Blue Skies (4 page)

Being at Chaps again brought Hank’s memories of Charlie into clearer focus. Glancing at the table where she’d been sitting last night, he recalled her saying she didn’t know how to dance. At the time, he’d believed she meant country-western dancing, but now he wondered if she’d ever danced at all. The same went for a score of other things. At one point, he’d worried that she wasn’t accustomed to drinking hard liquor. He’d also noticed a shy hesitancy in her response when he kissed her. The memory made him cringe. Where the hell had she been all her life, in a convent?

Hank sorely regretted now that he’d had so much to drink. If he’d been sober, he would have realized something was off plumb and never would have touched her.

If wishes were horses, poor men would ride.
He’d gotten sloppy drunk, and he
had
touched her. That was the bottom line.

Hank made the rounds, stopping at first one table, then another. At each, he launched into the same spiel, reminding people of the blonde he’d been with last night and asking if anyone knew her. Unfortunately, no one he spoke with, including Gary, the bartender, had ever seen Charlie before. Hoping she might return to the honky-tonk, Hank left his name and phone number so Gary could contact him.

As Hank left the bar, he paused just inside the door to look back at the room. For months now, this place had been like a second home to him. Now he wondered why he’d come there so much. It was strange how quickly a man’s tastes could change.

As he stepped outside and moved past the light of the overhead sign into the darkness, he stopped to stare at the sky. Like diamonds on black velvet, thousands of stars twinkled down at him. As a boy, he’d liked to sit on the porch with his grandfather McBride to stargaze. The old man had often challenged Hank to choose the brightest star, look away, and then try to find it again. That endeavor had always ended in failure.

Hank feared that finding Charlie again might prove to be just as difficult. Crystal Falls and the outlying areas had a population of 150,000. Without a last name to go on, he had no idea how to even start searching for her. To complicate matters even more, Charlie might be a nickname.

Hank’s only hope was that she would return to Chaps, and that was a long shot. It was up to Fate from this point forward, he guessed. He’d done everything he could to find her.

Chapter Three

T
hat night, Hank dreamed he was an old man, still working on the Lazy J ranch. In the beginning, it was a nice dream. He was forking hay into a stall, and morning sunlight poured in from the adjoining paddock to warm his shoulders. The smell of horses was all around him. The shuffling of hooves and the soft blowing of the mares soothed him.

As is often the way in dreams, Hank had no recollection of his life, only a sense that he was old and that he’d lived it well, working with horses, as he’d been born to do. He had a wonderful sense of rightness and peace.

Then he heard a car pull up outside. Straightening from his work, he cocked an ear and listened. An awful sense of dread filled him. He didn’t know why. He leaned the pitchfork against the wall and walked up the center aisle, his trepidation mounting. On some level, he knew he was dreaming, and he told himself to wake up, but his mind insisted on playing out the scene.

Outside the stable, Hank saw a tall, dark-haired young man standing by a dusty red car. At the sound of Hank’s shuffling footsteps, he turned and blasted Hank with blazing blue eyes.
Coulter eyes
. Hank had never seen the younger man, but somehow he knew this was his son. Hank judged him to be in his mid-twenties. That was about right. Twenty-five years had passed since that fateful night at Chaps when Hank had deflowered a virgin and passed out before he could learn her last name.

“Can I help you?” Hank asked.

The younger man ran a searing gaze from Hank’s soiled boots up to his face. “I’m looking for Hank Coulter.”

Hank sensed the young man’s anger and knew it would be unleashed the moment he identified himself. “You’ve found him.”

The kid knotted his fists and stepped forward. “You son of a
bitch
!”

Hank saw the blow coming, but he wasn’t fast enough to deflect it. When he hit the dirt, he lay there, blinking and trying to see, thinking stupidly that his son threw a hell of a punch. A regular chip off the old Coulter block, sure as hell.

“I thought I’d stop by and introduce myself. My name’s Hank. My mother named me after the bastard who sired me and never gave me his last name.”

Hank jerked awake and bolted upright.
A dream, only a dream
. But it had seemed so real. His body was drenched with sweat. He fought his way free of the clinging sheets and sprang from the bed. Gulping for breath, he stood at the center of the room, his heart pounding wildly.

Slowly reality closed in around him. He sank onto the edge of the bed and rested his head on his hands. Memories flashed in his mind like film clips.
Charlie, lying beneath him
. At the last second, when he’d realized she was a virgin, he’d pulled back, but he knew damned well his swimmers hadn’t.

