“Adoption.” Kelli’s voice fell to a whisper. “No one wanted him except me.”
“I’m really sorry, Kelli.” Morgan held out her hands and was rewarded by Kelli grasping them tightly.
“Doesn’t make any difference now, does it? I lost the baby. And Mark’s going to be a paraplegic for the rest of his life.”
Morgan already knew Mark’s fate—her mother had told her yesterday—but sorrow in Kelli’s voice made fresh tears well up and spill into the bandages on her eyes.
“Why did this happen, Morgan? Why did someone set off a bomb and change all our lives?”
Morgan had no answers. She tugged Kelli out of the wheelchair and pulled her onto the bed with her. The friends wrapped their arms around each other and cried for what was gone and for what could never be again.
Morgan went home on Monday, five days after the bombing. She was both happy and scared about going home, away from the security of the nurses. Her dad took her on a tour of the house, with her holding his elbow as the therapist had trained her to do when she was being led. The trainer had given her one of the sticks used by blind people. She used it gingerly, halfheartedly, self-conscious about the red-tipped stick that announced she couldn’t see. Inside the house, her father insisted that she use it.
“This is just temporary,” he kept saying. “The bandages won’t be on forever.”
Weeks seemed like an eternity to Morgan at the moment.
“I picked up in every room,” Paige said, following along behind, then walking beside and finally in front of Morgan and Hal as they toured. “Nothing to trip you up, honey.”
Morgan made a complete circuit of the first floor and stopped at the stairs. “I don’t need help to get up to my room,” she said, grabbing hold of the banister and dropping her dad’s arm.
“Maybe you shouldn’t—”
“Mom … I can do this.” The therapist had been very clear with Morgan’s parents about allowing her to navigate her own path through the days of darkness and letting her choose what she felt comfortable doing. It wasn’t as if she’d been blind since birth. She had been part of the seeing world and would be again. All she needed were basics to help her through the short haul. “You and Dad have to go back to work.”
“Not right away.”
“We can hire a helper,” Hal said. “You don’t need to be alone.”
Morgan knew her parents were anxious to fence her in, keep her safe. She didn’t want to be afraid either, but when she’d been a kid learning how to ride a bike, she got back on it immediately no matter how many times she fell, no matter how many scrapes she received. “I know how to make a sandwich, get around the house, go to the bathroom by myself, wipe my backside—”
“No need to enumerate your skills,” Paige said, cutting Morgan off. “We get the message.”
Hal chuckled.
Morgan stepped onto the stairs she’d once crawled up as an infant, grasped the rail with both hands. By the time she reached the top, she’d figured out her pace, the width and height of each step. At the top she felt her way along the wall to her bedroom, opened the door and was rewarded by a familiar sense of comfort and belonging. Her parents followed behind her.
“Uh-oh,” Paige muttered.
Hal cleared his throat awkwardly.
“What’s happening?” Morgan asked.
“Um … I put up a banner and helium balloons to welcome you home, but …,” Paige said meekly.
“But I can’t see them.”
“A miscalculation,” Paige said contritely.
Morgan burst out laughing. She turned and opened her arms and the three of them stood hugging and laughing until they were weeping with the absurdity of a mother’s carefully planned homecoming for the daughter who could not see it.
Morgan woke that night to the sound of Trent whispering her name. She bolted upright in bed. “Trent?”
“None other.”
Incredulous, she asked, “How did you get in?”
“Climbed,” he said.
“To the second floor?” He’d never done that in the past. He’d always just tossed grit at her window until she opened it, then she’d meet him under their tree.
“Well, I can’t fly,” he said.
“But—but Dad put up storm windows. And Mom always locks them.”
“Must have forgotten this one. Hey, aren’t you glad I’m here?”
“Oh yes.” She opened her arms, still warm from being under her covers. She held him. “You’re cold as ice.”
“Yeah. Cold climb. Maybe I could get under the covers with you.”
