"Smeds-MarathonRunner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smeds Dave)

high."

Was that it? Was he carrying a torch? Was her ghost jealously guarding him,
perhaps? Convenient, to think it was only that.

The rose caught a sunbeam that slipped through the oak leaves. The petals
drooped in the increasing heat. The flower had not been programmed to last.

That was the way it had to be.

A family appeared through the cemetery gates, making a procession toward a large
crypt near the fountain. Every adult of the group walked on long, supple legs,
their unlined faces tilted away from the day's brilliance.

Two lanky men, so similar in appearance they could've been twins, brought up the
rear. From their body language, Neil doubted they were twins. More likely the
one on the left was the great-grandfather of the one on the right.

Neil worked his way back through the graves. At the entrance, a woman stepped
onto the lawn with a small bouquet in her hands. As the distance between them
closed, he automatically made eye contact.

Her fine reddish curls and her figure brought a concealed smile of appreciation
to his face, but when he saw recognition spark in her green eyes, he stopped
short. So did she.

"I know you, don't I?" she said.

"Yes," he replied. "I saw you at the clinic, the morning after my nanodocs were
implanted."

"My morning-after, too." She looked at her bouquet, and then at a set of
headstones, as if measuring the distance between the two. But she didn't walk
on. Instead, she smiled.

"My name's Neil." "Nadine."

Neil and Nadine -- it had a nice, alliterative ring. Suddenly his scheduled
plans for the rest of the morning dissipated.

"Are you a local girl?" he asked, waving at the cemetery. "Family here?"

"Just my husband. He died not long after we retired out here in '41. I didn't
see much point in moving him or me back to Texas. So ah jus' stuck him in th'
ground with his boots pointed up." A chuckle accompanied her last sentence,
adding to the color of the deliberately exaggerated twang. Neil recognized that
kind of mirth; it was the type people used to bandage a deep wound.

"You know," Neil said, half to himself, "when I saw you on that bench outside
the clinic, I just naturally assumed you were twenty-two. Old habits, I guess."