Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

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After a while Pistache spoke.

“What did they mean about a legacy?”

I shrugged. “Nothing. Cassis made out he was a rich man so that they’d look after him in his old age. They should have known better. That’s all.”

I hoped she might leave it at that, but there was a stubborn line between her eyes that promised trouble.

“I never even knew I had an uncle,” she said tonelessly.

“We weren’t close.”

Silence. I could see her going over it in her mind and I wished I could stop the circle of her thoughts, but knew I couldn’t.

“Yannick’s very like him,” I told her, trying for lightness. “Handsome and feckless. And his wife leads him like a dancing bear.”

I demonstrated mincingly, hoping for a smile, but if anything her thoughtful look deepened.

“They seemed to think you’d cheated him somehow,” she said. “Bought him out, when he was ill.”

I forced myself to pause. Anger at this stage would not help anyone.

“Pistache,” I said patiently. “Don’t believe everything those two tell you. Cassis wasn’t ill, at least, not in the way you think. He drank himself into bankruptcy, left his wife and son, sold off the farm to pay his debts…”