Читать книгу The Saint of the Speedway онлайн

67 страница из 87

She came to her mother’s side and laid a gentle hand on her bowed shoulder.

“Mum, dear,” she said deliberately, “we’re going to move right into Beacon. It’ll set you crazy and me too, to stop around out here. There’s things this place won’t ever let us forget, an’ we’ve got to forget. Maybe we’re mostly feeling dead now. That’s the way grief hits us. But we’re both alive and need to go right on living. If Jim was here he’d decide for us the thing we need to do. He isn’t. So—so I’ve got to think for us both and push it through. We got eight thousand dollars to feed, an’ clothe, an’ shelter us. Maybe it would do for a while. But after—what then?”

The mother looked up. It was the questioning of one incapable of anything else.

“What do you mean, Claire? What’re you going to do?”

There was no inspiration, there was even no interest in the questions.

“Do? Do?” Claire’s reiteration was thrilling with live purpose and something like leaping excitement. “Do? Why, do as father would have done. Do as he did time and again.”