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  “Okay.” He came back on the line, his voice full of bravado. “I happen to be sitting here in a corner office at the tres prestigious Parker & Associates with a gorgeous view of the lake…well, okay, it’s more like a pond. But never mind that. Your old man is movin’ up in the world.”

  She laughed. “Very cool, babe. I’m proud of you.” She refrained from reminding him there was no place to go but up.

  “Thanks. I’m kind of proud of myself, actually.”

  “You should be. You worked hard to get there.”

  “All I need now is to get you down here so we can start making babies.”

  “Whoa! Let me unpack my bags first, will you?” She feigned a pout. “Don’t you even miss me?”

  “Yes.” Derek’s tone turned serious. “I miss you like crazy.”

  “I miss you too.”

  “But I’m dead serious about the babies, Olivia. Wait till you see the house. There’s a perfect room for the nursery. It’s got one of those—what do you call it?—turret things with a window seat and it’s already painted baby blue. For my son.”

  She chuckled and hoped he wouldn’t detect the strain behind her laughter. “It’s called a dormer window. Turrets are for castles.”

  “Well, this is our castle, babe.”

  Her laughter turned genuine. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  “It’s just waiting for your magic touch—and a couple of babies—to make it perfect.”

  “Whoa, boy. One at a time.” She knew Derek thought a baby would heal the ugly rift his affair had caused. He was still working through a lot of guilt. But she suspected he also blamed her somewhat for his indiscretion.

  Maybe he had a point. Like him, she’d been caught up in building her career, unwilling to give up even a weekend for fear she’d lose momentum. She’d been scaling that proverbial ladder of success and nothing was going to stop her.

  “You there?” Derek’s voice broke through her thoughts.

  “I’m here. You better get back to work. It’d be a real shame if you got fired before I even get down there.”

  “Ha! That’s not going to happen. They love me already.”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  “I love you. Hurry home.”

  The words jolted her. He already thought of Hanover Falls as home. She hoped it would be as easy for her. “One more day of work and I’m there.”

  She heard him cover the receiver and speak in muffled tones to someone. “I gotta run, babe.”

  The dial tone trilled in her ear and she bit the inside of her cheek. He still didn’t quite get it. This move wasn’t all la-di-da joy for her. She was leaving a career she loved, a city that invigorated her, friends who’d become closer than sisters to her, especially over the past two years. She was giving up a lot to move to Missouri and have his babies. If she could even have a child. She’d been on the pill so long that sometimes she worried that it might not be so easy to become pregnant.

  She pushed the niggling fear from her mind. She loved Derek, and she knew it was the right thing for them. She knew she would start getting excited about her new life—their new life—once she got there. But right now she wished he could just acknowledge that she needed to grieve a little for this life first.

  And for what his affair had cost them.

  Chapter 2

  Reed Vincent woke up drenched in sweat, the dream vivid and suffocating. He sat up on the side of the bed, rubbing his temples, trying to focus on the clock on his nightstand. The giant digital numbers were blurry—maybe blurrier than they’d been yesterday—but he could still read them. Just barely. Seven-fifteen. The morning sun poured through the window and he squinted against its painful brightness even as relief surged through his veins.

  His heart still stuttered like a jackhammer, but it had only been a dream. The stifling blackness, the coarse blindfold his fingers could not unknot. Gingerly, he touched his eyelids. The blindfold had been a figment of his imagination. Ease up, Vincent. It was only a dream.

  But that was just the trouble. It wasn’t a dream. One day…one day soon he would wake up and the numbers on the clock would no longer come into focus. And another day, their greenish glow might fade altogether.

  He punched off the alarm clock and rolled off the bed. He grabbed the crumpled pair of blue jeans flopped over the ladder-back chair in the corner and pulled them on over his boxers. Experimenting, he left his glasses on the nightstand, and plodded through the kitchen and down the three wide steps that opened to the sunken studio.

