Blue Skies (28 page)

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded and smiled. “I’m
fine
. No big deal.”

Only it was a big deal. She didn’t
want
to be blind again. The thought of it made her want to run, but it was darkness she couldn’t escape.

As if he sensed her panic, Hank distracted her by carrying her to the bedroom and making passionate love to her. Afterward, Carly lay replete in his arms, loving him as she’d never loved anyone.

When he left a few minutes later, she stood at the window and peered out at the ranch, trying desperately to see the landscape. It was all a blur wherever she looked, but memory served her well. There were perils everywhere—unruly horses, uneven ground, irrigation ditches, ponds, and barbed wire. She could make her way safely right now if she exercised caution, but she knew that wouldn’t last for long.

The next morning Carly was awakened at six by a searing pain in her eyes. At first, she tried to go back to sleep, but the discomfort was so acute she couldn’t. Holding a hand cupped over her face to block out the light, she went to the medicine cabinet for her drops, but when she trailed her fingers over the shelf, she couldn’t find the bottle. She or Hank had evidently moved them.

Pain lanced into Carly’s eyes as she tried to read the labels on the containers in the cabinet.
Blurry shapes
. She could barely make out the containers, let alone the lettering.

Defeated, she closed the cabinet and rested her throbbing forehead against the cool mirror. The pain was too intense to ignore. Hank might not return to the house until lunchtime, and she couldn’t wait that long for her drops, not with her eyes hurting like this.

She stumbled to the kitchen. Closing her eyes, she dialed him on his cell phone. No answer. She got his voice mail instead. “Hi, this is Hank. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now.”

Carly realized that he’d probably left his cell phone in the truck. She tried to call the main house to ask if Molly could come down to help her, but there was no answer. She belatedly remembered that Jake and his wife had taken an unplanned trip to Portland last night, something about a problem at the investment firm that Molly now managed with admirable diligence.

There was no help for it, Carly decided. She’d have to get dressed and walk over to the stable. Hank had to come home and find her drops.

En route to the stable a few minutes later, Carly stepped off into a hole and wished for the first time in her life that she’d learned to use a cane. She’d always managed well in the city without one. Unfortunately, the ground surfaces weren’t as even or predictable here. She staggered but managed to catch her balance before she fell.

The close call made her stop and take a long look around her. Her bubble, she realized, had shrunk to a diameter of about three feet. She couldn’t see the ground at all. If she wandered from the beaten path, there were logs and stumps everywhere.

Fixing her gaze straight ahead, she moved cautiously toward the stable, feeling ahead of her with the toes of her shoes for obstacles in her path.
No problem.
She had skateboarded blind, she reminded herself. She could surely walk a hundred yards over slightly uneven ground without killing herself.

As she continued walking, she tried to listen for sounds, but all she heard was the whisper of the wind in the trees. She also counted her steps, straining to see the outline of the stable up ahead. She wasn’t surprised when she saw nothing. Three feet of clearance didn’t allow for much in terms of long distance vision. Feeling her way, she kept going, confident that she was headed in the right direction.

After a while, Carly’s confidence abruptly faded. She didn’t remember the stable being this far from the house.

“Hank?” she called.

No answer.

Growing frightened, she turned in a slow circle, squinting to see through the fog. Three feet in all directions, the world was blanketed in a gray blur. Overnight, her vision had grown much worse.

Calm. She had to stay calm.

“Hank!” she screamed, hoping he might hear her.

He didn’t respond. She stood still and listened. She heard no sound to indicate which direction the stable was. Big problem. That meant she’d veered off course somehow, and she no longer knew for certain where she was.

She froze in her tracks and tried to remember exactly how many steps she’d taken. There’d been a time when she’d never taken a single step without automatically keeping count. How, in so short a time, had she come to depend so much on her eyes that she no longer did that?

Okay. Deep breaths. Stay calm. She couldn’t have walked that far. She had to be standing out in the open where people working outside could probably see her. The smart thing to do was to stand fast and yell. Sooner or later, someone would hear her, and she’d be fine.

