by Julie Miller
She had to go. She had to…
“Ma, you there?”
She froze in her tracks when she came face-to-face with the man braced in the archway where the living and dining rooms joined.
Mac Taylor.
As tall and lean as she remembered. The broad shoulders and endless stretch of legs beneath the gray sweatshirt and faded jeans were the same. The long, dextrous fingers still fascinated her. But the lack of meat on his angular frame gave him a hard edge. And the tight slice of his mouth across the golden scrub of a beard indicated he was angry.
She’d never seen him angry before.
“Ma?”
“I’m here, son.” The fatigue in Martha’s voice distracted Julia’s attention for a moment. Like her own mother, Martha would be in her early sixties. But the heartbreak that suddenly creased her face made her seem years older.
“Who’s with you?” Julia turned back at Mac’s demand.
Time and injury hadn’t been kind to her childhood hero. His sandy blond hair had lost its burnished lustre. All trace of curl had been cut away, leaving it a short, spiky length. Jagged streaks of newly healed, baby-pink skin branched out over his left cheek and across his forehead in an intricate web of fresh scars.
But it was his eyes that held her captive.
Beneath the cut that bisected his eyebrow, a tiny white blemish blotted the symmetry of pupil and iris in his left eye. And the right looked through her, past her, without seeing her.
He was blind.
Those cool chips of granite, once silver behind the gold of his glasses, that she’d fantasized about through her teenage years, were blind.
Her fears scattered as shock rendered her silent. Her lips worked to mouth the question, Why?
“Ma? Who’s with you?” he repeated.
Tears of sorrow, and maybe even pity for all he had lost, stung her eyes.
Martha shrugged off her son’s harsh tone. “Barbara Dalton.”
He tipped his face up, sniffing the air with an almost feral focus. “Who else?”
Julia blinked back the moisture in her own eyes, sensing sympathy would not be appreciated. “It’s Jules, Mac. Julia Dalton.”
“Son of a bitch.” His face flushed with emotion, and he whipped around. His shoulder banged into the archway, knocking a picture crooked on the wall. A string of succinct, damning curses accompanied him as he stormed back through the house.
“MacKinley Taylor!” Martha dashed through the archway, scolding after him. “She’s a nurse, son, she can help—” A door slammed, cutting her off, leaving Julia and her mother standing in shocked silence.
Several moments later, Martha returned. The strain on her face aged her even more. “I’m afraid I brought you here under false pretenses.” She rolled her gaze heavenward and clenched her mouth in an effort to stem her tears. “Of all my children, that one was never a bit of trouble. Never once gave me cause for concern. And now, when he does need me, he won’t let me help.”
“He needs bandages on those eyes.” The practical professional inside her kicked in. But decades-old friendship softened her scold to a gentle reprimand. “The damage to that tissue is recent enough that it could still breed infection. At the very least he should wear dark glasses. The light must be killing him.”
Martha went to the picture on the wall and straightened it. “I almost think he enjoys it. The pain, I mean.”
With an instinctive empathy, Julia knelt down to retrieve the wadded newspaper pages from beneath the coffee table. “Why would he punish himself that way?”
“I think he feels responsible for the accident.”
Julia straightened, hating her natural curiosity and abundant concern. Why couldn’t she just let things go? “What happened?”
Martha’s back seemed to creak with the effort of bending down and picking up a pillow that was half a room away from the chair to which it belonged. “There was an explosion at the lab where he worked. He suffered chemical burns, shrapnel wounds.” The hopelessness in Martha’s voice tore at Julia’s heart. Then her voice brightened a bit with a shallow smile. “There’s a chance the blindness isn’t permanent. He nearly lost one eye. It’s damaged beyond repair. But his right eye can be retested once he’s healed. He may be eligible for a lens transplant. If the eye’s strong enough. But he’s so stubborn. He’s so…defeated.”
