Craving Lily

by Nicole Jacquelyn

  I walked slowly, taking in everything. So much was the same, and so much was different. My mom had repainted the downstairs so many times that there was probably an inch of paint on the walls, but the last time she’d gone with a pale blue, almost green. It looked good. She’d done a good job. There were new photos on the walls. Mom hung them up constantly, but I didn’t let myself look at them. Not yet. I didn’t want to see how people had changed in photographs.

  When I got to the kitchen, I completely froze. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe.

  My parents were standing near the stove with their backs to me. Mom was stirring something and Dad was whispering in her ear, making her chuckle. She was wearing a purple robe that I’d never seen before and her hair was in curlers. She had a freckle at the nape of her neck. I’d never noticed that freckle before. I wouldn’t have cared about it before.

  Dad’s hair was short, like he’d recently shaved it with a pair of clippers, and his jaw was scruffy with a mixture of grey and black hair. He was wearing a bright white t-shirt that I remembered wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  “What’s up, Lilybug?” He turned toward me. “You’re up early.”

  His eyes met mine, and things went blurry for a minute as tears filled my eyes. I took a step forward without even thinking about it. Then another one, and another.

  “Farrah,” he said, in a tone I’d never heard before.

  He took a step toward me and I choked out a laugh, staring at his face. “You got old,” I whispered, my eyes widening. He had wrinkles where there hadn’t been any before. Little lines that spread out from the corners of his eyes and between his brows. The grooves on the sides of his mouth were even deeper than they’d been before, like he’d been smiling so much that they’d finally just decided to take up permanent residence there.

  “Lily?” he asked in confusion, his eyes welling up. “Baby, can you see me?”

  “Yeah.” The word came out as a sob, and suddenly I was pulled against his chest, his arms so tight around me that I could barely breathe.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered, kissing my head over and over. “Oh, God. Finally.”

  He pulled back and I laughed a little as he reached up and absently wiped the wet from his cheeks.

  “Give her to me,” my mom demanded, making him take a step back.

  Mom and I both froze as we stared at each other.

  “If you tell me I look old, I’ll shave off your eyebrows while you sleep,” she said hoarsely, making me smile.

  She didn’t look old at all. Her eyes had some fine lines similar to my dad’s, but otherwise she looked just like I remembered her. The skin of her cheeks and around her mouth were smooth and pale, her hair still the exact shade of blonde that it had always been.

  “You look beautiful,” I said honestly, my nose stinging as I tried to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “I’ve taught you well,” she replied, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and kissing the side of my face. “Smart girl.”

  “Holy hell,” my dad murmured, wrapping us both up.

  “When did it come back?” Mom whispered.

  “I’ve been seeing light for a while,” I answered, laying my head on her shoulder as we continued to stand in our little huddle in the middle of the kitchen. “But I could see everything when I woke up this morning.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Mom asked, squeezing me tighter until little arms started pushing in between us.

  “What’re you guys doing?” my five-year-old sister asked, trying to work her way into the middle of us. “I want a hug!”

  My parents pulled back so she could wiggle her way inside our huddle, and the minute I saw the top of her dark head, I fell to my knees.

  My baby sister was beautiful. When I’d lost my sight, my mom had been pregnant with Charlie. I could map out her chubby cheeks and sturdy arms and legs in my sleep, but I’d never actually seen her. Her eyes widened as I reached up and gripped both sides of her head with my hands.

  “Oh, my God,” I whispered.

  She looked just like me. We had the same eyes and the same hair, and even though her skin was lighter than mine, she had our dad’s olive skin tone.

  “What’s goin’ on?” she asked, trying to pull away. “Quit it, sissy!”

  I dropped my hands and sat back on my feet as she pulled away from me, pushing her hair back from her face in a dramatic show of irritation. She looked just like my mom when she did that.

  “I can see you,” I told her.

  “No, you can’t,” she replied, sticking her tongue out. “You’re blind.”

  Her words were so matter of fact that my mom and dad both gave watery snickers.

  “Not anymore,” I said with a shake of my head.

  “Uh-huh! What am I doing, then?” she asked with her tongue hanging halfway out of her mouth.

  “You’re sticking out your tongue,” I answered. “And you look like a llama.”

  “I do not!” She stared at me for a long time, then turned and glanced at me over her shoulder. “What am I doing now?” she asked as she shook her little booty.

  “Shaking your butt at me,” I replied, laughing as I swatted her. “Knock it off, weirdo.”

  “You can see?” she asked, turning back slowly, her eyes wide.

  “Yeah,” I whispered, raising my eyebrows as I smiled huge. “How cool is that?”

  “So cool!” she screamed, launching herself at me.

  We hit the floor with a clatter, and I laughed hysterically as she bounced up and down on my stomach.

  “Look! I got a scrape on my elbow and I have a scar right here!” she said, as she pulled her knee up for my inspection.

  “Whoa, cool scar,” I said, watching her face as different expressions flittered across it.

  “Did you know I got a purple skateboard? Curtis and Draco got boring black ones, but mine is purple ’cause Cam painted it just for me!”

  “Of course he did,” I said hoarsely. “ ’Cause who wants a plain black one?”

