Читать книгу Sleep with the Lights On - Maggie Shayne - Страница 9

2

A cop came to the hospital to take my statement. It wasn’t Detective Brown, though.

My imagination and sixth sense had joined forces and decided to visualize Mason Brown as gorgeous, buff and sexy as hell. He probably had a wide, strong jaw and a corded neck. No long rock-star hair, though. Not on a cop.

Another cop, a short fat one, I guessed, was sitting in a chair by my bed writing down my answers to his questions. He wore glasses. I could hear him adjusting them over and over, up on his head, then down on his nose again. Up when he was addressing me, down when his pen went scritching across the notepad.

“You should just give in and get bifocals,” I said.

He looked up, or that was what I guessed by the sound: movement, then stillness.

I loved this. Shocking people by showing off. It was almost like I was a magician doing parlor tricks for the crowd. Some of the blind—okay, visually impaired is the PC term, but I’m not visually impaired, I’m fucking blind—hated being underestimated by the sighted. I enjoyed letting them think I was some kind of wonder kid. It was good PR and amused me to boot. And amusing myself was hard when I was in the hospital and therefore in public, and therefore forced to play my Positive Polly role to the hilt. No slips allowed. BW would have my head.

BW, by the way, was my agent. Belinda Waubach, aka Barracuda Woman.

“Those are store-bought glasses, right? You got them off a rack at a Walmart or a CVS, didn’t you?”

“Price Chopper. I only need them for close-up stuff.”

“It’s the corneas. You need a transplant to fix it. Sadly, they save them all for people like me—not me specifically, of course. My body hates foreign corneas. Rejects them almost before the surgery’s over.” I smelled sweet pea and jasmine. “Are we about finished? My sister’s here to see me.”

“You—” He stopped, and I heard him shift positions, probably to look behind him at the doorway where Sandra stood.

“Is she messing with your head, Officer?” she asked.

“She’s amazing,” the cop said, thereby taking off ten pounds in my mental image-maker. Hell, he’d earned it. He still had bad acne scars and a hint of rosacea, though.

“Amazing my ass, she smelled my body wash.” Sandra came close, leaned over, we hugged, yada yada. “One of these days I’ll switch brands and screw you up royally, Rache,” she threatened.

“It’s not bad enough you pick a fragrance worn by a third of the women who shop at Bath & Body Works?”

She straightened, and I pasted a smile on my face and hoped my eyes weren’t doing anything stupid. Sandra and others had assured me that they didn’t, but I didn’t believe them, which is why I am rarely seen without sunglasses. I mean, why tell me, right? It’s not like I could check in the mirror and prove them liars.

“How are you, sis?” she asked softly.

My sister, Sandra, was my only claim to normal. She was a soccer mom in the best sense of the word. She had twin teenage daughters bearing the ridiculous names of Christy and Misty—no, I am not kidding—and a husband named Jim who worshipped at her feet. And why is it every great husband I know is named Jim? Anyway, this particular Jim was a pharmacist. Sandra was a real estate agent. Independent. Office in her basement and doing pretty damn well for herself. She and her family were so perfect, it was amazing I didn’t have to check my blood sugar around them.

“Bruised rib and a concussion,” I said. “Nothing big, but they want me overnight and they took my fu—” Oops. Cop’s still sitting there. “They took my darn glasses.”

“Did you give them hell?”

“Only a little,” I lied.

“We need to get you home before you destroy your career.”

“You’re right. I’m not even gonna argue. I was going to go hunt the glasses down myself as soon as Officer Bob here finishes with me.” I tilted my head his way. “That was your cue,” I whispered.

He laughed a nervous laugh. “Okay, I have all I need. And, uh—here.” He moved again, getting up, and then a plastic bag rattled. “It says personal effects, and I see some sunglasses in the bottom of the bag.”

I took it from him, and felt my glasses in the bottom. “Hey, thanks. I guess I should have asked you to begin with.” I fished them out fast and pushed them onto my face. My relief was so intense I felt like I melted in the bed a little.

“I hope you recover fast, Ms. de Luca.” Sincere and mildly amused. He thought I was cute. I hated being thought of as cute.