Tempting. “Can I trust you?”
“Babe! You wound me. Of course you can trust me.”
She scooted over, but snuggling up to him proved difficult because it felt so strange to have him in her bed. “How are you doing?”
“Hanging in.”
“Sad about Mark, huh?”
Trent said nothing.
“Did you know Kelli was pregnant?”
Silence.
“Trent, talk to me. Tell me what you know.”
“He didn’t love her like I love you.”
He always knew the right thing to say and what she needed to hear. “When this is over, when my bandages come off and we go back to school, how will Mark and Kelli … I mean, how will they …?”
“Let’s not talk about them,” Trent said, his voice soft in her ear.
She didn’t really want to talk about them either. She wanted the warmth and comfort of Trent’s arms around her. She was afraid to ask him for too much physical contact because one thing could so easily lead to another, so she said, “If I fall asleep, please don’t let my parents catch you in my room with me.”
“It’s a promise.”
Her brain was growing fuzzy and sleep was coming for her. She hugged something close to her chest and with a start realized it was Bingo, the stuffed dog Roth had given her. His image unfolded in her mind’s eye. Roth, darkly dressed, full lips and amazing blue eyes, looking as if he wanted to kiss her. Guilt shot through her like a cannonball. What was wrong with her? How could she be lying under the covers with one boy while her memory was clinging to another?
“I’m bored.” Apocalypse stopped shooting fire bursts at the demons on the TV screen and tossed aside the game controller.
“Why? Because I’m winning?” Executioner asked.
“I’ve won ten rounds to your three,” Apocalypse said. “This is such baby stuff after setting off a real bomb.”
They were alone in the house, parents at work, nothing to do without school to attend. Outside, an early December storm had turned the world and landscape white with snow.
Executioner was bored too, having been visiting and gaming since early that morning. But also scared. It had been ten days since the bomb, and cops and FBI were sniffing around and checking out people all over town. The explosion was all anyone talked about. It had made national news shows, but the cameras and crews were gone now, so only the local stations were left to keep the story alive.
“They’re going to interview everybody who goes to Edison, you know,” Executioner said.
“So?”
“What if they want to interview us?”
Apocalypse gave Executioner a cold hard stare. “Don’t be such a girl. If you get hauled in, you lie. Got that? You do know how to lie, don’t you?”
Executioner colored under the other’s withering stare. “I’m just saying that maybe we should be doing something to make them ignore us and home in on somebody else. That way they’d never get to us.”
Apocalypse started to say something, stopped, gave Executioner a thoughtful look. “An intervention. That’s not a half-bad idea.”
Executioner almost fell over from the faint bit of praise. “I was thinking it over last night. Thought of a few names. Kids who get into trouble regularly.”
Apocalypse studied the ceiling. “It wouldn’t take much to turn the cops on to someone. They really want
to solve this and haul someone’s ass away.”
“Yeah. That’s just what I was thinking too.”
Apocalypse flashed an expression that said, I doubt it, but Executioner saw the wheels of mischief were turning in the other’s head. “We need a list.”
Executioner leaned back feeling pleased. Very pleased indeed.
Max put Roth to work in his shop just as soon as Roth grew too restless to stay put at home. He was bored and wanted to see Morgan again. She had invited him to come by her house, but he had stayed away, unsure if she had really meant the invitation and because he didn’t want to ruffle Paige’s feathers. She might not like Morgan associating with someone she was defending.
Paige had called once and asked to drop by to talk and update Max, Carla and Roth on the investigation. She arrived one evening in a cloud of snow, wrapped in fur.
“I like your coat,” Carla said, taking it from her and shaking off the wet snow.
“I know wearing fur offends some people, but it’s warm,” Paige said.
“Doesn’t offend me,” Carla said. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Max took her into the living room and offered her his favorite recliner. She chose the dining table, with the three of them sitting across from her. Roth got the message that this wasn’t a social call.
