"Sheri S. Tepper - After Long Silence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

crowd, and he's gone up like a balloon. Maybe Terr├йe figures he'll be more of a novelty after he comes
back from an inland trip."

"Tripsinger Lim Terr├йe," Tasmin quoted from an imaginary poster. "Back from a six-month tour of duty
leading desperate caravans in the interior тАж "

Jamieson grinned. "Something like that, yeah. Why all the interest, Master Ferrence?"

"Oh," Tasmin fell silent. "I knew him once, years ago. He came from around here."

"No joke! Really? Well, I guess it'll be old friends at the bar then."

"Not really. I didn't know him that well."

"I wonder why he didn't let me know he was coming?" Tasmin's mother stared toward him in wonder,
though for years Thalia Ferrence had seen nothing but blurred outlines through those wide eyes.

"It seems odd he wouldn't let me know." Her voice was aching and lost, with an agonizing resurgence of
familiar pain, made strange only by renewed intensity.

He probably didn't know you were still alive, Tasmin thought, not saying it. "Lim was probably too
embarrassed, Mother. Or, maybe he didn't know Dad was gone and thought he might not be welcome."

"His father would have forgiven him. Miles knew it was nothing that serious." She shook her head,
smiling. She seemed determined to reform Miles Ferrence in memory, determined to create a loving and
forgiving father where Tasmin could remember only hostility and harsh judgment.

Not only her eyes that can't see, Tasmin reflected. Her heart can't see either. Maybe that's pan of being
a wife and mother, having a blind heart. If she's blind to Lim's faults, well, she's blind to mine as well. He
tried to feel generous about her warmth to Lim but couldn't. Something about it sickened him. Sibling
rivalry? That would be Celcy's easy answer to everything. No, it was the senseless expenditure of
emotion on someone unworthy of it that offended him.

Or jealousy. It could be that. He could be jealous of Lim. It would be nice to have only oneself to worry
about instead of juggling three or four sets of responsibilities. Celcy. Work. His mother, whose blindness
could be helped at one of the 'Soilcoast medical centers if he could only get her there and pay the bills.
Since Miles Ferrence had died, BDL provided no more medical care for her.

Not that she ever reproached him. "Your wife has to come first, Tas. Just come see me when you can. I
love it when you do."

Now she leaned forward to take his hand and stroke it. "Are you going out on a trip soon?"

"First New Moon, Mom. First trip for some recently robed singers. Be gone two days is all. I don't like
to leave Celcy alone very long, not in her condition."

"She's not still pregnant, is she?"

"WhyтАФ" He had started to say "of course, she is" and found the words sticking in his throat. "Why did
you think she wasn't?"