Blind Faith (5 page)

Will didn’t say anything, but if she
had
been able to see his face, Serena would have known just how shaken he was by what she’d told him.
 
That familiar ache he always felt when he thought of what she
went
through that night was mingled with rage and guilt and an infuriating sense of helplessness.
 
He didn’t think about what he was doing or how she would react; he simply responded by wrapping his arm Serena’s waist and pulling her back so that she was sitting alongside him.
 
Tucked in the protective curve of his arm with her head resting on his shoulder, she let out a soft sigh before continuing in a subdued tone.

“I can hear them laughing and making jokes while they try to…hold me down.
 
Their words are slurred because they’ve been drinking and the smell of beer is so overpowering I start to gag.
 
I’m crying and trying to scream but something is covering
my mouth, a hand maybe, and all I can think of is how mad McKinley
is
going to be when she finds out the dress I borrowed is ruined.
”

Serena closed her eyes.
 
It felt nice to be curled up next to Will, to feel so safe and warm.
 
If only she could hold on to it, draw strength from it, she wouldn’t have to be such a frightened little coward anymore.
 

“Is that where the nightmare ends?”

“Sometimes.
 
It usually ends when I’m suddenly all alone in that…place, but I don’t really mind because the pain has stopped.
 
It’s pitch black, but I don’t mind that either.
 
I like it in the dark because I can’t see their faces.
 
As long as I stay in the dark, I never have to see the way other people look at me when they find out what I’ve done.”

“What
you’ve
done?”
 
Will pulled her more firmly against his side.
 
“My God, is that what you think, that it was somehow
your
fault?”

“Wasn’t it?”
 
Her voice grew hard, cold,
accusatory
.
 
“I knew all the kids from school partied at the caves so they could sneak off and make out.
 
I knew there would be alcohol and that sometimes things got out of hand.
 
I wore one of McKinley’s dresses, put on make-up, and even curled my hair because I
wanted
the boys to notice me.
 
I was tired of McKinley getting all the attention, and just once I wanted someone to look at
me
and think I was pretty.”

Will’s throat constricted and his eyes stung, the pain inside his chest so acute it took him a moment to push past it.
 
“Serena…you were always pretty; maybe not in the same flashy way as McKinley, but you were very pretty.
 
At fifteen, it’s normal to want boys to see you as a young woman instead of a little girl.”

“Yes, but I…”

“Serena, every female at that party probably spent hours picking out the right outfit and doing her hair and nails, and I can promise you most of them wore clothes that were a hell of a lot more revealing than what you had on.
 
What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter if you knew some of the kids would be drinking or that you dressed up so the boys would notice you.
 
They had no right to violate you that way, and you damn well didn’t ask for it or deserve what happened.”

She considered what he’d said but wasn’t convinced he was right.
 
“You honestly think any of those boys would have given me a second glance if I
had
worn blue jeans and a t-shirt like I normally did?”

“What I think is that they were a bunch of vultures who were just waiting for someone they knew was young and naïve enough to go into that cave with them.
 
How could you possibly know they were capable of doing something like that?
 
You went to school with
them, passed them every day in the halls, and to you they weren’t strangers so there wasn’t any reason not to trust them.”

The guilt that she
had
steeped on her own shoulders over the years shifted as the truth of what he’d said began to sink in, but she didn’t want to analyze it right now.
 
She didn’t want to analyze the other questions swirling around in
her
mind just yet either; like why the heaviness in her heart seemed a little lighter or why she hadn’t felt the desperate need to physically separate herself from him when Will had drawn her up close his side.
 
Serena wondered how her parents would feel if she told them Will had done more for her in
the
past hour than all the brilliant therapists they’d sent her to.
 

“I think you missed your calling,” she finally said.
 
“You should have studied to be a psychiatrist.”

“I’m not sure I would have been so astute seven years ago
,
but I guess life has taught me a thing or two along the way.”

Serena smiled.
 
“Like being a good listener and learning how to coax secrets out of people they haven’t shared with anyone else before?”

“Yep, I’ve become quite an amazing man,” he quipped.

Will
was
jesting, but her response was sincere.
 
“Yes, you really are quite amazing.”

Will’s heart tripped, and the urge to kiss her was too overpowering at that moment for him to resist much longer.
 
“I better get back to my room.
 
Morning is going to come entirely too soon.
 
Are you going to be okay if I leave you now?”

“There won’t be any more bad dreams tonight.”
 

On impulse, he pressed his lips to her forehead before slipping his arm out from
around
her and climbing off the bed.
 
He leaned down and patted the dog’s head then said good-night to Serena and headed for the door.
 
Turning to take one last look at her, Will was filled with a lightheaded giddiness to see a soft smile playing on her lips.

“Don’t forget to turn off the light,” she said, then laughed because she
knew he was baffled
as to why a blind woman cared if the light was off or on.
 
“It bothers Rufus
.  H
e’ll flop around, deliberately making little grunting noises until I get up to turn it off.”

“Sure thing.
 
Good-night, Serena.”

“Will?
 
Thanks for being my sounding board.”

“No problem, that’s what friends are for.”

“Oh, and Will?
 
