"Charles L. Grant - Oxrun Station 05 - Bloodwind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

had no intention of following that course of decay.
Her mother had her father, but Pat knew she herself had no excuse. Not anymore.
Another sigh, mockingly drawn to a whimper of self-pity, and she turned on the shower, twisted back to
the mirror and launched into a punishing series of calis-thenics that had her skin glistening before five
minutes had passed. Her head complained, her stomach lurched, but she would not slow down until she had
achieved some sort of penance for last night's insanity. Not that she didn't deserve a night out once in a
while, she told herself twenty minutes later as she dressed. She did. She worked hard, damned hard, and
these occasional explosions of energy were very nearly the only releases she permitted herself, about the
only release one could get in a place like Oxrun Station in the middle of winter.
She laughed, and buttoned the cream-and-fluff blouse, adjusted the loose tie around its open throat. She
was doing it again, and she did it every timeтАФa stodgy, defensive rationalization for her partygoing simply
be-cause she lived in a village where affluence was an aftertaste of breathing the clean air. Where peace
was valued and quiet jealously maintained, and wasn't that exactly the reason she had come here in the first
place?
She hesitated in front of the vanity mirror, the bed reflected behind her and diminished somehow. On the
corner of the dresser was a silver-framed photograph of a young girl no older than eight, squinting at the
camera with a fearful smile on her lips.
The thought came unbidden, and unwanted, breaking through a resolve that had held for nearly five
years: she would have been sixteen today. She would have been in high school. She would have been able
to tell her friends that her mother was an artist and her father lived in California, and her grandparents had
this absolutely monstrous penthouse in New York City where they honest to god vegetated among furniture
so old you could smell the dust ingrained in the wood. She would have been. But she wasn't.
Pat set her left hand to her forehead, fingers gently rubbing. The sense of loss was not quite so sharp, but
neither had it faded; it persisted, like a scar that was every few years rediscovered with unpleasant
surprise.
Lauren would have been sixteen. But she wasn't. And Pat was thirty-nine and in a battle for her
professional life. And for a moment she felt sick. It was unfair her daughter should return on this day,
unfair and unkind and so damned unlike her. She loved the girl still, in dreams and in memory, but she was
eight years in her grave and it just wasn't fair.
The nausea passed. And the guilt that was its source. Her frown smoothed, and she touched the
photograph with a thumb that traced the child's face. All right, she told the image, but please, Lauren, stay
out of my way today, okay? Believe me, I'm going to need all the strength I can muster, and I really don't
think I can handle you now.
A laugh, rueful and short, and she headed for the kitchen not quite as eager as she'd primed herself to
be.

* * *
The apartment was half the second floor of an elegant three-story Victorian on Northland Avenue.
Above was a full attic used for storage, across the wide landing a retired couple named Evans. On the first
floor was the landlord, Lincoln Goldsmith, who lived so alone it was months before Pat even knew he was
there; and directly below her the residence of Kelly Hanson and Abbey Wagner, two women a decade and
a half younger than she, who worked over in Harley and lived in the Station because they liked the address,
not to mention the fact that it made an impression on job applications. And if it hadn't been for Kelly's
preference for blaring music in the morning, she knew she might as well be living alone for all the noise
there was. There were daysтАФ stormy days and days marked lonesomeтАФwhen the si-lence was
maddening and she was tempted to scream; there were also times, however, and more often than not, when
she blessed every saint she could think of for the luck that had provided her with such a perfect place to
live.
The front room was thirty feet square, the ceilings high, with elaborate moldings. The streetside wall was
broken by a pair of tall, arched windows flanking nar-row French doors opening onto a roofless porch she