“Oh, I know I will,” I told him. “I’ll just raise my vibe until my body has to rise up to match it.” Oh, my agent would have kissed me for that one. Funny how no one ever responded with the obvious question: “Why the hell are you blind, then?” Maybe they did, behind my back. Who knew? I didn’t care, as long as they kept buying the books. And the affirmation cards, and the annual calendar.

The cop should have left then. He really should have.

But instead he said, “If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to call.”

“I need my brother found, Officer. I think I’ve told you that already.”

“I know, I know. Look, it’s not my case, but I’ll see who I can nudge, all right?”

“No. It’s nowhere near all right.”

My sister swung her hip sideways, bumping my bed hard enough to shake it.

“But it’ll do for now,” I added. “Thanks, Officer.”

“You’re welcome, Ms. de Luca.”

I waited until I knew he was gone. It’s funny how you can feel a person’s presence or absence. Human beings give off some kind of...I don’t know, energy or force field or something. You can sense it clearly and easily if you aren’t too busy looking for them with your eyes. At least, that was my explanation for it. I didn’t remember noticing it until I’d gone blind. Then again, who remembered details like that prior to age twelve?

“So?” Sandra took the cop’s former chair. “What happened?”

I told her what she already knew from my phone call. “Got run over by a cop. Not that one, though. A much better-looking one, according to my built-in TV. A detective, even.”

“You should sue,” she said. She reached out to take my glasses from my face, then put them back a second later. “Crooked,” she said. “You’d get a zillion.”

“I already have a zillion. You know, give or take. Besides, it was my fault, so—”

“You weren’t in the crosswalk?”

“I speed-walked into the crosswalk without even pausing. The guy couldn’t stop. I was pissed. About Tommy.”

“I know.”

“Besides, how is the ‘make peace with the pain’ guru going to look in a big messy lawsuit? It would cost me more than I’d gain.”

She sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

“So I’m here for the night.”

“Yeah, well, you’d better stow the attitude, then. People talk.” And then she was leaning over the bed, apparently forgetting the part where I’d mentioned that I had a bruised rib, and hugging me again. “God, when I think what could’ve happened... We don’t know where Tommy is. Mom and Dad have been gone ten years now. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“Mom and Dad went the way they would’ve wanted to. Together and on vacation.” Cruise ship capsized. It was all over the news. “And we almost never know where Tommy is, so we should be used to it by now.”

“I know.”

“You won’t lose me, too. I promise.” I grunted, because she was still hugging me and the rib was still bruised. “I’m fine. And I’ll stay that way if you’ll quit trying to break the rest of my ribs.”

Warmth on my face. Tears. Hers, not mine. I didn’t believe in them. They didn’t serve a hell of a lot of purpose except to rinse the eyes, and I could do that with Visine, thanks.

“So they’re letting you go tomorrow, then?” she asked, sniffling, unbending, releasing me from her killer hug.

“Probably tomorrow, they said.”

“Why only probably?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to talk to the doctor.”

“Well, you can’t, big sis, because I’m of age, and that health-care proxy I gave you doesn’t kick in unless I’m incapacitated. So you’re going to have to take my word on this. I’m fine.”

“Hell.”

“I’m fine,” I repeated. “And the last thing I want is a fan club vigil in the waiting room or, God forbid, the press showing up. So keep this to yourself and tell my right-hand Goth to do the same. Got it?”

“Of course I’ve got it. And I’ll tell Amy. You know me, honey.”

Yeah, I thought. That’s what I’m afraid of.

* * *

Mason had worried all the way to his place. He’d jogged up the stairs with his heart in his throat, assuring himself that Eric was fine, but something—that same intuition that made him an uncannily successful detective, maybe—was telling him that he wasn’t okay at all. The apartment was the second floor of a two-family house, and the family who owned it rarely used the ground floor but kept it vacant just in case.

More money than brains, maybe, Mason didn’t know. He’d always figured if he held out long enough, they would get sick of keeping it and rent him the whole damn thing.

When he got to the top step his heart was pounding and his mouth was dry. Then he opened the door.

It was like a curtain parting on a nightmare. His brother was on the couch with a .44 Magnum jammed to the side of his head, just above the ear, awkwardly holding the piece with both hands, tears streaming from his reddened eyes. Eyes that shot to Mason’s for an instant, eyes so full of pain Mason could feel it himself.