He had a horrible feeling that the dream had been prophetic, that he’d done the unthinkable last night and fathered an illegitimate child.

Still groggy from sleep, Carly sat in a living room easy chair, her legs tucked beneath her. In the predawn gloom, there were few sounds coming through the walls and ceiling from the surrounding apartments. Not even the wind chimes on the front porch of the ground floor unit were making any noise. Over the last three weeks since she and Bess had rented this place, Carly had grown accustomed to the musical tinkling. In a couple of hours, many of the neighbors would start stirring, some leaving for work, others emerging to walk their small dogs on the grassy center common. But for now, Carly felt like the only person in the world who was awake. She couldn’t even hear any cars passing by on the street, which was usually busy during the day.

She’d lighted a candle to chase away the shadows and the bad dream that had awakened her. Somehow the flickering glow didn’t make her feel much better. Visions of Hank Coulter’s face kept slipping into her mind, and each time, a burn of humiliation mixed with shame pooled like acid in her belly.

She decided a glass of milk might soothe her stomach and her nerves. Not wishing to awaken Bess, who had always been a light sleeper, she tiptoed into the adjoining kitchen. She’d just gotten a glass from the cupboard and started pouring when Bess’s voice startled her.

“What’re you doing?”

Carly jerked and sloshed milk. “Bess, what are you doing up?”

Her friend flipped on the fluorescent ceiling lights. Carly winced and narrowed her eyes. “Do we have to have those on?”

Bess muttered something about living like vampires and plunged the kitchen back into semidarkness. “How long before your eyes heal enough for us to turn on the lights like normal people?”

“A few more days. I know it’s the pits, but bright lights are still pure murder.” Carly resumed pouring the milk. “I’m sorry I woke you. We need to ask the landlord to fix the refrigerator door. It creaks.”

“Get your finger out of the glass. You aren’t blind anymore.”

Carly curled her offending finger around the outside of the tumbler.

“You can’t train your visual cortex unless you use it, you know.”

“You’re cranky. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“Because I’m awake now, thanks to you.” Bess stifled a yawn. “You never answered my question. Why are you up so early?”

Carly returned the milk to the refrigerator and mopped up the counter. “What time is it?”

Bess glanced at her watch. “Not quite five. This is the second night in a row that you’ve paced the floors. What’s the matter, Carls? If you need to talk a little more about what happened the other night, I don’t mind listening.”

One hand pressed to her still tender abdomen, Carly grabbed her glass of milk. She circled her friend and returned to her chair in the living room. Trailing behind her, Bess headed for the adjacent sofa. After plopping on a cushion, she drew up her legs and hugged her ankles. In the candlelight, with faint streaks of dawn washing the window behind her, her dark hair looked like a drape of silk lying over her shoulders.

Normally, Carly could confide almost anything to Bess, but certain details about the incident with Hank Coulter were different somehow—intensely personal and, even worse, horribly humiliating. She set her glass aside and tugged at the hem of her nightshirt. “I’m a little worried,” she confessed. “I don’t think Hank used any protection.”

Bess’s eyes widened. “You’re not sure?”

Carly shook her head. Bess already knew about the painkillers and alcohol not mixing well. There was no point in going over it again. “I wasn’t tracking very well. I remember him leaning over the seat to get something, but I think he may have dropped it—or changed his mind.”

A worried frown pleated Bess’s brow. “Oh, Carls,” she whispered. “What if he got you pregnant?”

That was Carly’s worry as well. “The instant he realized I was a virgin, he stopped. I’m pretty sure he didn’t ejaculate inside of me. That being the case, aren’t I pretty safe?”

Bess said nothing for a moment. “Coitus interruptus isn’t a fail proof means of birth control, Carly. He penetrated. Even if men don’t ejaculate, they can have seepage. All it takes to get a woman pregnant is one sperm.”

Carly’s stomach turned a slow revolution. Deep down, she’d already guessed as much. “In my case, there wasn’t much coitus. Maybe, this one time, it worked.”

“And if it didn’t? What if you’re pregnant? Do you even know how to contact this guy?”

With a stubborn lift of her chin, Carly said, “I’m not calling him, if that’s what you’re thinking. I never want to see him again.”

“If you’re pregnant, what choice will you have?”

“He cursed at me,” Carly reminded her. “Afterward, I felt so dirty—the kind of dirt that never washes away. I owe him nothing, absolutely nothing.”