  The pine floor was cold beneath his bare feet, but sunlight already glowed softly through clerestory windows high on the north wall. He needed the light to paint by, but since his eyes had become ultra-sensitive to it, he’d grown to prefer the dawn and dusk hours.

  Inhaling deeply, Reed felt himself come fully awake. And fully alive. The mingled smells of oils and turpentine and stale coffee grounds never failed to invigorate him.

  He grabbed a warped canvas from a stack of rejects behind the file cabinet and cleared off the easel. With skill and precision granted by years of practice, he clamped the canvas to the easel. He turned and started for the cupboard where his paints were stored. Halfway across the room he stopped.

  He’d always told Kristina—back when they were on speaking terms—that even if he somehow lost his hands, he would still find a way to create art. He’d broken his right arm playing touch football in an alumni exhibition game a couple of years ago. While he was in the cast, he’d been able to do some rudimentary tasks with his left hand and it wasn’t long before he could use the fingers on his right hand a bit. It had made painting a more laborious task than usual, but he didn’t doubt that had the condition been permanent, he would have managed somehow, would have trained himself to work left-handed.

  But he’d taken his sight for granted. It was one thing to think of painting left-handed, or even holding a pencil between his teeth, if that’s what it took to continue producing art. But to not be able even to see what he’d created? He knew some talented abstract painters, but that wasn’t how he’d made his name. Art buyers were notoriously discriminating. They didn’t take kindly to a tried-and-true craftsman suddenly changing his style. Would Reed Vincent’s paintings be worth a red cent if they were created without benefit of his sight?

  Kristina hadn’t seemed to think so. Reed didn’t blame her for not wanting to risk getting stuck with a helpless invalid who might not be able to provide her with every good thing her daddy had supplied. Of course she was classy enough to never say it in so many words. He wondered sometimes if she had even admitted to herself why she’d broken off their relationship. But despite his failing sight, he could read the doubt—and worse, the pity—in her eyes from across the sizable rooms of the family estate.

  Understanding Kristina’s choice didn’t make her rejection hurt any less. But he wouldn’t take her back now, even if she had a miraculous change of heart. Back then, he’d been sure he was in love with the beautiful, talented Kristina Marie Hardesty. Thankfully, when her lack of loyalty and her self-centered bent revealed themselves, it took the edge off his adoration. His sister insisted it had also left him cautious and a little cynical. He didn’t necessarily agree with Alissa, but if that’s what it took to avoid a repeat performance, then so be it.

  Squinching his eyelids shut, he stretched his arms in front of him and cautiously felt his way to the tall cupboard. Groping for the handle, he scraped his knuckles on the rough wood, but forced himself to keep his eyes closed. The door opened easily.

  He ran his fingers slowly over the edge of the middle shelf that housed more than a hundred tubes of paint. Without faltering, he zeroed in on the box that held the small metal tubes. None of the small crimped tubes were stamped in Braille now. But when the time came, he’d find a way to label them. They were already filed alphabetically, and he could hire an assistant to help him select the right colors and even mix them on the palette if necessary. There were many aspects of
painting that could be done by someone else—preparing the canvas, mixing the paints to his specifications.

  Even with his eyes clenched tightly shut so the morning light didn’t penetrate, he could visualize what a daub of Alizarin Crimson would look like on the canvas, or the cool hue that would result if he mixed Prussian Blue with a dab of Titanium White on the palette. He didn’t suppose he would ever forget colors. They were too much a part of the essence of the artist, the essence of Reed Vincent.

  Even as a child, he’d possessed a heightened sense of colors, discerning the violet and lavender in shadows, where others saw only gray; and differentiating the palest pink and yellow tints in shades most would have labeled simply “white.” No, colors would be preserved forever in his memory. And hopefully the things he’d learned as he studied art over the years would enable him to instruct someone to mix them with the nuances in tone and hue that were so important to the outcome of a piece.

