A Matter of Trust

Начало книги

The week at his bedside was the immediate and necessary and unavoidable nightmare. Sometimes his hand would tighten on hers, just for a moment, and Jane Ann would know that no matter what they said, somewhere inside him, where that faint and desperate spark of life still survived, there was an awareness of her, of her closeness.

At the hospital there was neither night nor day, or even names for the days of the week — only the suspension of all time as she held his hand and watched him breathe, watched the bruised stillness of his face and tried to make her own vitality flow into him.

Husband. Strange, dear word, a love-rhyme word, somehow, matching the homely things — scent of shaving lotion, old hat he wouldn’t throw away, look of his hand lifting the morning coffee cup, and his smile upside down when things were awry. Widow. A hollow word, like some dried thing struck and echoing only emptiness, or the winter-wind sound around the eaves of a lonely house.

Читать дальше →