Julia shoved the newspapers into the trash can beside the desk, turning away from her mother who was hurrying to Martha and sweeping her into a comforting hug. She tried to remain clinical. “Transplant operations are fairly common, and generally quite successful. Partial or complete sight is restored, and the postoperative healing process isn’t too traumatic.”
“Don’t quote me facts.” Unfocused anger replaced the quaver of tears in Martha’s voice. “The success of the operation makes no difference if he won’t take care of himself! Look how he lives. Half the time he hides out in his room behind a locked door. He crashes around this house without regard for his safety, and has a temper tantrum whenever someone tries to help. He’s chased off three nurses already.” The anger receded behind a plea from the heart of a desperate mother. “You’re my final hope. Please. As a favor for old times’ sake?”
Julia clutched the straps of her black leather pack and squeezed until her knuckles turned white. She eyed her mother, whose arm draped in support and protection around Martha’s shoulders. Why hadn’t her mother done the same for her?
She choked back the traitorous thought. She hadn’t told her mother about Chicago. About that humiliating morning in Anthony’s office. She’d simply shown up on her parents’ doorstep last Saturday morning, a welcome, though unexplained, surprise. She’d resigned from her job at the hospital, closed up her apartment and headed for home. She needed time to think. Time to heal. Time to be safe.
She shook her head and, palm raised as though warding off the threat of danger, backed toward the door. “I can’t handle a serious case right now. I’m sorry Mac’s in trouble. I’m sorry for your whole family. But I can’t do this.”
Julia spun around and shot out the front door into the crisp autumn air, anxious to escape the pressure, the disappointment, the guilt. Halfway down the front walk to her car, she heard the door shut behind her.
“I didn’t raise a quitter.”
Julia halted at the sound of her mother’s voice. On a deep breath, she turned and pleaded with those eyes, part gold, part green, just like her own. “Someone else can help Mac. There must be hundreds, thousands, of qualified nurses in the Kansas City area. Reliable, tough—”
“I’m not talking about Mac.”
A bit of the concern she’d seen etched in Martha’s face now lined her mother’s. “What do you mean?”
Barbara closed the distance between mother and daughter. Physically, and emotionally. “I’ve never seen my little girl tuck her tail between her legs and run home to hide before.”
Julia held her tongue, not knowing what to say. She’d tried to be cheerful, talk of good times, help around the house. But she could see now that she hadn’t fooled her mother for one instant. “I’m sorry if I worried you. I didn’t mean to.”
Barbara smiled. “I’m a mom. Even after thirty years, it goes with the territory.” She reached out and brushed one of the short curls that crowned Julia’s head off her face. “I don’t know what happened to you in Chicago, but I’m sorry it hurt you. You are always welcome at home, and I am always ready to listen, if you decide you need to talk. But, in the meantime, I think you should do something. Keep busy, don’t just brood.”
Julia clasped her mother’s hand and squeezed it tight. “I love you for your concern, but I don’t think this is the right thing for me to do.” She looked up to the house, seeing it as a distant symbol of lost hope and shattered dreams. “He needs so much. And I don’t just mean nursing care. I don’t think I have it in me to give him enough of anything right now.”
The answering silence brought Julia’s attention back t
o her mother’s face. Those hazel eyes looked sad in the grim expression Barbara wore. “Martha Taylor has been my friend longer than you’ve been alive. You and her son Cole were classmates and good friends for many years. That family’s in desperate trouble now.” Julia sighed right along with her mother. “I won’t insist on anything that would put you or your feelings in danger. I just want you to remember that, sometimes, giving is what enables us to move beyond the fear or sorrow, and allows us to find a way to heal ourselves.”
Julia rolled her eyes heavenward, seeking the strength that seemed to have abandoned her. Growing up hadn’t been easy for her mother. But that life experience had given her a wisdom and insight that had surprised her daughter more than once. Maybe she did know something about healing the spirit, about mending a shattered self-image, about piecing together the will to move forward with her life. She looked at her mother, wanting to believe in that wisdom.