“Hank!” she screamed. “Hank!”

Carly soon lost track of how many times she yelled her husband’s name.
Nothing
. Her voice went scratchy from the strain of screaming. Her eyes hurt. She needed her drops. She passed a trembling hand over her face, wondering how long she’d be left to stand there. An hour, two? She needed something for the pain in her eyes
now
. She’d struggled all her life to be self-sufficient. Now, in a twinkling, she’d become a needy, helpless person, someone who couldn’t manage to do the simplest things without help. If she continued in this vein, Hank would detest being married to her within a month, and she would also hate herself.

From off to her left, Carly heard a horse whinny. Hope welled within her. She listened a moment longer and was rewarded by the sound of a hoof striking metal.
The stable
. She turned in that direction and cautiously set off again, toeing the way in front of her so she wouldn’t stumble over something and fall. “Hank!” she yelled again. “Hank! Are you there?”

When she’d taken fifty steps, she stopped.
Too far
. Her heart was pounding. Her body had gone clammy with sweat. She listened for the horse again. Soon it chuffed. She corrected her direction and set off, walking more slowly now, her movements jerky with trepidation. Was there barbed wire ahead of her? Afraid of running into something, she began patting the air in front of her as well as feeling with her feet.

“Hank! Answer me!” she cried. “Hank!”

She stepped forward again, and nothing was there. She felt herself falling and started to scream. The cry was cut short. Icy water engulfed her. The shock of it made her gasp as she went under. Up her nose, down her windpipe.
Oh, God
. She flailed in a panic and shot back to the surface, choking.
The pond
. It was her worst nightmare, a page from the past. The blind girl no one really wanted, fighting frantically not to go under.

She had to swim toward the bank, but she’d lost all sense of direction. Her water-soaked clothes weighted her down. She paddled in a panic to stay afloat, first one way, then another. Where was the damned bank?

She remembered Hank saying that the pond was ten feet deep at the outer edges, twenty at the center. She swam one way, then another, clawing at the water and open air, hoping to close her hands over something solid. Cold talons of terror squeezed her heart. Water, the thing she feared most.

She had to keep her head, she thought.
Think
. She’d just stepped off into the pond. If she swam in an ever-widening circle, she’d surely find the bank. She couldn’t be that far from shore. Dog-paddling, she struck off, praying she actually was swimming in a circle. In water, she grew disoriented when she couldn’t see. It diminished her ability to hear, made her feel weightless.

Circling . . . circling.
Soon, she grew exhausted. Her clothing clung to her arms and legs, making them feel leaden. She would go under soon.

“Hank!” she shrieked. Water got into her mouth, nearly strangling her. After coughing to clear her windpipe, she called his name again, hoping and praying that he would hear her. “Hank!”

Dimly she realized that she’d begun to sink. The waterline lapped at her mouth. She fought to keep her chin up, but she’d never been a strong swimmer, and exhaustion made her movements sluggish.

She slipped under and took in water. A tight, airless pounding began in her head. She struggled back to the surface, fighting to breathe.
Oh, God—oh, God
. Once again, she slipped under. Searing pain in her windpipe. A horrible burning shot up the back of her throat and into her nose.

Drowning. She was drowning.

Chapter Twenty

H
ank turned off the faucet and cocked his head. Glancing at Shorty, sitting on a milk stool outside the stall, he said, “Did you hear something?”

The sixty-five-year-old wrangler glanced up from the bridle he was repairing and cupped a hand behind his ear. “Come again?”

Hank stepped out into the center aisle. “I thought I heard someone yelling.”

“Could be. We got nigh onto twenty men workin’ here.”

Hank had an eerie feeling. He strode to the open doorway. Nothing, not even a hired hand. Even so, he felt uneasy. Glancing back at Shorty, he said, “I’m going over to the cabin to check on Carly.”

“See ya this afternoon sometime,” Shorty said with a toothless grin.