“How’s Morgan?” Roth asked at the first opportunity.
“She’s doing well. Thanks for asking.”
Roth wanted Morgan to be safe, and he didn’t want Paige to know his concern transcended casual interest.
“The police will call to question you,” Paige said, opening her briefcase and removing a file folder. “FBI, maybe.”
Roth read his name across the tab, swallowed hard, felt his palms grow damp.
“They’ll want you to come down to the station—their turf, their rules. Don’t go without contacting me. Don’t act belligerent; be cooperative, and don’t say anything unless I’m with you.”
“Why am I in trouble?” Roth wanted to know.
She flipped open the folder. “You have a little history of run-ins with the police.”
“Kid stuff,” Max said defensively. “He was never charged. I’d just go to the station and pick him up when the cops called. Nobody branded him as a bad kid, just a troubled one.”
“History is history.”
Roth slouched, grew pensive thinking about all the early trouble he caused for Max—petty stuff like fights, truancy, writing graffiti on walls. “I’ve been walking the line for four years. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
Paige glanced up at him. “Cops see what they want to see. Catching the bomber is a top priority. They’re going to look hard at you.”
Carla reached over and patted Roth’s hands, which were folded on the table. He wanted to pound the surface with his fists. “He’s going to graduate this year. And his grades are Bs and Cs.” She said it proudly and Roth wished she hadn’t. Paige had a daughter who never saw a C on her report statement and probably very few Bs.
Paige looked unimpressed and unfazed. “Plus you’re eighteen. An adult in the eyes of the law.”
“Can’t help that,” Roth said.
“And you ran into the school building.”
“Well, doesn’t that seem suspicious,” Max barked.
“He’s a hero,” Carla protested.
“I think he is too. He saved my daughter. She would have died if he hadn’t acted the way he did,” Paige said, “but everything is under scrutiny.”
Roth felt color creep up his neck. “They’re prejudiced. I don’t look like an all-American boy to them, do I?” He pushed up his long-sleeved shirt, exposing the tats on his wrist and forearm, a colorful, fiery dragon that twisted its ascent all the way to his shoulder.
“I own an ink shop,” Max interjected. “I do body art. It’s logical he’d have some tats.”
Paige closed the folder, looked straight into Roth’s eyes. “I’m your attorney, Roth. I believe you. But I must also defend you. Is there anything you’re holding back? Anything I need to know?”
His heart skipped a few beats and his insides turned watery. “Like what?”
“You tell me. Once we get into that interrogation room, I don’t want any surprises coming from the police.”
There was his fireworks prank. Few people knew about it, though—Liza, because he’d told her, and Morgan, because she’d figured it out. His heart sank. No telling if Morgan might spill the beans to her mother. For a moment he almost confessed, but something turned inside of him. The information would only make him look more guilty. He met her gaze. “Nothing I can think of right now.” A lie, but for the time being, it was his secret to keep.
Roth took to driving by Morgan’s house, the desire to see her growing more intense as the days pushed closer to Christmas. Her house sat far back on a sloping lawn studded with trees in a wealthier Grandville neighborhood. Just days before Christmas, with snow a foot deep and the sun sparkling off the pristine whiteness, he slowed his truck to a crawl as he passed the large piece of property. And that was when he saw her. She stood under a massive tree gesturing with her hands into what seemed like empty air. He braked and stared.
The tree was leafless, its bare branches stretching high into bright blue sky. He saw Morgan quite clearly. She looked to be talking and gesturing into thin air. Chills went up his spine. What the heck was she doing? He watched for a few minutes, but when she turned toward the house, he put his truck into gear and turned into the long driveway. His tires crunched over the salt and sand used to clear the most recent snowfall.
Morgan held the red-tipped stick in front of her, moving it expertly from side to side. She made the front porch before she heard his tires. “Who’s there?” she called out.
