Fox River. Emilie Richards

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СКАЧАТЬ gave a short, humorless laugh. “Well, I guess I took you by surprise.”

      “Why didn’t she just ask for paper and pencils?”

      “Hostility? Do you think?”

      She had to admit it sounded like the act of a pissed-off woman. “Did she have access to art supplies? If she’d asked for them?”

      “Dr. Jeffers feels she needs rest and quiet.”

      She was beginning to understand. “And not art supplies.”

      “Julia doesn’t need to draw. She needs to talk. Besides, damn it, she can’t see! She’s blind, or at least pretending to be!”

      She was stunned. “You don’t believe her? You think she’s making this up? My daughter isn’t perfect, but she doesn’t lie.”

      “No? There are a few things in her past she sure doesn’t bandy about.”

      “Bard, Julia can’t see. If you think she can—”

      “I know she thinks she can’t. I believe her. But there’s nothing wrong with her eyes! Nothing!”

      “Except that she can’t see through them.”

      He pounded his fist on the table, another highly uncharacteristic show of emotion. “You wouldn’t know it after the way she acted last night, would you?”

      “This is just another example of why she shouldn’t be there.”

      “Enough.” Bard rested his head in his hands. “I don’t want you to see her again while she’s in the clinic, Maisy. Dr. Jeffers thinks you brought this on, and so do I. He called me about an hour ago, and he was very upset.” He lifted his head. “I want you to understand, this isn’t personal. I just can’t have you interfering with her treatment. She’s my wife.”

      “She’s my daughter.”

      He pushed back his chair and rose from the table. “You need to listen to me. Closely. Most of the time you’re harmless, but not in this instance. I don’t want you near her until her sight’s been restored. Julia has a lot of thinking to do, and you’re going to get in the way.” His voice dropped. “I won’t have it.”

      A man spoke from the doorway. “What won’t you have?”

      Maisy turned and saw a bareheaded Jake dressed in a canvas raincoat. No matter the weather, Jake started each day with a long walk. She supposed after living with her all these years it was a way of pumping some predictability into his life.

      “I want Maisy to stay away from Julia.” Bard started toward Jake. “Will you make her listen to reason?”

      Jake didn’t smile. “Maisy doesn’t take orders well. It’s one of her finer qualities. If she needs to see her daughter, she will.”

      Bard’s face was a mixture of emotions. Maisy was too fascinated to be angry he was trying to rally her husband against her. She made another plea. “Look, I offered to have her come here if you don’t want her at Millcreek. I’m home all day. I can help her get her bearings—”

      “She doesn’t need to get her bearings! For God’s sake, Maisy, she needs to see again! And with you fawning all over her and waiting on her hand and foot, why should she?”

      Jake stepped forward to meet him. “You think your wife lost her eyesight because she wants to be taken care of?”

      When Bard answered at last, his face was expressionless. “You have ties to her. I understand that, but right now, I’m in charge of her recovery. Stay away from her. Please. Until she’s ready to come home. Then we can talk about what’s best for her.”

      “Julia is in charge of her own recovery,” Maisy said, spacing the words carefully.

      Bard shook his head. “If you won’t agree, I’m going to have to make my feelings clear to Dr. Jeffers.”

      “I suspect you’ve already done that,” Jake said. “Is there anything else you need this morning?” He stepped aside to make his point.

      Bard started past him. “I’ll talk to you later.”

      Maisy didn’t respond, and Jake didn’t speak again until their front door closed. “Are you all right?”

      “I’m trying to remind myself that for the sake of my daughter and granddaughter I have to be nice to Lombard Warwick, even when he’s in a snit.”

      “This has been hard on him, Maisy. He’s trying to cope as best he can.”

      “By giving orders and making decisions.”

      “He’s not so bad. He thinks he has Julia’s best interests in mind.”

      Maisy filled the pot with fresh water before she flipped on the coffeemaker. “Well, he did say that usually I’m harmless.”

      Jake chuckled. “He doesn’t know you as well as he thinks.”

      She smiled, but it died quickly. She told Jake what Bard had said about Julia sketching on the wall. “I’m going to see her again today.”

      “Do you want me to come along?”

      Maisy considered before she shook her head. “No. One of us needs to stay in Bard’s good graces. If you don’t come, we can preserve the illusion that you don’t completely agree with me.”

      “And that’s an illusion?”

      “Do you agree?”

      He came over and took cups out of the cupboard, setting them on the counter in front of her. Then he went to the refrigerator for the cream. “If you’re going because you want to be sure she has choices, you have my full support.”

      “I just want the best for Julia.”

      He set the cream in front of her. “You sound remarkably like Bard.”

      

      The warm glow of Julia’s rebellion only lasted until the early hours of the next morning. She awoke when the morning nurse came in to check on her. She heard the woman’s soft gasp and hasty exit.

      The jig was up.

      By the time she had showered and finished breakfast, she knew she was overdue for a visit from her psychiatrist. She had to commend his self-control.

      When Dr. Jeffers finally arrived, she was sitting by the window, listening to the rain falling on a wet landscape. She could picture the autumn leaves, heavy-laden and resistant. But they couldn’t resist for long.

      “So, Julia, we have here a little protest.”

      She had been contrite until she heard Jeffers’ tone. Had he not sounded as if he were talking to someone with the IQ of an earthworm, she might have apologized.

      Now she was angry again. “I will not be kept from doing the things I need to in order СКАЧАТЬ