Hank snorted with disgust and headed for home. By the time he reached the house, he was smiling. Maybe, he thought lasciviously, he wouldn’t return to the stable until afternoon. Let Shorty put that in his pipe and smoke it.

“Carly?” he called as he let himself in. “Yo, sweetheart. You awake?”

He covered the distance to the bedroom in four long strides and peeked in the doorway. No Carly. He checked in the bathroom. Not there, either. That was strange. Normally she didn’t venture from the house alone unless she came to the stable.

He stepped back out on the porch. “Carly! You out here, honey?”

No answer.

He stood there for a moment, searching the terrain with growing alarm.
Shit
. If she’d wandered off, could she still see well enough to find her way home? He rubbed the back of his neck, panning the landscape.

And then he saw it—something white in the pond. His heart damned near stuttered to a stop. He leaped off the porch and hit the dirt at a dead run.
Sweet Jesus
. Something white—in the pond.
No. Please God, no
.

His boots pounded the dirt, each impact jarring his body. As he ran, Hank kept his gaze fixed on the spot of white in the water, and he knew long before he finally reached the bank that it was his wife, floating facedown, her slender arms flung out from her body.

He didn’t stop to take off his boots or hat when he reached the bank. He hit the water in a running dive, the momentum of his thrust carrying him halfway to her before he ever took a stroke. “Carly!” he cried as he covered the remaining distance. “Oh, Jesus!”

He caught her in his arms. She was limp. When he rolled her over, he saw that her lips were purple and her face had an awful, bluish cast to it. Frantic, he swam to shore with her caught in the circle of one arm.

Once on the bank, he went to work, shoving on her chest, breathing into her mouth, and praying mindlessly.
Please, God—please, God—please, God
. It seemed to him that hours passed.
Dead
. She’d tried to tell him. Oh,
God
. She’d tried to make him understand how dangerous it was for her here.

Hank sobbed and grabbed her shoulders. “Breathe!” He lifted her halfway to a sitting position, shouting her name.
Please, God.
He couldn’t live without her. “Breathe, Carly. Don’t you dare die on me! Breathe, damn it.”

He lowered her back to the ground to share his breath with her again. Then he pumped her heart.
Nothing.
He hadn’t checked his watch. He had no idea how long he’d been trying to resuscitate her. One minute, ten? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop.

To stop meant the unthinkable—that she was gone.

Suddenly, her body jerked, and a huge gush of water shot from her mouth. Hank reared back, expecting her to suddenly open her eyes and start breathing like drowning victims always did in the movies. Instead she went absolutely motionless again and still looked dead. He was about to resume resuscitation when water spewed from her lips again.

Then she choked and began struggling to breathe, her lungs making horrible, rasping sounds. Hank rolled her onto her side. “Thank God. Thank
God
.”

Shorty appeared at Hank’s side.

“Bring my truck around! I have to get her to the hospital. Hurry, Shorty!”

As the old man raced away, Carly drew her knees to her chest. One arm hugging her waist, she coughed up more water. Then she began breathing easier. Hank stroked her wet hair with shaking hands.

“Oh, God, Carly. Oh, God.”

She stirred to look up at him. “Hank?” she croaked.

He leaned closer, touching her sweet face, which was finally getting some color back. Her lips were still blue, but even as he watched, he saw pink rising to the surface.

“Don’t try to talk, honey. I’ll get you to the hospital. You’ll be all right.”

She closed her eyes. “My baby. Oh, Hank, my baby.”

Until that moment, Hank hadn’t even thought of the baby. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “The baby will be fine.”

Even as he said the words, Hank wondered if it might be dead. He had no idea what a near drowning might do to a first-trimester fetus.

“Your wife and baby are fine,” an ER physician told Hank a little over an hour later. “Carly’s lungs are clear. She’s lucid. And the baby’s heartbeat is strong.”

“Thank God,” Mary Coulter whispered.