He lunged and shouted and the gun went off. Earsplitting, that shot in the confines of the small room. The blood spray was like an explosion.

He halted midway to his brother, tripping over himself and falling to his knees in time with Eric falling over sideways on the couch. Rumpling the plastic with which he’d covered it.

“Ahh, God, what the fuck, Eric, whatthefuck...?” He scrambled closer on hands and knees, over more plastic on the floor. There was very little left of his brother’s skull, and he just knelt there with it at eye level, shaking all over, frozen. He was also at eye level with the coffee table, so he saw the note and an odd row of driver’s licenses. And then he started moving again, fumbling for the cell phone in his pocket. Somehow he punched in 911. And then he was talking, giving the address, automatic functions kicking in while his mind reeled, as scrambled as if the bullet had gone into his own brain. Why? Mother. Marie. The boys. Why?

Putting the phone back into his pocket, Mason blinked again at those driver’s licenses.

Then he went still, and so did his reeling brain. Everything stopped. Time froze, a moment drawn out into what felt like eternity. He knew most of those faces. They were the same faces currently pinned up on the bulletin board in his office. All young men, all missing, all presumed dead. No bodies, though. Just empty wallets found in each man’s last known location.

What the hell was Eric doing with these?

Frowning, he looked around the room. Everything was just the way he’d left it this morning, except for the plastic and that duffel bag on the floor, way over by the far wall. He didn’t think that had been there when he’d left. Letter on the table. Eric’s handwriting, always as sloppy and uneven as a third grader’s. Swallowing hard, Mason looked at the note, didn’t touch, just looked.

I am a monster. I kill. Over and over again, I kill. I’m the guy you’re looking for, Mason, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. God, you must be so mad at me right now. But I stopped. I made myself stop. I did the right thing...finally. I know you’ll take care of the boys. It had to be over. Now it is. It’s over. Thank God. Pray I don’t go to hell. It wouldn’t be fair. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my fault. I just...couldn’t stop.

Eric looked from the note to his brother, lying in a soup of brain matter and blood on the plastic-covered sofa. He thought about Eric’s sons, Josh and Jeremy. Mason loved those two boys like they were his own. Now he was supposed to tell them their dad was...

...a murderer?

...a serial killer?

His mind rejected the notion even though it was right there in blue ink on a white, blood-spattered sheet of printer paper.

And Marie, what about Marie? She was heavily pregnant with a little girl.

And Mother. God, this would kill Mother.

Was he really going to tell them what was in this note?

He looked at the driver’s licenses again. The practical part of his brain said it had to be true. Otherwise, how would Eric have all those IDs? Trophies.

So he would have to tell them.

For what? It’s not like Eric’s going to kill anyone else. The murders will stop now. No more harm will be done. And I don’t have time to sit here debating this.

A minute, maybe two, had ticked past since his 911 call. He only had a few more. Maybe five. Probably five.

He got up, picked up the licenses and the note, moved to the left, where the duffel sat on the floor. Unzipping it, he saw duct tape, coils of rope, a Taser.

Shit.

He fought off his heaving stomach, then stuffed the licenses and the note inside the bag and zipped it up. The blood spatter had mostly gone the other way, and the recoil spray hadn’t made it that far. The duffel was clean, but the coffee table was coated with a fine mist of blood except where the note and licenses had been.

He picked up a bloody sofa pillow by one clean corner, shook it over the clean spots on the table to splatter them with blood, then replaced it where it had been on the sofa. Then he tipped the coffee table onto its side, as he could easily have done when he’d lunged toward his brother. The blood on the surface would run enough to further cover those clean spots. It wasn’t perfect. But it was enough. No one was going to look too closely, anyway. He had the text message, and he’d called it in immediately. There was nothing here to suggest this was anything but exactly what it had been: a suicide. He’d witnessed it. He was a cop. A decorated and respected cop.

Open and shut.

