Winter Baby. Kathleen O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ Ed didn’t really mean what he was suggesting. He was shocked, just as she was. Maybe even a little frightened, though he’d never admit it. Neither of them was acting quite rationally.

      Maybe she should call him. It was only six. He would be at home. His schedule was as familiar to her as her own. She could pick up the telephone right now. Yes, she should probably call, try to talk calmly.

      But she didn’t move. She felt suddenly exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. She didn’t want to talk to Ed. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. He had already planned to leave her, she reminded herself. He had already decided he didn’t want her. She felt her mind recoiling, rejecting the overload of emotion.

      Her half-focused gaze fell on the coffee table, where the week’s mail still lay where she’d dropped it as she came in every day, unable to work up the energy to open it.

      A few bills, a dozen Christmas cards.

      But now she saw that one of the cards was from Uncle Ward. His brief return address was written in his familiar arrogant black scrawl: Ward Winters, Winter House, Firefly Glen, NY.

      The sight was strangely comforting. She reached for the card, wondering if Uncle Ward had included one of his long, witty letters chronicling—and sometimes sharply satirizing—the goings-on in his little mountain town. How lovely it would be to escape, even for a few minutes, into Uncle Ward’s world.

      The envelope was bulky. There was a letter. She settled back to read it, smiling her first real smile all week, suddenly hungry for the sound of her uncle’s voice.

      The letter was filled with rich, amusing stories and with vivid, tempting descriptions of the beautiful snowy winter they were having. She came to the end reluctantly.

      …And I can’t seem to make anyone see reason about the damned ice festival. Greedy politicians, all puffed up and self-important. I guess I’ll have to take matters into my own hands. But what about you, Sarah? Aren’t you ready for a real winter? Florida! Bah! What do palm trees and cockroaches have to do with Christmas? If your stick-in-the-mud fiancé won’t come, come without him. I’d like that even better, actually. This Ed guy sounds as if his life view is a little constipated.

      Sarah caught herself chuckling. Ward was actually her great-uncle, and, while Ed had been wrong to call him senile, he’d been right to call him bad tempered. Ward was crusty and sardonic and demanding, but he was also tough and practical and wise. And entirely right about Ed.

      She sat up, wondering how much a flight to Upstate New York cost these days. She didn’t feel quite as exhausted anymore. Maybe a dose of Uncle Ward was just exactly the bracing tonic she needed.

      And maybe his quaint and quirky Firefly Glen, with its white mountains, its colorful architecture and its silly, small-town squabbles, was just the sanctuary she needed, too.

      Firefly Glen. She had spent one summer there, back when she was thirteen. Her mother and her husband had been fighting through a nasty divorce, and she had been packed off to Uncle Ward while the grownups settled important matters, like who would get possession of the Cadillac and the mutual funds.

      Her memories of that summer were emotional and confused, but they were surprisingly happy. Long, green afternoons walking with Uncle Ward in the town square, hearing rather scandalous stories of Firefly Glen’s history. Talking with him late at night in the library of his fantastic Gothic mansion, huddled over lemonade and popcorn and chess, and feeling understood for the first time in her life.

      He was acerbic and affectionate, hot tempered and honest, and she had adored him. In August, her mother had collected her—in the Cadillac, of course. Her mother was very good at divorce, and would only get better with each failed marriage. Sarah’s life hadn’t allowed another long visit, but to this day, when she wanted to speak the truth—or hear it—she had called her Uncle Ward.

      He and Firefly Glen had restored her then. Perhaps they could do the same now. She picked up the telephone. Surely somewhere in that gentle valley town, amid all that snowy silence, she could figure out what to do with her life.

      CHAPTER TWO

      AT EIGHT-THIRTY on Christmas Eve, both downtown streets of Firefly Glen were wet with an icy sleet, the shining asphalt crisscrossing at the intersection like two ribbons of black glass.

      The temperature on the bank clock said twenty-nine degrees, but the garlands strung between the streetlights had begun to swing and twinkle, which meant the mountain winds had found their way through Vanity Gap and into the Glen. Sheriff Parker Tremaine, who was headed toward the large red-brick City Hall at the end of Main, huddled deeper into his fleece-lined jacket and decided that the real temperature was probably more like two below.

      Still he took the street slowly. Every couple of minutes a car would crawl by, and the driver would wave or honk or even pull over to offer Parker a ride. But Parker would shake his head and wave them on. Call him crazy, but he wanted to walk.

      He liked the cold, liked the swollen bellies of the clouds overhead—they’d probably deliver snow by morning. He liked the pinpricks of sleet against his cheeks and the tickle of wool against his ears.

      He liked the peace of the hushed streets. He liked the way the stained-glass windows of the Congregational Church beamed rich reds and blues into the darkness.

      Most of all, he liked knowing that most of the 2,937 “Glenners,” whom he’d been hired to protect, were safely tucked in for the night. The rest, the Fussy Four Hundred, as they were known in the Sheriff’s Department, were gathered in the assembly room of City Hall for an ice festival planning session.

      Parker, who had just responded to a prowler call at the park—a false alarm, of course—was a little late to the meeting, which had begun at eight. By now the planning session had probably escalated from civilized discussion to hotheaded shouting, and Bourke Waitely was undoubtedly brandishing his cane like a weapon.

      But the image didn’t make Parker hurry. As long as he got there before nine, he’d arrive in time to forestall any actual violence.

      And when it was all over, he’d be off duty, and Theodosia Graham, who owned the Candlelight Café, had a hot, thick slice of pumpkin pie waiting for him.

      “You’re one damned lucky man, Tremaine.”

      Realizing he’d spoken out loud, Parker had to laugh. The chuckle formed a small white puff in the icy air, like a visible echo.

      Lucky? Him? That was pretty damn funny, actually.

      He was the thirty-four-year-old divorced sheriff of a tiny Adirondack town that gave bad winters a new meaning, and he was looking forward to spending Christmas Eve alone with a seventy-five-year-old spinster and a piece of pie.

      Plus, apparently he’d begun talking to himself on the sidewalk, which back in Washington, D.C. would have scared all the other pedestrians into crossing the street.

      Who in his right mind would call this lucky? He looked at himself in the window of Griswold’s Five and Dime. The only guy out here, shuffling along in a freezing rain, no wife waiting at home, no kids dreaming of sugarplums, not even a girlfriend dreaming of a diamond. The textbook illustration of a loser.

      So what the hell did he have to be so smug about?

      Nothing. He grinned at the guy in the window. Nothing except for the fact СКАЧАТЬ