"Jane Yolen - Briar Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

that if she kept them open, they would see she was on the verg
tears. And then they'd start in on her again, about how at Geml
age, with the arthritis and diabetes, it was just as well she di
know anything, couldn't suffer, as though the body felt no pa
the mind wandered in the past. Gemma wasn't that old and she
far from senile, Becca thought fiercely, the anger at last fighting I

She was about to remark aloud on it when the elevator stol
and the door opened onto the nurse's station. No one was there
an open notebook and scattered papers on the countertop ,

2-ma Sylvia said, her hands noi
her hair, nervously smoothing the -~.ides, checking the black v

"Mostly they lie in it," Shana *ib. "Old houses and old pf
smell and I don't plan to live in a9T;z one or be the other,"
'Think of the alternative," Becca enuttered, angry with herse.
ou

ed.

Briar Rose

21

rising to Shana's bait. Apart, her sisters were strong, competent
women, Shana in real estate and Sylvia a social worker. But together
they became bickering children. Becca knew this, had spent days
prepping herself for their visit. Yet again, like every other time they
came back home, the quarreling had started. She bit her lip and
silently led the way down the hall. Only Mrs. Benton was still in
her room, crying softly to herself. Becca couldn't think of a time
when she visited that Mrs. Benton wasn't crying, calling out for her
mother. The rest of Third West were downstairs finishing "Oh,
Susannah" and probably starting on "You Are My Sunshine," but
Mrs. Benton was sobbing like a heartbroken child.
Becca turned sharply into room 310 and looked around at the
neat, spare furnishings. They'd been lucky to get this room because
Gemma loved sunlight and it was an unusually sunny corner room.
Today, though, with the snow falling outside, the room was gray
and cold.
"Hello, Gemma," Becca said brightly to the old woman propped
up in the bed. The bearclaws quilt was tucked in so tightly around
her, it was almost possible to ignore the fact that she had on a posie
restraint, tying her to the bedsides. The television was crooning a
game show. Sylvia snapped it off in passing.
Shana went over and kissed her grandmother on the cheek, dry
little kisses that barely touched the skin yet still left marks where they
landed because the old woman's skin was so brittle. Sylvia waited her
turn and then did the same, missing the cheek by a hair's breadth.