Taking the duffel bag, he walked out of the apartment and down the stairs. He put the bag into the back of Rosie’s Hummer, then took a quick look inside his brother’s pickup, as the other detectives would do in a little while, but he didn’t see anything else tying Eric to the missing men. Not on first glance, anyway, and there was no time for a more thorough examination. His colleagues would be here any second now. So he sank to the curb and tried to keep it together as he heard sirens wailing in the distance, coming closer.

He’d made a snap decision to cover up the answer to the biggest case of his career. And he would lose everything if it was ever found out. But dammit, he couldn’t put his family through the truth.

He couldn’t.

He told himself he’d done the right thing.

And then the cavalry arrived, ambulance first, cops on its bumper.

He just pointed at the stairs. “My brother shot himself.”

The medics reacted, raced up the stairs. Rosie arrived and hunkered down beside him. “Lemme see your phone, partner.”

Nodding, Mason handed it over.

Rosie looked for Eric’s text message, found it, nodded. “You should’a taken me with you.”

“I didn’t think he meant that. Hell, maybe I did, but I didn’t think he’d really do it.”

A burst of activity on the stairs. Urgent shouts that seemed uncalled for, given that his brother was obviously dead. Mason looked up fast. Had he missed something? Did they know? And am I going to be wondering that every day for the rest of my life? God, what the hell did I do here?

And then a gurney came bumping down the stairs, Eric strapped to it, mask on his face, someone pumping a rubber balloon.

“He still has a pulse!”

Lightning jolted Mason to his feet. “How can he...how can that...his head...”

“Hold on, partner,” Rosie said, grabbing his shoulders when he started to go to his brother.

Mason honestly didn’t know in that moment, whether he meant to go help Eric or yank the bag away and let him suffocate.

Two EMTs jostled Eric into the back of the ambulance. In seconds it went screaming away and left Mason staring after it with his guts tied up in knots.

“You’d better go,” Rosie said. “Go on now. Be with your brother. Call your family. I’ve got this.”

Nodding, Mason looked Rosie square in the eye, knowing he had to initiate the lies now, before he lost his resolve. It was the only thing to do. “I can give you the gist first, though. You need to know. He showed up last night, asking to sleep over. About 3:00 a.m., give or take. I was half-asleep, and we didn’t talk. This morning I left before he got up. Then I got that text. When I opened the apartment door he was sitting on the couch with the gun to his head.” He had to stop and swallow hard to get his throat to open up again.

“Damn,” Rosie said softly. “You don’t have to do this now, partner.”

“It was a .44 Magnum. Never saw it before. Have no idea where he got it, or if it’s legal. He had the barrel here.” He put a finger on his skull. “His right. My left. I yelled and sort of jumped toward him. He pulled the trigger at the same time. I landed short, knocked over the coffee table. Then I called 911 on my cell, came down here and waited. I couldn’t look at him like that. That’s all. That’s everything.”

“Good enough. Good enough for now, Mason. Maybe I’d better drive you. They don’t need me here.”

Mason looked at his partner; he hated lying to him. “I’d feel better if you’d stay here while they process the place, see they do it right, respectfully, you know? I mean, it’s my place. I don’t want it all torn up.” He shook his head. “Shit, that sounds shallow.”

“Sounds like someone who’s seen what happens when a home becomes a crime scene. Don’t you worry.”

“I still need the Hummer, Rosie.”

“I’ll pick it up at the hospital once we finish here.”

“The station. I’ll leave it at the station.” Mason looked down at his hands. “I need to change...before the hospital.”

“Go to the station, then. You got a change of clothes in your locker?” Mason nodded. “You can park the Hummer there, then. Your wheels are already back in the lot. The blind writer didn’t so much as ding it. It’s all good.”

But it wasn’t all good. And Mason pretty much figured it was never going to be all good again. He wanted to crawl into a dark corner and stay there for a while. A long while. But he had to keep moving, and somehow he did.

He headed to the station. As Rosie had promised, his beloved black ’74 Monte Carlo was in the lot in back. And also just as promised, the blind chick hadn’t even put a dent in the bumper. They didn’t make cars the way they used to. A new one would have crumpled. He tossed his brother’s duffel into the trunk and made damn sure no one had seen him do it.