  “Right? Mine’s way better!”

  “You guys want some breakfast?” my mom asked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. “I’m making pancakes.”

  “Mom’s pancakes are always shaped weird,” Charlie said under her breath. “But they taste the same as Dad’s.”

  “Good to know,” I whispered back, helping her up off the floor.

  As I stood up, my eyes automatically went to the sliding glass door leading to our back yard, and my breath caught. I didn’t even realize I was moving toward it until my dad came up next to me and put his arms around my shoulders.

  “We changed it,” he said quietly.

  “I see that.”

  “Put in that fountain. Got rid of the horseshoe pit, since I hated that fucking thing anyway.”

  “The picnic tables are gone,” I murmured, leaning against him.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Needed space for the trampoline.”

  “And the flowers.”

  “Yeah, and the flowers. Amy helped with that.”

  “They look good,” I said, tilting my head back to look at his face. “You guys did a good job.” I’d known, of course, when they’d made changes. It was hard to avoid that kind of commotion when you were living in close proximity. However, seeing the differences somehow made them real.

  “You think?” he asked, meeting my eyes before staring out at the yard again.

  “Yeah. It doesn’t even look like the same yard.”

  “That was the idea.” He sighed and pulled me tighter against him.

  “Food’s ready,” my mom announced. “Quit looking back there. It’s morbid.”

  I snorted and took one last look around the backyard where so many things had changed for us. It didn’t even look like the place we’d lost my grandpa, grandma, great gram, and cousin Micky.

  Charlie scrambled into her seat at the table and without thought, I sat in the chair next to her while my parents
grabbed the food and drinks. There were a lot of things around the house that I helped out with, but we’d learned early on that bringing food to the table wasn’t one of my strong suits unless I was doing it all by myself. When there was another person helping me, it turned into chaos as we tried to move around each other without colliding.

  Just as I realized my mistake and started to stand up again, my dad came in behind me.

  “I can help—”

  “Orange juice at your 11:30,” my dad said at the same time.

  We both went silent for a moment.

  “Whoops,” he said quietly, kissing the top of my head. “It’ll take some getting used to.”

  I nodded around the lump in my throat and glanced around the table.

  “I should probably start calling people,” my mom said, smiling as she sat down across from me. “Or do you want to break the news? We could have some people over, or maybe go to the club? We should celebrate.”

  “Uh,” I stuttered out. “No.”

  Mom’s eyebrows rose.

  “Can we just… not?”

  “You don’t want to tell anyone?” my dad asked incredulously. “That’s not gonna work.”

  “No, I just don’t want a party,” I mumbled, the thought filling me with mortification. “We can call people, but I’d like to talk to Cam and Ceecee first. And Rose should know, too. Then we can spread the word.”

  “Oh,” Mom said softly, disappointment coloring her voice. “Sure. That makes sense.”

  The rest of breakfast was mostly silent as we tried to figure out our new normal. I was sure that my parents were filled with just as many questions as I was about how our lives were about to change once again. I could suddenly do so many normal things that I hadn’t been able to before. I was seventeen. Most seventeen-year-old girls could drive. They went on dates. They had more responsibilities than I did, and weren’t connected at the shoulder with their cousins every day of their lives.

  After my parents went upstairs, Charlie helped me clean up the kitchen, and I realized just how odd it was to have my sight again when I reached down to turn on the dishwasher and couldn’t remember which buttons to push. I glanced at my sister uncomfortably as she hung a dishtowel on the fridge, then quickly closed my eyes and felt my way to the correct buttons. Leaving my fingers where they were, I opened my eyes and took a mental note of the ones I’d pushed so I could remember them for later.

  It was fine, I told myself. Growing pains.

  “Come see my room,” Charlie ordered, grabbing my hand with her tiny one.

  “I’ve been in your room,” I reminded her as she led me upstairs. “About a million times.”

  “But you haven’t seen my dolls,” she replied stubbornly.

  “Hold up,” I said as we reached her bedroom door. “Go in and get your dolls, I’ll be there in just a second.”

  I left her in her room and walked down to the hallway to my parents’ bedroom door. I felt bad that I’d told my mom that she couldn’t call anyone, since I knew she was dying to tell my Aunt Callie the good news. Just as I raised my hand to knock, though, I heard their voices.

  “Calm down, Ladybug,” my dad soothed over the sound of quiet sobs.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Mom replied, sniffling. “Do we act like it’s no big deal? It is a big deal. Oh, my God, Cody.”

  “Act however you wanna act, baby.”

  “But I don’t want to freak her out,” she sobbed. “I don’t want her to think that it’s been this horrible life because she was blind. What if we act really happy and she thinks that? What if we act really happy and then it comes back? It would be so much worse for her!”

  “It’s not gonna come back.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “And I don’t think that anything we’re gonna do now will make it better or worse for her if it does come back,” my dad continued. “She’s gonna have to deal with that shit all over again, either way.”

  “Why now?” she asked, her voice so quiet I could barely hear her. “Why after all these years? The doctors said that therapy would help. It didn’t. They said a calm environment would help. It didn’t. They thought it would’ve been gone within weeks!”

