"Maureen McHugh - Ancestor Money" - читать интересную книгу автора (McHugh Maureen F)

that had solved itself in the afterlife.

"Ah. Rachel Ball. A moment тАж"

"Yes," she said.

"Yes. It is a substantial amount of goods and money. Would you like to claim it?"
"Yes," she said.

"Hold on," said the voice. She couldn't tell if it was male or female.

"What's going on?" Speed asked.

Rachel waved her hand to shush him.

"Honorable Ancestress, your claim has been recorded. You may come at any time within the next ninety
days to claim it," said the strange, reedy voice.

"Go there?" she asked.

"Yes," said the voice.

"Can you send it?"

"Alas," said the voice, "we cannot." And the connection was closed.

"Wait," she said. But when she pushed redial, she went directly to voicemail. It was in Chinese.

Speed was watching her, thoughtful. She looked at her bare feet and curled her toes.

"Are you going to go?" Speed asked her.

"I guess," she said. "Do you want to come?"

"I traveled too much in life," he said, and that was all. Rachel had never gone more than twenty-five miles
from Swan Pond in life and had done less in death. But Speed had been a hobo in the Depression,
leaving his wife and kids without a word and traveling the south and the west. Rachel did not understand
why Speed was in heaven, or why some people were here and some people weren't, or where the other
people were. She had figured her absence of concern was part of being dead.

Rachel had died, probably of complications from meningitis, in 1927, in Swan Pond, Kentucky. She had
expected that Robert, her husband, would eventually be reunited with her. But in life, Robert had
remarried badly and had seven more children, two of whom died young. She saw Robert now and again
and felt nothing but distant affection for him. He had moved on in life, and even in death he was not her
Robert anymore.

But now something flickered in her that was a little like discontent. Amelia Shaugnessy was тАж her
granddaughter. Child of her third child and second daughter, Evelyn. Amelia had sent her an offering.
Rachel touched her fingers to her lips, thinking. She touched her hair.