"Holly Lisle - World Gates 02 - Wreck of Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

She liked the look in his eyes. Her gut said, HeтАЩs okay. HeтАЩs one of the good guys.

But which good guys?

тАЬHey,тАЭ she said, opening the door. тАЬAre you where you could take a minute or two and sit in the hall
with Jake so that I could put groceries away?тАЭ

He looked startled. тАЬWellтАжI suppose. I came by to talk to you, butтАжтАЭ He shrugged at her, smiled at
Jake, and sat down on the stairs beside him. тАЬYou want to play? Cars? Or horsey? Or something?тАЭ

Jake sat there staring at Pete like Pete had two heads.

тАЬRight back,тАЭ Lauren said, and hauled her groceries down the hall before Pete had second thoughts.

HeтАЩd been by almost every day since the funeral. She saw him when she answered calls to check on the
Sentinel gates around the town, too, and when they bumped into each other on the street. In a town thatтАФ
since the influenza epidemicтАФhoused only a few more than seven hundred people, not running into
someone became difficult.

He wanted to be with her, to spend time getting to know her; he wanted to help her get past all the
awfulness of the past couple of monthsтАФand maybe the year before that, too. He liked her. For that
matter, she liked him.

But he wasnтАЩt Brian, and could never be Brian. And Brian had reached back from death to save JakeтАЩs
life, and had told Lauren that he would always love her, and that he would be waiting for her. That
didnтАЩt leave Lauren with a lot of room to move on with her life.

She was at such loose ends. She owned the house outright, and with government money that came in
monthly, she and Jake could afford to live without her working, even though to do so they had to live
very small lives. It wasnтАЩt such a hard thing to live a small life in a place like Cat Creek.

But her life had been planned to be so much more. Until MollyтАЩs death, she had been one-half of a
partnership born to save Earth from self-immolation and prevent the escalating collapse of the
worldchain of which Earth was just a single bead. SheтАЩd spent thirty-five years of her life heading
toward a destiny of unimaginable wonder, had in a single day at the end of that thirty-five-year trek
discovered not only who she was and who Molly was, but what their parents had planned for the two of

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them, and that her life mattered in huge ways she couldnтАЩt even fully conceiveтАжand in the same day,
Molly had died and sheтАЩd lost the sister sheтАЩd only just found and the future sheтАЩd spent her entire life
hungering for. And that same bitter death had rendered her parentsтАЩ sacrifice of their lives years before
futileтАФfor if Lauren and Molly couldnтАЩt carry out their parentsтАЩ plans, LaurenтАЩs mom and dad had died
for nothing.

Lauren jammed cans onto the shelves of the pantry and the fruit into big wooden bowls lined along the
counter and refused to let the tears come. Shit happened. It happened to everyone, and if it didnтАЩt seem
fair that so very much of it had happened to her, well, no one with any sense had ever tried to claim that
life was fair, had they? Or even that anyone ought to try to make it fair. She still had Jake. She had a