Fox River. Emilie Richards

little cool tonight.”

      “I have a sweater in the dining room.”

      “I’ll get the door and the sweater.”

      Julia listened as Maisy’s footsteps disappeared. She had steeled herself for this confrontation. Her marriage to Bard had always seemed simple and forthright. It had also been untested, and it was failing this one, as if the added weight of her blindness had tipped a precariously balanced scale.

      Moments passed. She heard murmurs from the front of the house, a door close, then footsteps. She dried her hands and turned, leaning against the counter with her arms folded. When he crossed the threshold, she was ready.

      “Hello, Bard.”

      “Julia.” His voice was tight, as if his throat was closing around it.

      “We expected you earlier. Maisy saved a place for you at the dinner table.”

      “I’d like to talk to you alone. If I’m allowed?”

      She was annoyed by his tone. “You don’t need to be rude. Maisy?”

      “Right here. I brought the sweater.”

      Julia held out a hand, and Maisy placed the sweater in it. “Need help getting it on?”

      “No, I’ll manage.”

      Maisy must have turned, because her voice came from a different place. “Julia would like to have this conversation in the garden. Can you help her get there?”

      “I can still escort my wife any place she needs to go.”

      Julia spoke without thinking. “And any place I don’t need to go, as well.”

      “Now who’s being rude?” Bard stepped forward to help her with her sweater.

      She didn’t apologize, although it had been a cheap shot. “Let’s go out through this door. Callie’s in the barn with Jake.”

      “I understand you sent for Feather Foot, too. Just how long do you intend to stay?”

      “As long as I need to.”

      She heard the kitchen door open, then felt Bard’s big hand on her upper arm. “Let’s finish this outside.”

      He was a large man with a long stride. He did little to modify it as he propelled her to the garden. She stumbled once, and he slowed down, but she could tell he was annoyed by the way he continued to grip her arm.

      “You should try this sometime.” Julia came to a halt when he did. “Being dragged along by someone bigger than you. It’s not a reassuring feeling.”

      “I didn’t drag you.” He hesitated. “Damn it, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m just so angry.”

      “Is this what happens when you don’t get your way? Or hasn’t that happened often enough for you to recognize the signs?”

      “You’re determined to be stupid about this, aren’t you?”

      “Stupid?”

      “It was stupid for you to escape from the clinic. Do you have any idea how that made me look?”

      “Let me guess. Like the husband of a stupid woman?”

      “Damn it, Julia!”

      She was silent, waiting for him to gain control. Although a large part of her wanted to have a screaming match, a larger part knew better. Not only would Callie hear, nothing would be accomplished.

      He took a while to get hold of his temper. She imagined steam rising from a boiling kettle, then an unseen hand turning off the heat. The steam billowed, then puffed, and at last died away altogether. But the water was still hot enough to scald.

      “Let’s sit down,” he said at last.

      “Where are we?”

      “There’s a bench under a tree.” He led her there. She could hear him brushing leaves from the wooden slats; then he repositioned her. She could feel the bench against the backs of her knees. She sat gingerly.

      Julia knew enough of her mother’s gardening style to visualize how this garden looked in moonlight. With fall in the air, Maisy would have planted gold and orange chrysanthemums. Purple asters bloomed here when the weather began to turn, perhaps there was flowering kale this year. Maisy’s gardens were chaotically haphazard and more beautiful because of it, as if God Himself had randomly sprinkled all the colors of the world with a generous hand.

      “I came here a lot as a teenager.” Julia explored the bench with her fingertips. “You can see the road through those trees.” She inclined her head. “Sometimes I’d see you riding by. Did you ever notice me?”

      If he understood her attempt to take the conversation to a more conciliatory level, he gave no sign. “What were you thinking, Julia? Dr. Jeffers says you found your way downstairs by yourself. You could have been killed.”

      “I had help. Did he also tell you he threatened to have me committed?”

      “He was trying to keep you there for your own good.”

      “Bard, I’m an amateur psychologist. I’ll admit it. But doesn’t it make sense that I won’t get better unless I’m part of the cure?”

      “Maybe you don’t want to get better.”

      “Then there’s no point to being at the clinic, is there? Think of all the money we’re saving. I can wallow in my blindness for free.”

      He took her hand, swallowing it in his. “I don’t mean consciously, Julia. I know you think you want to get better.”

      “Now who’s playing amateur psychologist?”

      “Well, if you wanted it badly enough, wouldn’t you just see again?”

      “Back to that.”

      “I don’t know what to think.” He squeezed her hand.

      She let him, even though she really wanted him to disappear.

      She wanted him to disappear. The thought surprised her, and for a moment it choked off conversation.

      “We won’t talk about the clinic anymore,” he said at last. “Maybe I was being too heavy-handed.”

      Concessions came with a price. She waited.

      “I want you to come home.”

      She removed her hand from his. “I’m sorry, but for now I’m right where I need to be.”

      “I’m not going to work on you to go back to the clinic, if that’s what you’re afraid of. That chapter’s over. We’ll—”

      “You’re not listening again. Even if the clinic’s never mentioned, I want to be here. I need to be here. It feels right.”

      “What are you really saying? That you need to be here—or you need to be away from me?”

      Since she wasn’t sure, she couldn’t answer directly. “I need people I love around me. You work hard. You won’t be home much, and Mrs. Taylor will end up taking care of me.”

      “I can take time off.”

      She tried to imagine Bard preparing meals and making certain utensils were in reach. Bard mopping up spills. Bard leading her to the bathroom, or picking her up if she stumbled.

      “You would hate it,” she said, and he didn’t deny it.

      “How long do you plan to stay?”

      She had no plans. Her loss of sight was so mysterious, so precipitous, that it defied logic. She might wake up tomorrow, her vision as clear as crystal. She might spend the rest of her life in a world as dark as a starless winter night.

      “I don’t know how long I’ll stay. As long as I need to.”