"Mitchell Smith - Reprisal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Mitchell)

Daydreams

To Linda, beautiful and brave

A wound of the heart need not be made

by steel; Lack and loss make more than ample institution. Nor must its
distance run be metered by a wheel, To leaf the thorn of pain past any
restitution. A search for what medicines that sore may seal, Is sure to come
at last to healing retribution. Joanna Reed, Cut Flowers Sansome, Day and Co.
Boston, 1994

REPRISAL

Prologue

She knew the dock watchman's rounds. She'd learned his hours. Charis came
down the dark wooden stairways at five forty-five, carrying her duffel and the
crutches. At the end of the fourth dock finger, past ghost boats softly
bumping, whispering in the last of night, she found Bo-Peep, an eighteen-foot
half-decked strake-wood sloop with a cramped cockpit--an outboard, cocked and
covered, fastened to its transom.

She sat by her duffel a few yards down, her back against a bollard, and laid
the aluminum crutches across her lap.

Then she was still, and never moved as the night slid away and the day came
on.

Frank Reed left the cottage in veiled dawn light, breakfast still warm in his
belly. He started down Slope Street, careful on night-damp cobbles, and
conscious--as he rarely bothered to be--of settled near-perfection. Reminded
of it, really, by having forgotten his wedding anniversary the day before ...
so stupid because he'd had it on his office calendar, and then they'd come out
to the island a couple of weeks ago and he'd forgotten.

Had been reminded pretty briskly, however --by Joanna, then Rebecca calling
from the college. Two reminders of their twentieth wedding anniversary.
Twentieth. God almighty. ...

That interesting date, and a good breakfast this morning--ham steak, eggs over
easy, wheat toast, and Colombian coffee. A twenty-year marriage and a good
breakfast made for some self-congratulation.

Health: very good for forty-three. Work: coaching going well--one of the best
college soccer teams in New England. No complaints about work, except your
typical small-school budget for athletics. No football.

Cobblestones made for slippery walking. Slope Street looked quaint, but a
sidewalk would be a definite plus. However, try to persuade these island