"Kate Wilhelm - Forever Yours Anna" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

FOREVER YOURS, ANNA
By Kate Wilhelm

[05 feb 2001 тАУ scanned for #bookz, proofread and released тАУ v1]

An enigma of past, present and future, in which an authority on handwriting attempts
to determine the nature of the author of the letters signed as the title of this story.
There's a surprise in store at the end.

Anna entered his life on a spring afternoon, not invited, not even wanted. Gordon
opened his office door that day to a client who was expected and found a second man
also in the hallway. The second man brought him Anna, although Gordon did not yet
know this. At the moment, he simply said, "Yes?"

"Gordon Sills? I don't have an appointment, but wait?"

"Afraid I don't have a waiting room."

"Out here's fine."

He was about fifty, and he was prosperous. It showed in his charcoal-colored suit, a
discreet blue-gray silk tie, a silk shirt. Gordon assumed the stone on his finger was a
real emerald of at least three carats. Ostentatious touch, that.

"Sure," Gordon said, and ushered his client inside. They passed through a foyer into
his office workroom. The office section was partitioned from the rest of the room by
three rice-paper screens with beautiful Chinese calligraphy. In the office area was his
desk and two chairs for visitors, his chair, and an overwhelmed bookcase, with books
on the floor in front of it.

When his client left, the hall was empty. Gordon shrugged and returned to his office;
he pulled his telephone across the desk and dialed his former wife's apartment
number, let it ring a dozen times, hung up. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his
eyes absently. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the slats in the venetian
blinds, zebra light. 1 should go away for a few weeks, he thought. Just close shop and
walk away from it all until he started getting overdraft notices. Three weeks, he told
himself; that was about as long as it would take. Too bad about the other guy, he
thought without too much regret. He had a month's worth of work lined up already,
and he knew more would trickle in when that was done.

Gordon Sills was thirty-five, a foremost expert in graphology, and could have been
rich, his former wife had reminded him quite often. If you don't make it before forty,
she had also said--too often--you simply won't make it, and he did not care, simply
did not care about money, security, the future, the children's future ...

Abruptly he pushed himself away from the desk and left the office, going into his
living room. Like the office, it was messy, with several days' worth of newspapers,
half a dozen books, magazines scattered haphazardly. To his eyes it was comfortable
looking, comfort giving; he distrusted neatness in homes. Two fine Japanese
landscapes were on the walls.