If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t at the end of Melinda Sue’s list of boys to kiss.
 
I overheard Sawyer and Anthony joking about someone named Nathanial Torrance who never even got an invite to take lessons.”

“That’s just great,” he snorted.
 
“I beat out Nate the nose picker.
 
Thanks for the ego booster,
friend
.”

Will could still hear Serena’s muffled giggles half way up the stairs to the second floor.
 
He paused for a few minutes at the top of the landing, letting the sound of it chase away his own doubts and fears.
 
He’d finally broken through that cement barrier she protected herself with and gotten her to divulge something she
had
kept locked inside for God knows how many years.
 
And she hadn’t drawn away from him, physically or mentally, which was a major triumph all its own.
 
Oh, Will wasn’t kidding himself.
 
He still had a long row to hoe, but it was a start.
 
Now all he had to do was keep chipping away until the wall around her heart came tumbling down, and when it did…

He stopped himself cold.
 
There could be no future for them without facing the past first.
 
It was going to be rough, and maybe in the end it would tear them apart instead of binding them to one another, but they
had
both hidden from it long enough.
 
Tonight he’d caught a glimpse of the torment Serena suffered from every day of her life
.  I
t was only going to get worse before it got better, but they
had
taken that first step together and it gave him hope.
 

“I can do this,” he murmured as he crawled into bed.
 
He
had
to do this, and he would…one day at a time.

After Will had gone, Serena retrieved the bedding she’d kicked off in her sleep and remade the bed then slipped beneath the covers.
 
She was emotionally drained but in a good way, like when she sat down and had a good cry after one of her dark episodes.
 
It was a cleansing of sorts and she always felt better afterwards, as if she
had
purged herself of some invisible force that kept nudging her towards a complete melt down.

But when morning rolled around and she had time to reflect on the things she’d divulged to Will, Serena began to doubt the wisdom of exposing so much of herself to him.
 
The last thing she wanted was for Will to feel sorry for her, or worse, start treating her like an emotional cripple.
 
It was bad enough when her own family did it; carefully avoiding subjects that might trigger memories of that night, always trying to be bright and cheerful to keep her from worrying about them, and praising her for being able to do things that were far from extraordinary even for a blind person.
 
Managing to get food onto a fork and into her mouth without slopping it down the front of her blouse was hardly a skill that required her sight
.  T
he way the members of her family carried on about such trivial accomplishments, Serena was surprised they hadn’t presented her with a medal.

Oh, she knew she sounded like an ungrateful wretch, and even while their behavior irritated her at times
,
she loved them all the more for it.
 
It’s just that she wanted to them to treat her like they treated each other, to be included in the ups as well as the downs in their lives, and even to get in an argument now and then like normal siblings did.
 
But that would never happen
,
of course, because she
wasn’t
normal, was she?
 

Serena was
special
, different from her brothers and sister because of the emotional scars that had been inflicted, different because of the dark world she now lived in.
 
What they didn’t understand was that coddling her and keeping her wrapped in a protective bubble only made her more vulnerable and uncertain about stepping out into the real world.
 
By letting her withdraw from other people and not forcing, or at least encouraging her to venture outside the house and the security of her family, they
had
allowed her to wallow in her own fear and self-loathing for years.

It was her aunt Rose that finally broke the cycle and sparked some life back into her.
 
“We need to have a talk, kiddo,” Rose told her one day when she’d stopped by to take Serena to lunch.

“Sounds serious.”

“It is.”
 
Rose paused until the waiter set their plates in front of them.
 
“Linguine at twelve o’clock,
vegies
at twelve thirty, bread at forty-five.”

Serena grinned.
 
“Nothing at twelve fifteen?”

“Yeah,” Rose eyed Serena’s plate, “a sprig of something green that looks decidedly uneatable.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“The cocoon you’re living in and how we
are
going to pry you out of it.”

“Wh-what?”

“You heard me,” Rose’s voice was firm.
 
“It’s called tough love and you’re about to get a h
ealthy
dose of it so listen up.
 
You were always shy, I’ll give you that, but who wouldn’t be with a stage hog like McKinley for a sister?
 
And don’t bother defending her,” she cut Serena off before she’d even opened her mouth, “I love McKinley to death but she’s a hedonistic drama queen who thinks her looks will carry her through life.
 
You
have a heart, Serena; you just need to remember how to use it.”

“That’s not fair,” Serena sulked as she twirled her fork in the linguine noodles.
 
“You know I can’t…that relating to other people is difficult ever since…it happened.
 
And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m blind so it’s not as if I can go out and meet new people whenever I want to.”
 
She swallowed hard, hating how feeble the excuses sounded even to her own ears.
 
“Besides, I’m happy with my life just the way it is.”

“Are you?
 
Because I’m
not
blind, kiddo, and I don’t see a happy person when I look at you.
 
What I see is that same lost little girl you were seven years ago
.  A
nd if you’re still stumbling around in the dark
,
it’s not because you can’t see the world around you, it’s because you won’t even acknowledge that there
is
a world around you.”

“Of course I acknowledge it,” Serena snapped.
 
“I’m a teacher
. 
I go out in it every day.”