“Maybe not. But he owes you. Besides, a man has a right to know when he’s fathered a child, and every child has a right to know its father. You’ll have to get in touch with him.”

“I’m not pregnant. That just can’t happen.” Even as Carly uttered the words, she knew she was kidding herself. “Having a child would derail my education, possibly my whole life. It just can’t happen.”

Bess pushed her hair back from her eyes. “Let’s just hope nothing comes of it. If you’re pregnant, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Carly hauled in a deep breath. “At least I accomplished one thing. I’m no longer the last twenty-eight-year-old virgin on earth.”

Bess laughed, albeit worriedly. “True. Before we know it, you’ll be a veteran giving
me
advice.”

Carly shook her head. “Once was enough for me. In my opinion, the joys of sex are highly overrated.”

“It gets better.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just take your word for it.” Frankly, she wouldn’t care if she never had sex again.

Chapter Four

S
ix mornings later, Carly woke up feeling sick to her stomach. When Bess found her in the bathroom kneeling by the toilet, she bathed Carly’s face with a cool cloth and started saying, “Oh no!” as if it were a mantra.

“It’s only the flu,” Carly managed to say between bouts of nausea. “Morning sickness doesn’t start this early. Does it?”

“It depends.” Bess lowered herself to the floor and rested her back against the vanity doors. “Some women get sick from the very start.”

Carly’s stomach finally settled enough for her to sit back on her heels.

“Just to be on the safe side,” Bess said, “maybe we should call Dr. Merrick to make sure the meds you’re taking won’t hurt the baby.”

“What baby?” Carly made tight fists on her knees and peered owlishly at her friend, whose face was a misty blur. “There
is
no baby, Bess. There can’t be.” Another wave of nausea struck. Carly leaned back over the toilet bowl and cradled her head on her arms. “Oh, God, what am I going to do? I’m not running a fever. Usually, with the flu, I run a fever.”

Bess curled a hand over Carly’s shoulder. “Well, first of all, we aren’t going to panic.”

“Right,” Carly said thinly. “Probably just something I ate.”

“Exactly,” Bess replied in a calm, reassuring way. “Nausea can be caused by countless things. We’ll just have to wait and see. If your period’s late and you’re still feeling puny, then you should take a home-pregnancy test.”

Carly couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Meanwhile,” Bess went on, “it only seems wise to call the doctor and ask how a fetus might affect your eyes. Lattice dystrophy is such a rare disease, you just never know.” She quickly tacked on, “Not saying there
is
a baby, mind you. You’ll just be covering all the bases that way.”

“Right.” Carly cautiously straightened again. The flush lever on the toilet tank swam in her vision, its metallic glint creating a brilliant, dancing orb. “My focus is all out of whack.”

Bess leaned over to push a hank of hair from Carly’s eyes. “That help?”

“No.” Carly pressed her fingers to the base of her throat, closed her eyes, and took several shallow breaths.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” Bess said. “The doctor told you to expect bouts of blurry vision for several months.”

Carly nodded, recalling the doctor’s warnings that the visual aberrations would frequently incapacitate her for at least three months, making it almost impossible for her to hold down a job or function normally. That was why she’d scheduled the first surgery, called superficial keratectomy or SK, for late May, so the blurry vision and other visual problems would be mostly over before school started in September. Later, because the improvements brought about by SK didn’t last forever, she would probably need another operation.

A few minutes later Bess led the way to the kitchen, dialed the number of the corneal specialist in Portland, and handed Carly the phone. When the doctor got on the line, he was not pleased to hear that Carly could be pregnant.

“If you were planning to have a baby, you never should have had the first SK,” he said. “Pregnancy can adversely affect lattice dystrophy and shorten the effectiveness of the procedure.”

Carly’s eyes throbbed from the recent bout of vomiting, and all she could think to say was, “I see,” which seemed stupid, given the circumstances.

Merrick sighed. “I should have stressed the dangers of pregnancy more strongly. During one of our talks, you gave me the impression that you weren’t sexually active and pregnancy wasn’t an immediate concern. I planned to go over the long-term instructions in more detail during your six-week checkup.”

Carly remembered the conversation to which he referred, and he was right; she’d told him that she wanted to be able to see while she was attending grad school so she could have a more normal social life and possibly start dating.

“Circumstances change,” was all she could think to say. “I didn’t plan the encounter, Dr. Merrick. It just—sort of happened.”