Roth shut off the engine and climbed out of his truck. “Roth,” he answered. “I was out doing stuff and thought I’d come by and say hi.”
She wore sunglasses over her bandaged eyes, and it was obvious that he’d caught her off guard. “Oh. Hello.”
He bounded onto the porch and fought an urge to pity her in her blindness. Her cheeks were red with the cold and she looked vulnerable, not at all like the self-confident girl he’d known at school. “It’s cold out here. Maybe we should go inside.”
“Well, I … I mean, nobody’s home except me.” A dumb thing to announce, she thought, but his unplanned arrival had thrown her off balance.
“Then I’ll leave.”
She caught his arm. “No. Don’t go. Come in and I’ll fix us some hot chocolate.”
“Sounds good to me.”
She surprised herself with the invitation, but in all honesty she craved the company.
He followed her inside her house, down a hallway of dark wood floors, past rooms of understated fine furniture and into an industrial-style kitchen with gleaming appliances. He thought how much Carla would like a house like this.
“Sit,” Morgan said, motioning toward a table. She knew every inch of the house after spending two weeks alone inside and getting acquainted with it via her other senses. Sounds bounced around her with a quality that offered direction; smells were intensified, leading her like invisible fingers; touch helped her to appreciate the house’s walls, curves, textures.
Roth sat, fighting the urge to offer help. He figured she wouldn’t have asked to make hot chocolate if she couldn’t do it. “How are you doing?” he asked while she worked.
“I’m getting the bandages off next week, two days before Christmas. Can’t wait.”
“All right,” he said with a grin she couldn’t see.
“How about you? Your hands healed?”
“They’re fine. A few wicked scars, though. Makes me look tough.”
She mused, “I’ve always thought you looked tough.”
“Yeah, big bad Roth.” He watched her move around the kitchen with confidence. Everything in the cupboards and silverware drawers and on the pots-and-pans shelves had a proper place and her hands were sure a
nd quick. She fumbled very little and in minutes had measured out two cups of milk with a special measuring device into a pot on the stove. She sprinkled in powdered chocolate with a set of measuring spoons and stirred the concoction, held a hand over the pot every so often until she was satisfied with the temperature, then poured the mixture into two ceramic cups. She didn’t spill a drop. “I’m impressed,” he said as she carried the cups to the table. He took one; she set the other down and pulled out a chair for herself.
Her accomplishment impressed her too. She’d never performed a ritual for anyone except her parents, and having Roth materialize so suddenly had unnerved her. How much had he seen and overheard? “Hours of practice,” she said. “Not much else to do until the bandages come off. I still have Christmas shopping to do. Kelli and I are going to the mall after my eye doctor appointment. Girls’ day out.” Her friend wasn’t over losing the baby or Mark’s terrible injury.
Roth had always taken his sight for granted. Most people did. “What are you looking forward to most?”
“Reading. Plus I’m getting a car for Christmas.” She smiled, absolute glee on her face.
“Awesome.”
“I know it’s because Mom and Dad feel so sorry for me. I haven’t whined, haven’t complained,” she added, “but I don’t want to discourage them either. I’d love my own car!”
“Wheels mean freedom,” Roth said in agreement.
Trent would love for Morgan to have a car of her own too. He’d told her so just that morning. Just as soon as that thought came to her, Morgan was swamped with guilt. If she cared so much about Trent, then why was she enjoying Roth’s visit so much?
Roth watched the change in her demeanor from across the table. Was it something he’d said?
She put her hands around her cup, brought it up to her mouth and took a sip.
Roth saw the pearl ring Trent had given her on her finger. He didn’t know how to ask her about Trent. He thought back to the scene he’d watched as she had stood under the tree. She’d appeared like an actress speaking lines, rehearsing a play for an invisible audience. It troubled him. “Hey, it’s getting late. My uncle will be wondering where I am. I’m helping in his shop while we’re out of school.” He stood and she scrambled up too.
Red Heart Tattoo Page 9