Hank was dimly aware of his parents sitting nearby. Everyone in his family, except for Jake and Molly, who were out of town, had rushed to the hospital to be with him, and they’d waited in an agony of suspense for word of his wife and child’s condition.

“Thank God,” Hank echoed. He dropped onto a waiting-room chair, his legs suddenly so weak they wouldn’t hold him up. He sat forward, resting his head on the heels of his hands. “Thank God,” he whispered raggedly. “My fault, all my fault.” He realized he was talking to himself and glanced up. “Thank you, doctor.”

The physician, a wiry little man in a white jacket, warm-up pants, and golf shoes, patted Hank’s shoulder. “They’re both ready to go home, Mr. Coulter, and you can thank God and yourself for that, not me. You’re the one who kept your head and did what needed doing.”

“That’s right,” Hank’s father seconded. “You kept your head and saved her life.”

Hank didn’t see it that way. If not for his stupidity, Carly never would have fallen in the pond to start with.

When Carly emerged from the ER, she smiled wanly at him. Her clothes were still slightly damp, and her hair hung in kinky ropes over her shoulders, reminding him of drizzled honey, but he’d never seen anyone on earth more beautiful.

“Hey,” he said, pushing unsteadily to his feet.

She walked straight into his arms. Hank locked her in his embrace and buried his face in her hair. Chilling terror sluiced down his spine every time he thought of how she’d looked after he pulled her from the water.
Dead
. He’d come so close to losing her.

Hank was glad of the fact that his family had come. They all rushed forward to hug her and say how glad they were that she was all right. It gave him a chance to back away, collect himself, and paste on a smile. She’d felt so fragile when he held her in his arms.

All the way home, Hank kept remembering how she’d looked, her body so lifeless, her face so blue. Guilt squeezed his chest, making it difficult to breathe. “I’ll fix things somehow. No worries. I’ll build fences and stuff. I’ll fix it so you never get lost out there again.”

She just nodded and said nothing.

When they got back to the ranch, Hank needed some time by himself. After getting her into dry clothes and safely put to bed, he crept from the cabin and went to the stable, where he sat on a hay bale and agonized over how close he’d come to losing her. Jake came out and sat with him.

“It wasn’t your fault, Hank. Would you stop beating up on yourself?”

“It
was
my fault. She tried to tell me she’d have special needs. I was so cocksure I could handle everything and take care of her. Now I’m scared to death I’ll overlook something else, that she’ll get hurt and I’ll lose her.”

“Have you talked to her about this?”

“No,” Hank said hollowly. “But I will.”

When Hank got back to the house, he thought Carly was asleep. She wasn’t. She heard him sit down in the living room. After several minutes of silence, he emitted a broken, masculine sob—the sound so soft she might have imagined it. Then she heard him whisper, “Oh,
God,
oh,
God
. I had no idea. No
idea
. What if I can’t do this?”

Carly huddled on her side. Scalding tears filled her eyes. She’d told Hank a dozen times that he had no clue what he was getting into with her. Now reality had finally been driven home.

He came to her later. After taking her into his arms, he promised over and over that he’d make the ranch safe for her. “I’ll start on it first thing tomorrow, and I won’t rest until everything is absolutely safe, I swear.”

Despite all his reassurances, he failed to do the one thing that might have eased Carly’s aching heart. He didn’t make love to her. When she tried to encourage him, he caught her hand and drew it to his lips. “Not tonight, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I just—can’t.”

It was the first time since the night at the lake that he’d turned away from her. Carly huddled on her side, her heart splintering into a hundred lacerating pieces.

True to his word, Hank was at The Works, the Coulter ranch supply store, when Zeke opened the doors the next morning.

“Hey, little brother,” Zeke said with a smile. “You’re in town early today.”

“I need wire and posts,” Hank told him. “A shit load. Carly’s scared to death. And who can blame her? I’ve got to make it safe for her out there, Zeke.”

“Her vision is getting that bad already?”

Hank nodded. “Seems a little worse with each passing day. She can still see up close, but I think even that’s getting blurry.”

