Fox River. Emilie Richards

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СКАЧАТЬ was home. But not in the upstairs room where she had danced to Depeche Mode and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” where she had sketched a thousand portraits of her schoolmates and landscapes of her beloved hills, suffered over trigonometry defeats, talked on the telephone for hours to Fidelity…and Christian.

      Her hands rested in her lap, but she felt them ball into fists. She hadn’t slept under this roof since her marriage. Even though she’d only been twenty when she married Bard, she had packed away her childhood and stored it in the attic of her unconscious.

      She remembered it, of course. If she had the need she could pull pieces of it from mental suitcases and trunks. When Callie asked, Julia told stories of growing up at Ashbourne, of the winter when she’d had the chicken pox and to cheer her Maisy had dressed up like Santa Claus to deliver Valentine candy nestled in a lavender-and-yellow Easter basket.

      She thought now that she had been a pensive child in a happy home. A quiet child in a home where nothing ever went unsaid. A secretive child in a home with no mysteries. No one here had belittled her or tried to change her. She had been accepted and loved, and though at times she had yearned for the more traditional households and parents of her friends, she had also realized just how lucky she was.

      Until the day her world turned upside down.

      Her reverie was broken by a knock at her door. “Come in,” she called too loudly, grateful to be interrupted.

      “I brought you some tea. I remember the way you liked it as a little girl.”

      She smiled in the direction of Jake’s voice. “You’re too good to me.” She heard his footsteps.

      “No one could ever be too good to you, Julia.” He set something, probably her cup, on the table beside her bed. “It’s our largest mug, about half full. I baked cookies last weekend, and there are two on the saucer beside it. Shall I put the mug in your hand?”

      “Please.” She extended her hand and closed it around warm pottery, probably one of Maisy’s projects. Maisy had gone through an unfortunate ceramics era, and the cupboards were still filled with lopsided mugs and plates that couldn’t survive the microwave.

      Jake waited until she was secure before he released it. “Two lumps of sugar and plenty of milk.”

      “I haven’t had it that way in years. What a treat.”

      The bed sagged. She could tell he was sitting at the foot now. “You’ve had quite a day.”

      She hadn’t thought of it for years, but now she remembered the many times Jake had come to her room as a teenager, making himself available if she wanted to talk, departing without comment if she didn’t. He never probed, never criticized. Jake had always simply been there. No real father could have been kinder.

      “Dr. Jeffers was threatening to have me committed if I didn’t agree to stay there on my own.”

      “Could he do that?”

      “I don’t know the law, something I’m sure he was counting on. I guess he thought that was his ace in the hole.”

      “Well, about now he’s playing fifty-two pickup, isn’t he?”

      “I couldn’t get better there. But maybe I won’t get better here, either.”

      “What would be the worst thing that could happen?”

      “I might never see again.”

      “Highly unlikely, but let’s say it’s possible. Then what?”

      “I learn to live with being blind.”

      “Could you?”

      “Would I have a choice?”

      “Only a very extreme one.”

      She realized he was talking about suicide. “This is terrible. Unthinkable. But I still have my life, my family. I’m not going to do anything foolish.” Tears filled her eyes. “Jake, what is Callie going to think of me?”

      He was quiet a moment. “I believe we’re about to find out.”

      She heard the pickup, too. “I don’t want her to see me crying.”

      “Drink some tea and wipe your eyes.”

      The tea tasted like childhood, like rainy afternoons and Black Stallion novels and the wind whistling through evergreen hedges. She had regained her composure, at least outwardly, by the time she heard the old heart of pine floors creaking with excitement.

      Then her door burst open. She felt Jake remove the cup from her hands, and she opened her arms wide just in time to catch her daughter’s soft body in a fierce bear hug. She pictured her as she held her.

      Callie Warwick had pigtails the color of butterscotch and brown eyes rimmed with thick black lashes. Like her mother she was small-boned and petite. Unlike Julia, she was spontaneous, open and unafraid to show her feelings.

      “Mommy!”

      Julia wondered if she would ever see her daughter’s sweet face again. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

      “Maisy came and got me. And she got Feather Foot, too. I mean she told Ramon to get her and bring her here so I can ride at Ashbourne. Isn’t that neat?”

      Feather Foot was Callie’s pony. At eight, like most local children, Callie was an accomplished rider. “Maisy is the world’s best grandma,” Julia said.

      Callie giggled. “We played hide-and-seek with Mrs. Taylor.”

      Julia imagined it was more like hide, then hide some more. She was sure that once Callie’s suitcases were packed, Maisy hadn’t wanted to run into Millcreek’s housekeeper.

      “Everything go okay, Maisy?” Julia lifted her face from Callie’s hair. She knew her mother was standing there by the scent of violets.

      “No problems at all. And we stopped by the stables to make arrangements to have Feather Foot loaded and delivered within the hour.”

      “Are we really going to stay here, Mommy?”

      Julia brushed Callie’s bangs back from her forehead. “Yes, we are. Maisy and Jake say they want to take care of us until my eyesight returns, but I think they just want more time with you.”

      “Is that true?” Callie said.

      “Your mommy’s too smart for words,” Maisy said. “She always was. I could tell you stories.”

      “And will if there’s even one moment of silence to give you a foothold,” Jake said.

      “Maisy said I can pick out any room I want upstairs. Do you want to help?” Callie was silent as Julia tried to think how to gently remind her that picking things out right now was a difficult task. “Oh, you can’t,” Callie said matter-of-factly. “I forgot.”

      Julia felt a weight lifting from her shoulders. She had nearly bought Bard’s warnings that her blindness would be an insurmountable hurdle for Callie.

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