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Автор: Roxana Robinson
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Зарубежные детективы
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007307449
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      ROXANA ROBINSON

      

       Cost

      Table of Contents

       Part - I

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Part - II

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Part - III

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Part - IV

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       A Note About the Author

       Praise

       By the Same Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

PART I

       ONE

       Her memory was gone.

      It came to Katharine like a soft shock, like a blow inside the head. She was in the yellow bedroom at her daughter's house in Maine, standing at the bureau, getting ready for lunch. She'd just finished doing her hair, smoothing it back to her modest bun, tucking in the small combs to hold it in place. The combs were hardly necessary now, her long, fine hair—still mostly black—had turned wispy and weightless, and no longer needed restraint. But vanity, like beauty, is partly habit, and Katharine still put the combs carefully into her thinning hair, though now they slipped easily out, then vanished, beneath the furniture, against the patterns of the rugs.

      Hair done, combs briefly and precariously in place, Katharine looked around for her scarf. It was an old soft cotton one, a blue paisley square. She'd worn it once at a birthday party, and now, for a moment, in her daughter's guest room with its faded yellow walls, the sunlight slanting onto the worn wooden floors, the idea of the scarf and the party seemed confusingly to merge. She had a sudden sense of the party blooming around her—a blur of voices, laughter, a fireplace—a sense of pleasure at being with these people, whoever they were. Green demitasse cups, those tiny tinkling spoons, a tall brass lamp by the fireplace—or was that somewhere else?

      She tried to remember herself further into it, but could not. She could not mentally arrive at the event. She stood at the bureau, her mind groping. Everything else about the party—whom it was for, when it had happened, where—had vanished. The small, hard, bright facts, like nails that should connect it to the rest of her life, were missing. The place where her memory had been was gone, blurrily erased, like a window grayed by mist. Beyond it