“I don’t remember you being this philosophical, Mom.”
“I don’t remember seeing you in this much pain.”
Julia considered the importance of family and friendship, of loyalty and love. She weighed the value of her actions in Chicago and what they had revealed about her true character. Her instincts had failed her, and she’d been too stubborn to listen to common sense. She had fallen short of her parents’ expectations of her, far short of her own expectations for herself.
Maybe she owed them a bit of penance until she could figure out how to make things right again.
If only she wasn’t so afraid of making things worse.
But Barbara Dalton hadn’t raised a quitter.
“All right.” She stepped forward and wrapped up her mom in a hug. The tight embrace around her own shoulders might be the only strength she’d have to sustain her through this. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours. We’ll see how it goes. But you and Martha need to be looking for a backup plan.”
She felt the tension in her mother relax. “Thank you, Jule.”
Embarrassed by the simple gratitude, Julia separated and trudged up to the door. “Twenty-four hours,” she reminded her.
To do a favor for an old family friend?
Or to survive a sentence from hell?
MAC WAITED A GOOD ten minutes after his mother’s goodbye before leaving the sanctuary-slash-prison of his bedroom. At least he thought it was ten minutes. His internal clock seemed to have gone haywire in the same instant the toxic flames and lacerations scarred his throat and tore the sight from his eyes.
Ten minutes. Five. Twenty.
What did time matter to a man who served no useful purpose?
The dull ache behind his left eye was a constant reminder of all he had lost. And no amount of scientific or medical training could bring back the competency of a man who had lived by his senses, his powers of observation, his ability to see something once and identify its attributes. He was a man of science, a man of thought and reason. He’d never worried about how to get from point A to point B. How to find the toilet across the hall. How to pick out socks that wouldn’t clash with his jeans.
He’d never thought about living without his sight.
Mac swung his bare feet off the edge of the bed and slipped into the beaten loafers that had become his uniform of late. He inhaled a deep, fortifying breath and stood, steadying himself by grabbing on to the headboard. He waited for the waves of dizziness to pass, knowing damn well these vertigo attacks were a result of panic and disorientation, and had no bona fide physical cause.
Only when his shadowed world stopped spinning did he move. Three steps from the bed to the dresser. He trailed his fingertips along the scarred oak top, sticking a moment where the old varnish had pooled, sliding past the spot where there was no varnish at all. His hand hit a smooth, hard object and glass clinked against glass.
Tempting defeat, he turned his hand, lifted the glass to his nose and sniffed. Nothing. Plain water. Maybe the other…
His stomach rumbled in protest at the lone leftover doughnut he had scrounged for breakfast. Despite his abysmal welcome, he hoped against hope that his mother had left a sandwich for him to eat. Restoring the clutter on his dresser, he reached for the door.
Two steps more across the hall to the bathroom. He followed the wall until he hit the dining room. Then he was in no-man’s-land as he buffeted from chair to wall to sideboard. When he stubbed his toe on the break in the carpet beneath the archway, he knew he’d reached the living room.
He clutched at the molding that framed the arch and paused to get his bearings. He needed to learn the number of steps into the kitchen, or move the bookshelves and recliner so he could simply follow the perimeter of the wall without breaking his foot, his face, or any of those knick-knacks his mother had entrusted to him over the years.
As if thoughts of his mother triggered the response, guilt reared its ugly head. He’d never realized how much temper simmered inside him. He’d always prided himself on maintaining an even emotional keel. But since the explosion, he’d learned he could be a beast. Reactive. Out-of-control. And his mother, meddling saint who had raised six boys and one girl under her roof, didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his sour moods. Once he had some food in his stomach, he’d call home and apologize.
And make Ma promise not to spring any more surprises on him.
Feeling even that small bit of mastery over his life once more, Mac extended his arms as feelers and braved the booby-trapped path to the kitchen.