He locked Rosie’s Hummer, took the keys inside and left them in his partner’s locker, avoiding everyone he saw on the way. No one stopped him. Easy. Then he took a quick shower and changed into the spare clothes he kept on hand, a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved pullover in two-tone gray. Then he went back out to his own car and drove to the hospital, racking his brain on the way. Had he missed anything?

He undoubtedly had some of Eric’s blood on his clothes. He’d crawled across that plastic, after all. That was fine. He wouldn’t even wash them until he was sure his colleagues didn’t want to run them through the lab. They would count on his cooperation. He had to give them exactly what they expected an innocent cop to offer. Full cooperation.

He might have left microscopic traces of blood on the steering wheel and driver’s door of Rosie’s Hummer. But that would be expected, too. If he cleaned that up, it would look as if he had something to hide. If anyone even bothered to check, which they had no reason to do. Looking as if he had something to hide would be the quickest way to revealing the truth, though, so he hadn’t cleaned off the steering wheel or front seat.

Traces of blood in the cargo areas in the back of the Hummer, or on the cargo hatch door, however, would be unexpected. They would be out of place. But no one was going to look for traces of blood in the back of Rosie’s Hummer. No one had any reason to. Unless Eric somehow pulled through, of course. Or said something in a state of delirium. If that happened, he would deal with it. He couldn’t do anything about it now.

As Mason pulled into the parking lot behind Binghamton General and looked for an empty spot, the shaking set in.

My brother’s dead. But not quite. No, dead. He’s dead. No one could live like that. It’s a glitch in the works, some reflex trying to hold on. But he’s gone. I saw it, felt it. I know.

My brother was a murderer. All those guys. How many licenses? Gonna have to go through them later. And that bag. God, I don’t want to go through that bag. Got to, though. And then hide it. Where it’ll never ever be found.

I need to find the bodies. What the hell did he do with the bodies? Those families...

Gotta call Mom. And ohmyfuckinggod, Marie. I gotta call Marie. How do I break this to the boys? It’s gonna destroy them.

Yeah. I did the right thing. This is bad enough without...that note. That bag. Those IDs. Those faces. It’s bad enough. I did the right thing, God forgive me.

But what if he lives?

“Sir? Sir, can I help you?”

He’d managed to walk into the E.R. without even realizing it, that was how far gone he was. He needed to pull it together here. He focused on the woman—a nurse wearing scrubs with big pink flowers all over them. She was behind a curved desk looking at him through an open glass partition. “Detective Mason Brown, Binghamton P.D. I’m here for my brother.”

“I can help you with that. His name?” she was already tapping keys.

“Eric Conroy Brown.”

“Eric.” Tap-tap-tap. “Brown.” Taptaptaptap-big tap. She actually backed up from the computer screen a little, and the bright smile vanished. “He’s in the ICU. That’s up—”

“I know where it is.” He was a cop. He knew his way around Binghamton General. He was gone while she was still talking. Wishing him luck or something equally useless. Elevators, buttons to push. Autopilot.

What if he lives?

He still had all the evidence. If his brother lived and was anything more than a bedridden vegetable, Mason was going to have to turn it in and take the consequences for removing it from the scene. It would be the end of his job. Which was nothing compared to the possibility of his brother going on killing.

Eric. Killing. God, he couldn’t even imagine it.

Yes, you can. You know damn well you can.

How the hell had it happened? What had driven him to this? They’d had the same childhood. Not perfect, but no trauma. No abuse. What had made his older brother become a monster?

He’s never been right and you know it. And what about all those cats, huh? Why was it we could never keep a cat? They all disappeared. And when they were gone, the neighbors’ cats started vanishing. Remember how everyone thought there must be a wild animal in the area, preying on house cats? Coyotes. They blamed coyotes. And when I asked for a dog, Dad said absolutely not, and there was this look in his eyes, remember that? This look like the thought of a dog was horrifying somehow. Maybe he knew....

The elevator stopped, the doors slid open. He stepped out into the white hallway. It smelled so clean he didn’t think a germ would dare try to invade. Spotting the nurses’ desk, he went over and repeated his brother’s name to the guy sitting there.

“Are you family?”

Mason hated male nurses. Didn’t know why, it just chafed him. They always seemed, to him at least, to be full of themselves. People who see men in scrubs automatically assume they’re doctors, and privately, he thought most male nurses got a huge ego boost out of that and almost never corrected the misassumption.