  He mentally steeled himself to face the possibility of a future without his eyesight. If, in the process, he lost the gift of his art, he would grieve deeply. But it wasn’t that loss he ached to consider so much as the possibility that he may never see the subtle changes in his precious niece and nephew as they grew up. His sister and her family were the joy of Reed’s life. He wanted to witness the passing years crease Alissa’s pretty face with smile lines. He wanted to watch little Ali and Mason grow into teenagers.

  To think that he might never look into the eyes of his own future children was almost more than he could bear. Or that he might “see” the face of a wife he’d yet to meet only by tracing the contours of her brow with his fingertips.

  He knew these physical things shouldn’t matter. But they did. He was an artist. His very thoughts were visual…and vivid. Would a loving God take that from him? He had so much of life yet to experience.

  He’d bargained with God more than once. He’d vowed to accept the loss of his sight graciously if only God would hold back the curse until he’d experienced the small blessings of life that others took for granted. A loving wife. Babies. The satisfaction of providing for a family.

  But what woman could love him if the worst happened and he went blind? Besides, he would be a fool to father children he could never properly care for. He was dreaming, entertaining foolishness. He had to be realistic. He should be thankful if he could manage to provide for his own basic needs.

  Shaking off the morbid thoughts, he opened his eyes and selected a few nearly empty tubes from the cabinet. He squeezed out carefully measured globs of Cobalt Blue, Titanium White and Cadmium Orange onto a glass palette at twelve, three and nine o’clock, the way one might fill a dinner plate for a blind person. He picked two flat sables from the bouquet of pricey paintbrushes that bloomed in a pottery jar on the tabouret beside the easel.

  Could he transfer what he saw in his mind’s eye to the canvas? That had been a difficult enough task when his eyesight was perfect. He squeezed his eyes shut again, and leveled the palette over his left wrist and forearm. He felt for the edge of the canvas with his right hand. Planting his feet apart he flexed his toes, steadying himself.

  It took supreme effort not to take a quick peek, but he felt for the edge of the palette and stabbed at it until he felt the brush meet resistance at nine o’clock. That would be the orange. He filled the brush and stroked the color onto the canvas, feeling the paint spread in a studied arc under the command of his wrist. It was a sensation as familiar to him as breathing.

  Muscles he hadn’t realized were tensed relaxed a bit as he visualized the texture of a burning sun. He emptied the brush in circular motions on the canvas. Finished, he aimed the brush in the vicinity of the jar of turpentine on the tabouret, jabbing until he heard the telltale blup-blup of bristles hitting liquid. So far, so good.

  He took the clean brush and loaded it with blue paint, working across the canvas from left to right, building a swell of ocean waves beneath his sun. He could “see” the canvas in his head far more clearly than he’d expected. Granted he’d chosen a simple scene, but this wasn’t as difficult as he’d imagined. He relaxed further and began to enjoy his little experiment.

  Reed continued to paint, feeling surprisingly optimistic. He measured off an invisible grid with his fingertips, and dotted whitecaps on his waves of paint. He could do this.

  Ten minutes later he opened his eyes. He leaned forward, squinting to appraise his handiwork. His jaw dropped.

  The canvas before him looked like something a kindergartner had painted—or a chimpanzee. He gaped at his awful creation for half a minute, feeling the viscous bile of rage rise in his throat.

  Unable to stop himself, he raked the canvas off the easel and in one motion, slammed the palette down on the uneven wood planks. The safety glass fractured with an ear-splitting crrrack.

  Reed sank to the floor and lopped his forearms over bent knees. It was all over. He was finished.

  He hung his head in the crook of one elbow and watched the pine boards soak up greasy splotches of orange and blue.

  Chapter 3

  Olivia struggled to the surface, fending off suffocating blankets as her cell phone’s mechanical tone played a soundtrack to her dream. She was walking down the street of a ghost town straight out of a B-western. Half a dozen people loitered on the dusty boardwalks that ran in front of the dilapidated buildings on either side of the street. Faceless names, they waved and beckoned as she passed.

