Читать книгу The Coffins of Little Hope - Timothy Schaffert - Страница 21

Daisy, at first, felt no panic when Lenore was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t unusual for Lenore to wake early, to walk to the peach trees to see if the fruit was still too green to eat. That one, Daisy would tell the sheriff later, pointing at a peach on a low-hanging branch, when they were trying to piece together a clinical portrait of Lenore’s existence—seeking a single strand of hair, a bit of skin that had flaked from a peeling, sunburned shoulder. Anything. Any sliver of soap or chewed-up plug of gum stuck beneath the seat of a kitchen chair. Didn’t you ever snip off a curl to tape onto a page of her baby book?

This peach, Daisy said, reaching out to cradle it in the palm of her hand, careful not to disturb its precious place in the investigation. It was all she had, she knew. The skin’s broken there, just slightly, she explained. She put her thumb to where the peach was bruised, its skin nicked. That’s where Lenore pressed at it with her fingernail. She was seeing if it was soft enough to eat yet. See? That’s Lenore. She was here.