Rose’s tone was just as sharp as hers had been.
 
“And just what are you teaching your students, Serena?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, are you teaching them that they
are
handicapped?
 
Because they are, or they will be by the time the school year ends if they continue learning from you.
 
Serena…
you
are the example they
are
being given as to the quality of life a blind person can have, and it’s not enough to pass off what you’ve accomplished in your career as the brass ring.”

“I’m proud of myself for getting through college and becoming a teacher,” Serena replied stiffly.
 
“My students like me, they listen to me…”

“That’s right, they listen to you
because
they adore you, but what are you telling them?
 
You told me that being blind has sharpened your other senses, that you can hear things sighted people filter out.
 
Don’t you think your students can hear the sadness and defeat
in your voice?
 
You think they can’t tell that your attitude towards life stinks to high Heaven when they hear you shuffling across the floor instead of walking like you have a purpose?”

Serena wished she could deny it, but there was too much truth in what Rose said.
 
“I…I never thought about it before.”

“Damn right you haven’t, but your sweet Aunt Rose is going to make sure you think about it a lot from now on.
 
The first thing we have to do is move you out of that daycare center you live in so you can take care of yourself and start acting like a responsible adult.”

“Rose…”

“I have a rental house that would be perfect for you.
 
I
would
have to make a few modifications
,
but the floor plan is simple and you
would
have it aced in no time.”

“Rose, I really…”

“Think about it, Serena.
 
You would have room to breathe, to do as you pleased without Leslie hovering over you all the time.
 
I know how much you love to cook; wouldn’t it be nice to make your own meals without someone charging in and taking over because it’s
unsafe
for you to do it?
 
You
would
learn how to rely on yourself, and I’m not talking about cooking or doing laundry. I’m talking about taking control of your own life, about climbing out of that grave you’ve dug for yourself before it’s too late.
 
I want to hear you laugh again, Serena, to see you smile, really smile, with your whole heart in it.”

“How do I do that?
 
I’m scared,” Serena admitted through a mist of tears.

“I know you are, honey, but you have to fight it with everything you’ve got.
 
Happiness isn’t something anyone can give you; it’s something you have to find for yourself.
 
It’s inside of you, in your heart and your mind, and if you don’t let it out of that cold, dark place you’ve banished it to…” Rose’s voice hitched.
 
She stopped for a moment, drawing in a deep breath to steady herself before continuing.
 
“I love you, kiddo, but I can’t just stand by and watch the life being drained out of you by an overindulgent family who thinks the only way to keep you safe is to shelter you from your own feelings.”

In her heart, Serena knew her aunt was right
,
but that did very little too alleviate the mounting anxiety when she considered what living on her own entail
ed
.
 
Was she ready to let go of the security her family offered?
 
Her stomach churned and her throat was suddenly so constricted she had trouble swallowing the piece of bread she’d been chewing on.
 
The inane thought flitted through her head that this must be what a baby bird feels like right before its mother pushes it out of the nest and sends it plunging over the side.
 
Except Leslie Cross wasn’t pushing her daughter out of the nest and she never would, and neither would her father or siblings.

“I want to fly,” she whispered.

“You want to…did you say you want to
fly
?”

“Yes,"
 
she said with a determined lift of her chin.
 
"I want to spread my wings and fly.”

“Well it’s about damn time,” Rose said, her own laugh
t
er sobering a few short seconds later.
 
“
Ooooh
, your mother is going to
kill
me when she finds out I’ve convinced you to move out.”

Serena finished getting dressed, the memory of Rose’s defiant confession to her parents a few days later vividly imprinted in her mind.
 
Her mother had been furious, her father more worried than angry, but Rose stood her ground.
 
It was Rose’s dogged determination to save her niece from being smothered by her parents’ love that gave Serena the strength to stick to her decision, and a few weeks later she moved out.

Now she was in danger of letting herself slip back into the role of a timid little mouse by confiding in Will about her nightmares and dredging up memories that were best forgotten.
 
She
had
come too far to let that happen and it was up to her to safeguard the confidence she’d spent the past six months building up.
 
Opening up old wounds would be counterproductive
,
and letting Will see just how ugly those wounds were would only encourage his pity, and that was something she simply couldn’t bear.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                          
***

Will noticed it right away.
 
Whatever bond they’d shared the night before had vanished with the morning sun and it hit him like a physical blow
.  H
e’d been so sure things would be different between them.
 
He’d swallowed his pride for her, told her that embarrassing story about Melinda Sue because he knew it would make her laugh, and now Serena was behaving as if they were practically strangers.
 

Oh, she
was
pleasant enough when she joined him in the kitchen for breakfast, but it seemed forced, guarded, as if she
had
drawn a boundary line in their relationship that she’d forbidden herself to cross.
 
Even Rufus seemed a little leery of him, which only reinforced his belief Serena was stressing about something.
 
The dog was extremely sensitive to her moods and it hadn’t taken Will long to realize he could pick up more about what Serena was feeling from Rufus than he could from her.

“I’m not much of a cook,” he said as he cleared away his breakfast dishes, “but if you’re feeling brave, I think I c
an
manage to grill a few steaks for dinner tonight.”