  There was Opal Something-or-other, the nice widow from church that Derek had told her about. The woman held out a cake, and though her face was obscured, Olivia somehow knew she was smiling. Derek’s boss, Jay Brooks, stood on the other side of the cow-town street. His face, too, was a blur, but he was built like Olivia’s Uncle Jay—same middle-age paunch and balding pate.

  The burr of her cell phone filled the room again, louder this time, and she came fully awake, groping for the phone on the bare floor beside her rented cot. She coughed and tried out her voice, the weird dream still thickening her brain. Without her reading glasses, she couldn’t make out the display screen.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello…” She waited several seconds before she folded the phone shut, annoyed. She pulled the blankets over her head and squeezed her eyelids together, trying to get back to the dream. Bizarre though it was, it had been interesting.

  She’d always found it fascinating to trace a dream to its cause. This one wasn’t too hard to figure out. Derek was already settled into the new world that would soon be hers. He’d talked enthusiastically about his new colleagues and the friendly neighbors in their subdivision. She had only names for these people Derek spoke of like old friends. And now that the day of her move was here, she felt more apprehensive than excited.

  Wide awake now, she threw off the covers and sat up on the side of the cot. She took her glasses from their perch on a stack of magazines that served as a nightstand, turned on the cell phone again and scrolled through the recent messages. It was Derek who’d called. At 6:55 a.m. Had she actually managed to sleep a full eight hours on this lumpy cot?

  She punched in his number only to get his voice mail. She sighed into the phone. “Hey, babe. Guess you’re in one of those important company meetings wowing all your co-workers…never mind that it’s Sunday morning.” She giggled at her own joke. “But, hey, call me when you have a sec. I packed the car last night so I just have to drop the keys by the office and return the cot and I’m outta here. I’ll call you when I get into town so you can guide me through the huge metropolis of Hanover Falls.” She gave a little laugh. He’d get a kick out of that. “Okay…see you in seven hours and fifty-six minutes.”

  Derek had mapped out the route for her and knew almost down to the minute how long it should take her—as long as she didn’t make too many stops or hit St. Louis at rush hour. Were there rush hours on Sunday? People racing to get to church? She doubted it.

  She stripped the cot and folded the bedding, putting
it in a neat stack by the door. When she’d wrestled the unwieldy bed into a neatly folded rectangle, she rolled it out to the front hall. It took her twenty minutes to dress and pack up the few belongings left in the house.

  She took one last walk through the town house. This was it. Her stomach churned. This time tomorrow she’d be a small-town housewife waking up in Hanover Falls.

  A summer storm bruised the Illinois sky as skyscrapers gave way to sprawling malls. By the time Olivia crossed into Missouri the sun glimmered on a lush green landscape dotted with farmhouses.

  Traffic was light until Olivia got on I-44, but even with quick stops for lunch and gas, Derek would be happy that she was only fifteen minutes behind his ETA. The city limit sign for Hanover Falls boasted a population of just over ten thousand. Olivia tried unsuccessfully to fathom that number compared to Chicago’s three million.

  As she tooled down the town’s Main Street, she had to admit this little burg had a lot of charm, set as it was in the foothills of the Ozarks. A nice place for a vacation getaway, but could a city girl like her be happy living here?

  She dialed Derek’s number. Correction: her number. Their number. It bothered her that she had trouble thinking of Hanover Falls as their new home. They were in this together, weren’t they? She wanted to believe it. Why couldn’t her heart seem to follow her head?

  The phone rang four times before the answering machine picked up. That man. Derek had been in the house less than a week and he already had an answering machine hooked up and operational. No doubt she’d walk into a fully functional kitchen and rooms with all the furniture in place. Fine. Just so he didn’t try to take over the decorating. That was her department and he knew it.

  Decorating the house was the only thing that would keep her sane in the weeks to come. It was bad enough that Derek had picked out the house without her. But she’d been swamped at work, determined to finish up two big projects for clients before leaving the city.