  That was news to me. The doctors and my parents hadn’t told me a word about when they expected my blindness to disappear. I’d only ever heard vague promises that someday I would be able to see again and that there were no medical issues preventing me from regaining my sight.

  “Who the fuck knows,” my dad said calmly. “And who the fuck cares?”

  “I care! I want to know why! I want to know why it took so long if it came back so goddamn easy!”

  I stepped away from the door as my mom’s angry words broke at the end.

  The conversation wasn’t meant for me. It was private between the two of them. I knew that. But even if they had been speaking directly to me, I had no answers to give them.

  I’d been afraid of everything for a long time after the attack. Every little noise made me shudder in fear. A slammed door or the sound of a car driving down our gravel road had put me into a panic. I’d had nightmares and paranoia and I’d wet the bed. But all of those things had been gone for years. It made no sense that it had taken so long for me to see.

  “Are you coming?” Charlie asked impatiently, sticking her head out her bedroom door.

  I nodded and went into her room, smiling as I realized that my mom had painted it in a rainbow of colors, like she hadn’t been able to choose which one she liked best.

  * * *

  “What’s so important?” Rose asked later that day as she rushed into my room. “I know you haven’t done anything but sit at home since I saw you like twelve hours ago.”

  I smiled and turned toward her, coming to a stop when I got a look at her face. My cousin was gorgeous. Really gorgeous. Like a woman who did makeup ads or something. She was curvy, which I’d already known, but her face reminded me of that saying, “The face that launched a thousand ships,” or whatever. She was striking. She had large brown eyes, thick eyebrows that were perfectly manicured, high cheekbones, and one of the poutiest mouths I’d ever seen in my life.

  “What?” she asked in irritation. Then her eyes widened so much they looked like they were going to fall out of her head. “You can fucking see me!”

  “Surprise,” I said, laughing uncomfortably.

  “What the fuck?” she squealed, launching herself forward so quickly, she practically tackled me onto the bed. “When did that happen? Oh, my God!”

  “This morning,” I said, wrapping my arms around her as she squeezed my waist. “I just woke up and it was there.”

  “You just opened your eyes, thinking, ‘I might as well just keep them closed,’ and suddenly you could see everything?” she asked in awe. “Jesus, that must have been a shock.”

  “I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” I answered honestly.

  “I bet.” She let go of me and fell onto my bed. “Tell me everything.”

  “Nothing much to tell,” I replied, closing my bedroom door. “My parents are pretty freaked out, though.”

  “Well, yeah,” she muttered. “Have you told your brother and sister?”

  “They were the first calls we made.”

  “Hey!”

  “Well, I wanted to tell you in person,” I said, dropping down next to her. “I told my mom that she could call your mom as soon as you were here—so she didn’t accidentally spill the beans.”

  “Oh, shit. She was on the phone the minute I walked through the door,” Rose joked.

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “This is so crazy.”

  “I know.” I sighed.

  “I can’t pick my nose whenever I want anymore. That’s going to take some getting used to.”

  “But, hey, you also don’t have to lead me around like a goat anymore.”

  “A goat?”

  “Do you have a different animal choice?”

  “Lamb?�
��

  “Fine, a lamb, then.”

  Rose smiled softly and lay down on her side, resting her head on her bent elbow. “I didn’t mind.”

  “I know.” I lay down next to her, my body a mirror of hers. “Thank you.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Whatever.”

  We both grinned. Rose had perfectly straight teeth, and her smile was so wide I could see most of them.

  “You can do your own makeup, now.”

  “I wouldn’t even know how,” I replied. “Plus, my depth perception is a little off. I can’t imagine how bad it’ll be with a mirror.”

  “Wait,” Rose said, dragging out the word. “You haven’t looked in a mirror yet?”

  I threw my arm over my face and shook my head, embarrassed. I didn’t want to admit that I was too afraid. I knew that there was nothing wrong with my face. I’d felt every millimeter of it with my hands at some point. But knowing that there was nothing wrong with it didn’t calm the fear that I’d look at myself and not recognize the stranger staring back at me. The last time I’d looked in a mirror, I was eleven years old.

  “Get up, you wuss,” Rose ordered, reading my mind. “It’s not like you’re a hideous beast.”

  “Thanks,” I groaned as she pulled me to my feet. “That’s reassuring.”

  She dragged me into the bathroom and shoved me in front of the sink with little fanfare.

  “See? Beautiful.”

  I clenched my jaw as my brown eyes watered. I looked almost the same as I had before. Thank God. My cheeks had lost the baby fat they’d had before, making my cheekbones more prominent, and the little bit of a unibrow I’d had was plucked away, but beyond that, I looked like… me.

  Chapter 7

  Leo

  After a week and a half on the road meeting up with some contacts and protecting a shipment into Montana, I was ready for beer and a bed. Even when things went smoothly, going on those runs was exhausting. Some of the guys lived for it, loved getting away from the daily grind and their wives for a bit, but it had never been like that for me. I loved being on my bike and planned on doing it every day for the rest of my life, but the human part of the runs wore me the fuck out. Talking to people and making nice wasn’t my strong suit.