“I’m his brother.”

“I’d better take you in. Your brother is—”

“I was there when he pulled the trigger. You don’t need to prepare me. Just point me to the room, okay?”

The chubby Justin Bieber–haired blond came around the desk, anyway. “It’s right over here. He’s on a ventilator, but—”

Mason walked into the room, right up to the bed. Eric lay there. His entire head was bandaged and padded underneath, so it wasn’t as obvious that a lot of it was missing. Someone had washed most of the blood away and put him in a hospital gown. His eyes were closed, sunken unnaturally back into his head.

“Have you called his—your—family?” the nurse asked.

“I was just about to.”

“Good. The doctor will want to talk to them as soon as possible.”

“Why?” Mason took his eyes off his brother to look at the nurse.

“I really have to let the doctor be the one—”

“Come on, kid. Do you really think it matters who tells it? Cut me some slack here. I just watched my brother blow his own head off. Just tell me what you have to say already.”

The nurse lowered his head. “He’s brain dead. The machine is pumping air through his lungs, and forcing his heart to keep pushing oxygenated blood through his body. But he’s not coming back.”

Mason nodded and exhaled long and slow. No vegetable brother wasting away slow for the next twenty years. No recovering murderer brother having to face the consequences of his crimes. No being forced to testify against his own sibling or reveal the nightmare to his mother or sister-in-law or nephews. No being driven out of the job he loved.

It was better this way. Was that selfish? Okay, yeah, a little, but not entirely. It was better for everyone this way.

“So the doctor wants us all here to tell him to pull the plug.” It wasn’t a question.

“And to ask you about organ donation, though technically his wife has to make those decisions,” the nurse said with a nod in the direction of Eric’s left hand. “Most families make it together.”

Organ donation. That hadn’t even occurred to him. He let his eyes travel up and down his brother’s body, completely intact except for his head.

“The ventilator keeps the organs oxygenated until the decision is made,” Nurse Bieber went on.

“I see. So he’s...”

“He’s already gone, Detective Brown. I’m really sorry.”

Mason nodded. “Seems like it would be a shame to just waste them, doesn’t it?” he asked. “The way he wasted the rest of himself.”

“Yeah. It does. There’s someone right now praying they’ll stay alive long enough to get a heart, a liver, a kidney, a lung. Even his corneas are still good. He could make a blind person see again. Maybe for the first time.”

A blind person see again.

Maybe this accident happened for a reason.

Mason turned and looked at the nurse, revising his opinion of him. “They should have you talk to all the families in this situation. You’re good at it.”

“Does that mean you’re going to...?”

“Yeah, I’ll convince the family. Marie...she listens to me. But don’t worry, I’ll let the doctor think he talked me into it. Now, about those corneas—can we pick someone to get those? A specific person? If they’re the same tissue type or whatever?”

“Of course you can. Tissue typing isn’t even necessary for corneas anymore. The latest studies, blah blah blah.”

The nurse’s words faded into the background noise inside Mason’s head, where the gunshot was ringing and echoing endlessly. He was staring at his brother, remembering when they were kids, playing on the tire swing that hung from the giant maple up at the lake, seeing who could swing out farther, dropping into the icy cold water.

How do you go from a laughing ten-year-old to a cold-blooded killer?

“Detective Brown?”

He nodded to let the nurse know he hadn’t lost him. “Can you, uh, give me a minute alone with him?”

“Sure. And then you’ll call the family?”

Mason nodded.

The kid left and closed the door behind him, leaving Mason alone with Eric. He moved closer to the bed. “I don’t know what to say to you, brother.” He swallowed to loosen up the constriction in his throat. “Hell, I don’t even know if you can hear me, but...what the fuck, Eric? What were you thinking? You—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You killed all those boys, you sonofabitch. And then dumped it all on me? What the fuck, man?”

He sighed, backed away. “Okay, so you win. You’re badass. You make the messes, and I clean ’em up. Just like always, big bro. And now I’ve gotta go call Mother and Marie, and break their hearts. And they’re gonna cry and mourn for a piece of shit who never deserved either of them. Much less the boys. Damn you, Eric, how could you do this to your family?”

