"Alexander Jablokov - Fragments Of A Painted Eggshell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jablokov Alexander)

would the owner want to move it here? Unless he really was mad, in which case maybe taking the job
hadn't been such a good idea.

Virgie divined her worry. "It's okay, it's just something he's set on doing. He wants a good restoration,
he's got the bucks, we're all right."

Virgie was a kick-ass carpenter, but she didn't know squat about business. Still, she'd gotten a good
contract with this Leo. Hidden somewhere under the asphalt shingles, the rotted window frames, the
hideous wallpaper, was a Greek Revival house from 1838, and Leo was willing to pay to have it restored
to its original glory.

"How'd you meet this guy, anyway?" Paula asked. Just behind the house was a rusted chain link fence.
On the other side was a hill of garbage, mostly broken bottles. With luck, by midsummer weeds would
have concealed the worst of it.

Virgie tugged at her belt, then shrugged. "I came to Leo to save my marriage."

"It didn't work." Paula didn't want to be harsh, but Virgie did tend to go on about it.

"Well, no...but that wasn't Leo's fault." Virgie squatted against the foundation wall, letting her hanging
tools rest on the ground.
"Karl was always really busy. His job was important, he worked for that insurance company, they had a
lot of cases all over, big ones. He was always away, and it was rough on the kids. Oh, he did his best.
He'd tape-record bedtime stories for them while he was driving from the airport to his hotel, though
sometimes he'd yell at other drivers and forget to edit it out. He would have them fax him their
homework, and he'd talk it over with them. He had to be away on Marty's birthday, and I played a
recording of him singing Happy Birthday...he really does have a good voice, you know. He sang in
college. Marty just cried. You'd think kids nowadays would be the ones who realized how irrelevant
whether he was actually physically there or not was. After all, they grew up with all this stuff. They're all
interconnected."

It was when Virgie defended her ex-husband that things got bad. Paula wondered if Mark ever defended
her actions to others. It was a weird thing wronged lovers did, and it always made friends furious.

"So I brought them to Leo. Leo's a memory man, I think you knew that. Implantation, design. Used to be
a bigwig at some company, don't know how that fell out. This was pretty easy for him, he probably could
have done it in his sleep. After all, all the stuff was there. He just had to turn it real. When he was done,
Marty and Lisa remembered their dad being there for everything. Helping with the homework. Singing at
the birthday party. He just grafted memories from when he was there over onto places when he wasn't. I
didn't tell anyone about it. I was kind of ashamed, you know, going to a service to get the kids to love
their father. Plus, it cost a bundle, most of what I saved."

This threw a new light on what had happened. Virgie's husband had soon requested a divorce, and kept
the children. Their love for him was relatively uncomplicated, and thus easier for them to deal with, than
their relationship with their not-entirely consistent mother.

Virgie looked up at her. "And you know how he let me know he wanted a divorce? By fax."

The restructuring of Leo's house proved to be a great job for Paula's team. They stripped the asphalt
shingles off, and the rotting, ancient clapboards underneath. The huge, old sheathing boards were still in