Last Breath. Karin Slaughter

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СКАЧАТЬ only been doing this for a minute, Charlie. I don’t know much of anything about any of those girls except they seem to think it’s easy to bake a sheet cake and throw a party for twenty snotty teenagers who don’t appreciate anything you’ve done for them and think you’re old and fat and stupid.” She had tears in her eyes, but she had tears in her eyes a lot lately. “It’s exactly like being home with Ryan. I thought it would be different having something to do, but they think I’m a failure, just like he does.”

      Charlie couldn’t take another crying jag about Belinda’s husband right now. “Do you think that Flora’s grandparents are doing a good job?”

      “You mean, raising her?” Belinda looked in the mirror, using her pinky finger to carefully wipe under her eyes. “I dunno. She’s a good kid. She does well in school. She’s an awesome Girl Scout. I think she’s really smart. And sweet. And really thoughtful, like she helped me get the cake out of the car when I got here, while the rest of those lazy bitches stood around with their thumbs up their asses.”

      “Okay, that’s Flora. What about her grandparents as human beings?”

      “I don’t like to say bad things about people.”

      Charlie laughed. So did Belinda. If she didn’t say bad things about people, half her day would be spent in silence.

      Belinda said, “I met the grandmother last month. She smelled like a whiskey barrel at eight o’clock in the morning. Driving a sapphire blue Porsche, though. A freaking Porsche. And they had that house on the lake, but now they’re living in those cinder-block apartments down from Shady Ray’s.”

      Charlie wondered where the Porsche had ended up. “What about the grandfather?”

      “I dunno. Some of the girls were teasing her about him because he’s good looking or something, but he’s got to be, like, two thousand years old, so maybe they were just being bitches. You get teased about your dad all the time, right?”

      Charlie hadn’t been teased, she had been threatened, and her mother had been murdered, because her father made a living out of keeping bad men out of prison. “Anything else about the grandfather?”

      “That’s all I’ve got.” Belinda was checking her make-up in the mirror again. Charlie didn’t want to think in platitudes, like that her friend was glowing, but Belinda was a different person when she was pregnant. Her skin cleared up. There was always color in her cheeks. For all of her prickliness, she had stopped obsessing about the small things. Like she didn’t seem to care that her watermelon-sized stomach was pressed against the counter, wicking water into her dress. Or that her navel poked out like the stem on an apple.

      Charlie would look like that one day. She would grow her husband’s child in her belly. She would be a mother—hopefully a mother like her own mother, who was interested in her kids, who pushed them to be intelligent, useful women.

      One day.

      Eventually.

      They had talked about this before, Charlie and her husband. They would have a baby as soon as they had a handle on their student loans. As soon as her practice was steady. As soon as their cars were paid off. As soon as her nerdy husband was ready to give up the spare bedroom where he kept his mildly expensive Star Trek collection.

      Charlie tried to do a running tally of how much the Emancipation of Florabama Faulkner would cost. Filing fees. Motions. Court appearances. Not to mention hours of Charlie’s time. She could not in good conscience take funds from Flora’s trust, no matter how much money was left in it.

      If Dexter Black paid his bill, that might almost cover the expenses.

      She heard her father’s voice in her head—

       And if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their tails hopping.

      Belinda said, “Why are you asking all these questions?”

      “Because I think Flora needs my help.”

      “Wait, is this like that John Grisham movie where the kid gives Susan Sarandon a dollar to be his lawyer?”

      “No,” Charlie said. “This is like that movie where the stupid lawyer goes bankrupt because she never gets paid.”

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