He got up, started to leave, then turned back. “Why the fuck did you have to wait for me to get there, make me watch you do that? That’s never gonna get out of my head, you know.”

He left the room, closed the door, lowered his head way down because his eyes were burning with tears, and then, finally, he called his sister-in-law.

* * *

By noon my room was full of balloons, flowers and various idiotic stuffed animals. And people, let’s not forget people. My BBF—best blind friend—Mott Killian was at my bedside, strumming his guitar and singing away, doing his usual half-a-song-then-switch thing. Mott taught American history over at Cortland State. Amy, my irritatingly twentysomething personal assistant, had confiscated my tray table for her laptop. She was clicking away, tweeting and posting hourly updates to my fifty-thousand-and-some-odd followers, and manning her ever-present iPhone to tell reporters no to every interview request. I have no idea about social media. She does it all for me. My agent, Barracuda Woman, was keeping tabs via Skype from her Manhattan office. And my sister was riding herd on the hospital staff and ordering takeout. Her twins were texting nonstop—I could hear the tapping, soft as it was—and sucking down vitamin water. I could smell it. Misty had Berry Blast, and Christy had Mango Peach. They were trying not to let me know that their social lives were positively wasting away while they were doing time at their blind aunt’s bedside, but their frequent sighs were audible, and their impatience wafted from their pores like B.O.

When a nurse tried to object to all the activity in the room, Sandra laid down the law. “Do you know how many times my sister has been on TV?” she asked. “She’s important. She needs her people around her.”

My people. My entourage. And every one of them so devoted they would take a bullet for me. Well, except for Misty and Christy, who would take a slap for me, max. Maybe. As long as it wasn’t in the face.

Moreover, the people in this room were the only people who knew that the real me was not the feel-good guru who showed up in my books and on talk shows. And they not only loved me anyway, they loved me enough to not sell the truth to the tabloids. That was devotion right there, because that information would’ve been worth a significant bundle.

There was a tap on the door before someone came in. I smelled her and heard her signature footsteps, soft and close together, and I knew her instantly. “Hold up, hold up.” I tapped Mott’s knee as I spoke, and he stopped strumming.

“Doc Fenway?”

“You amaze me every time, you know that?” she said with a smile in her voice.

“I do it on purpose,” I confessed. “So are you here to visit, or did this little accident have some kind of impact on my eyesight? Please don’t tell me I’m going blind!”

Obediently, my entourage laughed. But only a little. There was still noise all around me. Amy’s clicking keys, Sandra talking on the phone—“Ham and pineapple, extra blue cheese and the hottest wings you’ve got”—Mott still picking a string over and over as he tuned the guitar, because apparently he thought as long as he wasn’t playing an actual song he was in compliance with my “hold up” order of a moment ago.

And then Doc Fenway went on. “Actually, I came with some good news for you.” And then she said it. One sentence that changed everything. “You’re going to see again, Rachel.”

The room went silent. I flinched as the words exploded inside my brain. “I...um...how?”

“We have a brand-new healthy set of corneas for you. Private donor. Wishes to remain anonymous, and—”

“No.” I shook my head and kept on talking before the arguments could begin. “I’m not putting myself through it again, Doc. You know I reject every set I get. It’s too much to—”

“Just hear me out, Rachel. Let me explain why it’s different this time. Then make whatever decision you want.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t want to let my hopes start to climb. So far, they hadn’t, but if I let her talk they might, and I didn’t like the crushing disappointment of failure. I’d had transplants before. My body rejected them. Violently. I was sick all over. I know, another one of my endearing quirks. I’m a unique individual.

“If everyone could leave us for a few minutes...?”

“They can stay,” I said. “They’re just going to torture it out of me later, anyway. Go ahead, Doc, give it your best shot, but you know how I feel about beating this particular dead horse.”

“Okay.” She cleared her throat. “It’s been several years since we’ve tried. There’s a new procedure. Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty.”

“Oh, well in that case, let’s go for it. Anything with such an impressive sounding name is bound to work.” I loaded on enough sarcasm to clog up a black hole.

Doc Fenway sighed, then repeated herself, but in English this time. “We transplant a thin layer of the graft, not the entire cornea. The risk of rejection is minimal. Recovery time is faster. It’s light-years beyond what we’ve been able to do before. And I think it just might be your answer.”