One step. Two steps. He butted his shin against the recliner and stopped, rotating his arm like a compass needle in his search for the clear path. His outstretched fingers hit the floor lamp and knocked it at a tilt. He caught it and straightened the shade, experiencing a silly little rush of triumph that he hadn’t destroyed it. With a trace of positive energy whispering through him for a change, he moved with more confidence, stepping to the left to avoid the obstacle.
He plowed into something warm and soft and solid, with two hands that latched on to his wrist and elbow to catch him from recoiling backward.
“Mac?”
He wrenched his arm away from the firm grip and smacked the lamp with his fist, sending it crashing to the floor.
Jules.
“I thought I told you to leave.” The condemnation in his scarred voice sounded harsh, even to his own ears.
“You never got around to that. You were rude to your mother, and then you stormed out.”
The teasing retort came from below, and he realized she had squatted down to pick up the lamp. “Bent, but not broken.” Her voice sounded nearer. Had she stood? “No wonder it looks like a demolition derby in here. Didn’t you get a cane to walk with?”
“I don’t need a cane.”
“Right.” Her clear, low-pitched voice danced with a smug humor. “It would be easier to just rent a bulldozer and trash the whole place in one fell swoop, instead of wrecking one little corner at a time.”
A flood of indignation surged through him. How dare she joke at his expense! Did she have any idea how embarrassing it was to flounder around his own home like a fish out of water? He couldn’t even hold a decent argument with her, not knowing whether he was talking to her face or her belly button.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Helping out a friend.”
Right in front of him. Mac turned his scarred visage on her. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“I was talking about your mother. She needed my help.”
Ouch. An appropriate comeback escaped him. Jules had been one of the neighborhood kids. Hanging out at his dad’s shop or in the rooms upstairs they called home. Of all those adolescent interlopers who interrupted his work and study time, she had been…which one? He thought his way through the maze of comings and goings that had been a part of their everyday lives back on Market Street.
It had been useless to try to concentrate on his books when Cole and his buddies descended upon them. They’d gather around the kitchen table and raid t
he fridge and play cards, or perch in the living room to watch sitcoms on TV. Accepted as one of the guys, Jules had always been at the center of their laughter.
Her sassy wit hadn’t dulled over the years.
Mac wondered if anything else about her remained the same.
But he filed away his curiosity to return to later. A more pressing question needed to be answered as a fist of concern gripped his heart. “Is Ma holding up okay?”
A faint rustling sound answered him. “If dark circles under her eyes and new wrinkles beside her mouth are normal, then, yes, I’d say she’s doing fine.” That tart voice was a shade more distant. She’d moved.
“I owe her an apology.”
“Probably.” The gentle agreement nicked at his conscience. He owed Jules an apology, too. But she never gave him a chance to organize those thoughts. “If you take half a step to the left, your path is clear to the kitchen.” Like a beacon, her concise directions called to him from a distance. She must have gone into the kitchen herself.
Not yet trusting that the edge of a rug or leg of a chair wouldn’t leap into his path, Mac stood rooted to the spot.
In an effort to form an image of what she looked like now, he tried again to picture the Jules he’d once known. Having graduated in Cole’s class, she’d be seven years his junior. “Braces. Freckles.” He tapped the memories out loud. He’d watched a couple of coed league games one summer to support his brother. “You played second base. Killer arm. Shag hitter, always made contact with the ball.”
He could remember details of a fifteen-year-old softball season, but couldn’t remember the layout of his own house. Frustration made his damaged voice tight. “So what have you been doing all this time, playing for the majors?”
Her voice returned to the living room. “Nah, I got cut last week. Right after the braces came off.” The husky music of her laughter defused the tension that had paralyzed him. “You coming?”
He heard the rustling sound again. Then the clank of pots from the broiler pan beneath the oven. She’d abandoned him once more.
A trace of scent lingered in the air. Something crisp and fresh, like autumn air and sunshine. With arms outstretched, he followed that scent into the kitchen. Just as she had promised, there’d been nothing in his path to stumble over.