When Hank returned to the ranch an hour later, Levi met him just outside the stable. The older man scratched his head and shuffled his feet, clearly at a loss for words. When he finally found his voice, Hank could barely credit what he said.

“Carly left,” Levi said flatly. “With that friend of hers. Bess, I think’s her name. Looked to me like she took most of her things with her.”

Hank rushed to the cabin. Irrational though he knew it was, he hoped to see Carly at the kitchen table, devouring her morning sickness cure. She wasn’t there. As he closed the door, an eerie feeling of emptiness assailed him. The cabin never felt this way when she was there.

Not wanting to believe that Levi was correct about Carly leaving him, he moved quickly through the house. A glance into the front closet told him her clothes were missing. In the back bedroom, he discovered that most of the baby clothes and blankets had been removed from the bureau.

En route back to the kitchen, he saw a letter lying on the table. Feeling drained and strangely detached, he sank onto a chair to read it. Her lines were hopelessly crooked, but the writing was legible.

Dear Hank: It’s difficult for me to write, so I’ll make this short. I need to live in the city where there are sidewalks and crosswalks and public transportation systems. You need to live where you are, close to the land, working with your horses. I’ll always remember you here, in your element, my handsome prince in riding boots with a Stetson tipped low to shade his eyes. For a while, you made all my dreams come true. Unfortunately, you were only on loan. Just know that for a time, I was happier than I ever thought I could be, and that I’ll treasure my memories of you forever.

She had tried to draw a happy face, which was lopsided, with one eye outside the circle.
I’ll be in touch. In time, when we’ve both distanced ourselves from this a bit, maybe we can see our way clear to being good friends. For the baby’s sake, we should aim for that.

She ended with a flourish.
Yours always, Carly
.

Hank tossed the letter onto the table and just sat there, staring through tears at nothing.
Gone
. She was gone. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t wrap his mind around that. Even worse, he couldn’t contemplate a future without her.

Late that afternoon, Bess answered her phone on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

Hank swallowed to steady his voice. “Hey, Bess. It’s Hank.”

Long silence. Then she finally said, “Hey, Hank. What a surprise.”

He smiled sadly. “I know you came out and picked her up, Bess. She told me so in her letter.”

“Okay. So you know. End of subject.”

Hank sank onto a chair. “You have to tell me where she is.”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t have to tell you that.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Let me put it another way. I’ll find her, one way or another. Be a friend. Save me a lot of trouble and money.”

“I can’t. I promised her. I betrayed her once. I won’t again. I can’t help but think that maybe she’s right this time.”

“How the hell can you say that? I love her, damn it, and she loves me. We belong together. I’ll also remind you that she’s carrying my child.”

“Calm down, Hank.”

“I won’t calm down. My wife left me! She went to her father’s, didn’t she?”

Silence.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Hank tightened his grip on the receiver. “Damn it, Bess. Don’t play these games. Is she going to be happy away from me? Ask yourself that.”

“No, she won’t be happy,” Bess admitted, “but at least she’ll be safe, and so will you. Sometimes you have to love someone enough to walk away. Wouldn’t you do whatever it took to stop her from throwing away everything that mattered to her?”

“She is what matters to me, Bess. She hasn’t saved me, she’s destroyed me.”

“You know what I mean. We’re talking thousands, maybe over a hundred grand to make that place safe for her. How in the hell can you cough that up?”

Hank laughed bitterly. “Oh, come on. It won’t cost that much.”

“Want to bet? You can’t just drive some stakes and string some rope. You’ll have to network the place with concrete paths, bordered with metal rails. There should be intercom systems everywhere so she can call the stable, the cabin, or the main house in case of an emergency. And you need hurricane fencing around the pastures, not barbed wire. I could go on and on, and that’s just improvements to the land. She also needs handrails on all the porches, and the inside of the house has to be arranged just for her. A hundred grand isn’t really a stretch. It could cost a hell of a lot more than that.”