My heart gave a ridiculously hopeful leap. I told it to lie back down and shut the fuck up.

“The donor chose you specifically, Rachel. And we can do it today.”

“Oh my God.” That was Sandra, and the words were damn near swimming in tears. “Oh my God, ohmyGod, ohmyGod!”

I wasn’t quite as impressed. “Today? You want me to decide this today? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Meanwhile Sandra was still going on, “You’re going to see! You’re going to see, ohmyGod!”

The twins started with the teenage-girl squealing thing that sounds like giant mice having their tails stepped on. Really, someone ought to be researching a cure for that. Screw Descemet’s Stripping-whatever.

“This is a miracle!” Amy cried. And then she and Sandra were hugging and hopping around in what sounded like a circle. I don’t know. Blind, remember? Everyone was talking and crying and laughing—and squealing, let’s not forget the squealing—at the same time.

I held up my hands. “Stop. Just stop.” I had to speak very loudly.

They all stopped, and I felt their eyes on me. “Okay. Okay.” I took a deep breath, but I wasn’t processing this. This wasn’t real yet. I didn’t get it. “I do need everybody to get out, okay? Except you, Doc. Everybody else, just...just go get a coffee or something. Give me a minute here.”

I heard a keystroke and whipped my finger toward Amy. “Don’t you even think about tweeting anything about this. Understand?”

“Yeah. No, I wasn’t—”

“Close the lid, Amy.”

I heard the laptop close.

“Come on, everyone, let’s give her some space,” Sandra instructed. She was a little hurt that I’d asked. I could tell by the texture of her voice.

“Yeah. I need space.”

Mott leaned in close. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, you know.”

“Right. Like you wouldn’t?”

“No. I wouldn’t.” Petulant, maybe a little combative? What the fuck?

I frowned. I mean, I knew he thought of the blind as a minority group and himself as our Malcolm X, but I didn’t think he’d want to stay sightless if he had a choice. Then again, he’d been born blind. I hadn’t. I’d had twelve years of vision. Eleven of them twenty-twenty. And I’d had blurry, half-assed eyesight three times, after the last three transplants, a few days each time before my body threw a full-on, no-holds-barred revolt. I knew what I was missing.

Mott kissed my cheek, and everyone left the room. Shuffling steps, grumbling complaints, whispers and finally the door closing behind them. I lay there in the bed, listening to Doc Fenway come over, sit in Mott’s former place, clear her throat.

“What do you need to know?” she asked.

I thought for a long time, and then I said, “Is this for real?”

“Yes.”

“Will it work?”

“Almost certainly. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it, Rachel. This might be the miracle you didn’t think you’d ever get.”

She was telling the absolute truth, as she saw it. Lies were one of the easiest things to hear in people’s voices. I felt tears brimming in my stupid sightless eyes. Damn, I did not cry. Not ever. And if I ever did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be in front of anyone. Thank God I was still wearing my sunglasses. “I don’t want to believe it just to have it go bad again, Doc. Not this time. It would be more than I can take.”

Revealing my soft underbelly was not something I did often. But she wasn’t allowed to tell, right? She was a doctor.

“But you have to believe if you ever want anything to change. Isn’t that what you’re always writing about? How it’s the belief that creates the reality, and not the other way around.”

Right. Like I was twelve and somehow believed my way into twenty years of blindness right? I would probably go to hell for the bullshit I sold to the gullible.

“How long before I’ll be able to look at my sister’s face?”

She patted my hand. “Tomorrow, if all goes well. And better than the other times, right off the bat, with full recovery in two to three months.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll be able to see my sister’s face again...tomorrow.” I lowered my head, shook it slowly. Even if it didn’t last, I’d have that. I just didn’t know if I could handle the letdown if it was only temporary. You might think temporary vision is better than none at all, but you haven’t been there. I have. It sucks.

“It’ll work for you this time, Rachel. I honestly believe that.”

Yes, she honestly did. I sighed, and she knew I was going to give in. “If I believed in miracles, I’d think this was one.”

But of course I didn’t. And as it turned out, it wasn’t.