"Vukcevich-NoComet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vukcevich Ray)

all up."

"You're scaring me, Daddy," Sacha said.

"Don't worry, Honey." I would have liked to touch her hand, but I couldn't reach
her. "Nothing can hurt you if you keep your head in the bag."

"You're teaching her to be an ostrich!"

"What's an ostrich?" Sacha asked.

"Is that why you won't let me have the weekends?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I really, really have to go, Daddy," Sacha said.

I heard them shifting in their chairs, moving around, trying to be quiet, but
not succeeding. I heard them whispering. Fear turned me to stone. The game was
up. I pictured Jane quietly slipping off her bag and setting it aside, pictured
her carefully removing Sacha's bag, saw Jane grin and roll her eyes in my
direction and put her finger to her lips so Sacha would be quiet, saw them both
looking at me stiff in my bag, the two of them, the little alien, the Russian
girl, our surprising blond Sacha, and the big one, looking so sweetly sad
suddenly, Jane. It wasn't that she hated me, I realized. She'd moved on when I
wasn't looking. She was bored, restless; we had so little in common these days.
She wandered like a wounded bird, one leg missing maybe, circling east, and I
plodded ever westward. What in the world did we have to talk about?

I saw Sacha make an O of her mouth when she looked at the window and saw the
comet peeking in at us like an angry red eye filling the sky. I saw the comet
leap to Earth and fire the trees, the city, our house. Burning hurricane winds
knocked down our walls and crisped our skin and peeled our bones.

I cried out.

Jane snatched the bag from my head.

Sunshine turned the refrigerator into a gleaming white block, an alien monolith
that had popped into existence among our chrome pots and wooden bowls. From
somewhere far away came the tiny tinkle tinkle of an ice-cream truck. I looked
at the window over the sink, and, in a flutter of squawks and black wings, birds
fled the feeder.

"It's easy to see what happened," I said. "You were right, Jane. Someone peeked.
But we didn't. And because we didn't, by the time we looked, we'd split off into
a reality in which the comet never existed in the first place. We're saved!"

"Oh, Daddy." Sacha hugged me quickly, then ran off to the bathroom.