【时间旅行者的妻子】71

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“Why did you say was?”

　“No reason. Lucille is fine. Don’t worry.” He’s lying. My stomach tightens¹ and I wrap my arms around my knees and put my head down.

　

HENRY: I cannot believe that I have made a slip of the tongue of this magnitude. I stroke Clare’s hair, and I wish fervently² that I could go back to my present for just a minute, long enough to consult Clare, to find out what I should say to her, at fifteen, about her mother’s death. It’s because I’m not getting any sleep. If I was getting some sleep I would have been thinking faster, or at least covering better for my lapse³. But Clare, who is the most truthful⁴ person I know, is acutely sensitive to even small lies, and now the only alternatives are to refuse to say anything, which will make her frantic⁵, or to lie, which she won’t accept, or to tell the truth, which will upset her and do strange things to her relationship with her mother. Clare looks at me. “Tell me,” she says.

　

    CLARE: Henry looks miserable⁶. “I can’t, Clare.”

　“Why not?”

　“It’s not good to know things ahead. It screws up your life.”

　“Yes. But you can’t half tell me.”

　“There’s nothing to tell.”

　I’m really beginning to panic. “She killed herself.” I am flooded with certainty. It is the thing I have always feared most.

　“ No. No. Absolutely not.”

　I stare at him. Henry just looks very unhappy. I cannot tell if he is telling the truth. If I could only read his mind, how much easier life would be. Mama. Oh, Mama.

　

HENRY: This is dreadful. I can’t leave Clare with this. “Ovarian cancer,” I say, very quietly. “Thank God,” she says, and begins to cry.

　

　Friday, June 5, 1987 (Clare is 16, Henry is 32)

 

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