Chương 1
"Lucy Reed’s flashlight clicked on, and for the first time in five years, someone gave me a reason to doubt the darkness.
“They got smaller again,” she whispered.
I sat perfectly still in the leather chair while the three-year-old aimed the cheap yellow flashlight at my face with the solemn concentration of a surgeon.
“What got smaller?”
“The black circles.”
She clicked it off.
A second later, she clicked it on again.
“There.”
My right hand closed around the wooden armrest.
“Lucy, don’t move.”
“I’m not moving.”
“The flashlight.”
“Oh.”
The beam disappeared from my face.
I heard her little sneakers shift against the library rug, followed by the plastic rattle of the flashlight being transferred from one hand to the other.
“Do it again,” I said.
She obeyed.
Light had become an abstract thing to me, something other people complained about when curtains were open or praised when the afternoon was beautiful.
I felt only a faint warmth near my eyes.
Lucy gasped.
“They did it.”
The library door opened hard enough to strike the stopper.
“Lucy!”
Hannah Reed crossed the room quickly, and the flashlight vanished from my face as she lifted her daughter.
“I told you not to bother Mr. Mercer.”
“I wasn’t bothering him.”
“You were shining a flashlight in his eyes.”
“He said I could.”
Hannah stopped.
Her breathing changed before her voice did.
“Mr. Mercer?”
“Put her down.”
A pause followed.
Hannah had worked in my house for two years, long enough to know that I disliked having instructions repeated.
Lucy’s shoes touched the rug.
“Tell your mother exactly what you saw.”
“The black circles get little when the light goes on.”
Hannah said nothing.
I turned toward the sound of her breathing.
“Is that possible?”
“Lucy, go wait by the door.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Lucy trudged away with the exaggerated suffering available only to small children.
Hannah came closer.
“May I look at your eyes?”
“You’ve been looking at them for two years.”
“Not like this.”
That answer bothered me more than it should have.
“Go ahead.”
She took the flashlight from Lucy.
“Look straight ahead.”
“I am.”
“I know.”
The light touched my face.
Nothing.
Darkness remained darkness.
Hannah switched the beam away, waited, then brought it back.
Her breath left slowly.
“Again,” I said.
She repeated the test.
“Well?”
“Your pupils are reacting.”
The words seemed too small for what they did to the room.
I had spent five years learning the dimensions of blindness.
Eighty-two steps from my bedroom to the west terrace if nobody moved the hall table.
Fourteen from my desk to the library doors.
Six from the kitchen island to the refrigerator.
Three scars along my left forearm from the first year, when pride had made me refuse a cane inside my own house.
There were other measurements.
Five years since I had seen Caroline smile.
Five years since Emma had been four years old forever.
Five years since an explosion at Pier 17 had burned light out of my life and left my wife and daughter in coffins.
“Say it again,” I told Hannah.
“Your pupils constrict when exposed to light.”
“That means I can see.”
“No.”
Her answer came so quickly that anger rose before disappointment had time to reach me.
“You’re certain about that.”
“I’m certain pupil response and conscious vision aren’t the same thing.”
“Then this proves nothing.”
“I didn’t say that either.”
Lucy made a tiny humming noise near the door.
Hannah lowered her voice.
“Before Lucy was born, I trained as an ophthalmic technician.”
I turned toward her.
“You cleaned my house for two years and never thought that was worth mentioning?”
“You never asked for my résumé.”
“That’s cute.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
There was one reason Hannah had lasted longer than the housekeepers before her.
She was not afraid enough of me to become useless.
She was afraid sometimes.
I could hear it in the careful breath before she disagreed with me.
But she disagreed anyway.
“What happened to the training?”
“I left.”
“Why?”
“My husband disappeared, childcare cost more than I was making, and life became extremely interested in my plans.”
Despite myself, I understood the sentence.
“Could damaged eyes still react to light?”
“Yes.”
“Could permanently blind eyes react?”
“Yes.”
“So we have nothing.”
“We have a question.”
“I have enough questions.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
The sharpness in my voice silenced the room.
Lucy stopped humming.
I regretted it immediately and hated myself for regretting it.
Hannah spoke more softly.
“When was your last retinal scan?”
“Dr. Hale examines me every Thursday.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
I searched backward through appointments that had become nearly identical.
Hale arriving at ten.
His leather case opening.
The bitter medicinal smell.
Pressure checks.
Drops.
Questions about headaches.
Questions about pain.
Occasionally a blood draw.
Always the same conclusion.
Stable.
Permanent.
Nothing further to be done.
“The hospital,” I said.
“After the explosion?”
“Yes.”
“And since then?”
I waited for a memory that did not come.
“No.”
Hannah did not speak.
That silence was worse than an accusation.
“What?”
“Five years is a long time to rely on the same imaging.”
“He examines me weekly.”
“With what equipment?”
“I don’t inventory his bag.”
“Does he dilate your eyes?”
“I get drops.”
“That isn’t necessarily the same thing.”
“Hannah.”
“I’m not diagnosing you.”
“Then stop sounding like you are.”
“I’m trying very hard not to.”
She moved away, and I heard the flashlight land softly on the desk.
“Your injuries may be exactly what you were told they were,” she said.
“Pupillary response can remain in people with profound vision loss.”
“So why do you sound worried?”
Another pause.
“Because if a physician has been telling you for five years that further testing has no value, I’d want to know what the original diagnosis actually said.”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
May you like
Because the alternative was standing up and breaking something.
“Vernon Hale has been my physician for twenty-three years.”
