not doing much." "Nope. This show is on the road." She was already stepping away, but then her mom caught her hand. She looked intent. "William coming?"
Melanie shrugged. "He is dad's favorite anesthesiologist."
"Nervous?"
"Never. What's one ex-fiance among three hundred people?"
"William's a jerk," her mom said loyally.
"And you are the best." Melanie gave her mother's hand a squeeze, then plunged into the crowd.
A sudden movement caught her eye. She turned just in time to see the flapping tail of a brown overcoat disappear into the kitchen. That was odd. Who would be running around in a soiled overcoat?
She was about to follow up, when she heard a commotion from outside. The valets were fighting over whose turn it was to park a Porsche. By the time Melanie sorted it all out, the matter of the out-of-place overcoat had completely slipped her mind.
AN HOUR LATER Melanie realized she still hadn't checked in on the blood donor room that her friend Ann Margaret had set up in the front parlor.
"I'm so sorry!" she apologized immediately, bursting into the wood-paneled room that now boasted four blood donor stretchers instead of the usual leather sofas. "I wanted to see if you needed anything, but it's been so crazy!"
"Completely understandable," Ann Margaret drawled as she finished rubbing iodine on the exposed skin of a man's arm and in the next heartbeat slid in the needle. "As you can see, life here is just fine."
"Hey, gorgeous," the man said. "I've been wondering where you've been hiding."
Melanie burst into a smile. "Uncle Jamie! Here you are. I should've known my godfather would fly all the way from Europe just to hole up with a beautiful woman."
"Can't help myself," Jamie informed her. "It's the gift of being Irish."
Melanie shook her head. She'd heard it all before but didn't mind hearing it again. A longtime friend of her parents from their days in Texas, Jamie O'Donnell was one of her most favorite people in the world. He jetted all over the globe tracking down rare items for his import/export company, then blazed into town twice a year to spoil her rotten with imported chocolates, exotic toys, and larger-than-life stories.
Now he was sprawled on the raised donor bed, looking just off the docks even in a three-thousand-dollar tuxedo. It was probably the single diamond winking in his left ear, or the mischievous look on his face.
'They take your blood, Uncle Jamie? Somehow I figured with the life you've led . . ."
."
"Hardly," Ann Margaret murmured, and snapped a rubber band around an empty donor bag.
Melanie looked back and forth between her godfather and best friend. Maybe it was just her, but she would swear there was a light blush on Ann Margaret's face, a reluctance to meet Jamie's direct gaze; Very interesting.
Melanie climbed onto the stretcher next to Jamie*! and offered up her arm to donate while she and godfather caught up.
Jamie didn't waste any time. "Brian really he's gay?"
"I don't think he merely 'thinks' it." Jamie sighed. "And your dad, being the open-minded fellow that he is, tossed him out on his arse,
Melanie grimaced. "Brian didn't exactly help matters with his method of announcement. I mean, one
minute Harper is serving duck a l'orange to the hospital's head of surgery, the next his own son is bolting