"Kate Wilhelm - Happiest Day Of Her Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

During her entire life she had lived with her mother for a total of six years off and on; the first two years
she and her mother had lived here in Aunt

Rebecca's house. After that she had been shipped off to Aunt Rebecca now and then while her mother
and the current New Guy tried to work things out, or while her mother was in pursuit of a new New Guy,
or for some other reason. When she was twelve she had come to stay.
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According to Sonya, Reba's father had been a prince, a beautiful young man who had swept her off her
feet, loved her passionately, and then mysteriously disappeared without realizing she was pregnant. She
didn't know his last name.

Just Cary. Like Cary Grant, only much, much better looking. Sonya, of course, had been a lovely naive
girl, ready to be swept up, one who, Reba suspected, had always exuded clouds of pheromones. She
never had any trouble landing a New Guy, and, pretty as she always had been and still was, never kept
any of her catches more than a few years. Throwaway fish who didn't measure up to the Prince.

The problem was that the New Guys too often seemed to be intent on getting Reba killed. The first one,
Harvey Wilson, had died in a stupid wreck that threw Reba out of the car into a shallow pond with a nice
cushiony mud bottom. A different

New Guy had fallen asleep on the couch and dropped a cigarette; a neighbor had dragged him out, but
neither of them had remembered there was a child sleeping in the house. Reba had crawled out a dog
door, following the poodle to safety. A miracle, everyone had declared. How had she managed to fit
through? Later, a new

New Guy had gone skiing with Sonya and Reba; the gondola lift had jerked; he had lurched forward and
managed to push Reba over the side down to where she should have been killed on jutting basalt
boulders. Instead, she had landed in a deep new-powder drift between rocks.

Reba continued to sit on the side of her bed, brooding about her mother, and her new New Guy. An
omen, she thought bleakly. She had avoided her mother's New Guys for years, purposely had never paid
them a visit. There had been a number of parental visits over the years, when Sonya would appear by
herself, rearrange things for a few days, buy Reba some clothes or trinkets, try to curl her hair, give her
advice about how to walk, how to sit, how to eat, what to eat; then she would leave, and Reba and Aunt
Rebecca, sharing quiet relief, would restore order and get on with their lives.

And now there was a new New Guy in the house, an evil omen, certain to doom her wedding, doom her
in all likelihood.

By the time Reba dragged herself into the shower, dressed and went downstairs, she had a grade-A
headache. She stifled a groan when she saw that her mother was making a list....

"Darling, good morning!" Sonya cried. "Are you ill? Just nervous? You shouldn't drink coffee, if you're
nervous. And it's perfectly normal to feel a bit jittery, but believe me, sweetheart, tomorrow will be the
happiest day of your life. Your wedding day is always the happiest day of your life."