“I see.” Papers rustled at his end. A brief silence ensued. “If you are pregnant and your condition shortens the life of the SK, I will strongly advise against your having a second procedure until after the child is born.”

Carly’s headache made it difficult to think. “Are you saying I might go blind again before the baby comes, and you won’t be able to do anything?”

“If you are pregnant, and the first SK fails quickly, it’ll be a strong indication that your lattice dystrophy will have an adverse effect on any follow-up procedures done during the pregnancy. You can only have so many superficial keratectomies and corneal transplants. Why waste an entire series at a time when your disease is running rampant? You’d be throwing away years of sightedness.”

Carly understood his reasoning; she just found it difficult to accept. “I definitely don’t want to have more surgeries done while I’m pregnant if they’re just going to fail. That’s why I waited so long to have the first operation, so I’d be sighted when I entered the workforce. I’ll want to see as long as I possibly can.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “At this point, you’re not positive that you’re pregnant. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“It might be wise to go in for a blood test. They’re accurate before a missed menses.” She heard a thump at his end of the line and then the rustling of pages, indicating to her that he might be leafing through a book of some kind. “Here we go,” he said. “St. Luke’s is the hospital there. I’ll fax them an order this afternoon so you can go in for a blood draw first thing Monday morning. That way, we’ll know for certain straight away.”

“Okay,” Carly said hollowly.

“In the meantime, don’t worry too much about losing your sight. No point in borrowing trouble. Pregnancy affects some lattice patients adversely at a very rapid rate, but others skate through with only minimal problems. If you are pregnant, maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones.”

“I’m having trouble focusing right now. Things get clear, and then they go all fuzzy.”

“Have you followed through and seen the doctor I recommended there in Crystal Falls for a postsurgical exam?” Papers rustled again. “Ah, yes, here’s the report. According to him, everything looked fine. That was what—ten days ago?”

“About that.”

“He’s a topnotch eye surgeon and qualified to spot any problems arising from the surgery. The blurry vision you’re experiencing right now is probably normal. Even if your vision has improved to twenty-twenty now that your corneas are healing, your visual cortex is still inadequately trained to process and assimilate all that your eyes take in. As a result, there’ll be times when it plays tricks on you. It’s not uncommon to look directly at something and not see it. Or to think you see something that isn’t actually there. Think of it as a new memory bank over which you have little control—much like one experiences during dreams, with random images popping up. Only with you, it can occur when you’re awake.”

Carly knew all about seeing things that didn’t exist, namely the tenderness she’d glimpsed in Hank Coulter’s eyes.

“Incidents of blurry vision,” the doctor continued, “will gradually become less frequent and go away in time. You’ll still have trouble noticing details, such as background patterns, and your depth perception may always be poor, but your focus will sharpen. You just need to take it easy until your visual cortex has had time to adjust.”

“If I’m pregnant and it adversely affects my lattice, how long do you think it will take for me to lose my sight?”

Alarmed by Carly’s side of the conversation, Bess came to stand nearby.

Dr. Merrick took a moment to reply. “There’s no pat answer to that question. It all depends on the patient, the severity of the lattice to begin with, and a host of other things. You may notice no change in your vision for months. Then again, your sight could go quickly.”

“I’ve forfeited my legally blind status, Dr. Merrick. If I lose my sight again, how long will it take to get me reinstated so I can get special financial aid for school?”

“Once you’ve had corrective surgery and your sight is restored to twenty–two hundred or better, you become ineligible for legally blind status until all possible surgical procedures to correct the problem have been done. In short, you can’t get reinstated unless you have another SK, then a transplant, and both procedures fail.”

Carly leaned weakly against the counter. “That doesn’t seem fair. If I go blind from the pregnancy and can’t have a corrective procedure done until after the baby’s born, how will I attend grad school? I won’t have any special funding.”

“I don’t make the laws,” he reminded her. “Before we start painting worst-case scenarios, let’s be sure there’s cause for concern. Erring on the side of caution, you should stop taking those pain pills I prescribed over the weekend. Hopefully, your corneas have healed enough by now that the analgesic drops will keep you comfortable.”

Carly felt numb by the time she hung up the phone. “Well, that was an uplifting conversation.” She quickly filled Bess in on everything the doctor had said. “If I’m pregnant and it messes up my SK, I’m sunk until after the baby’s born.”

Bess looped an arm around Carly’s shoulders. They stood there, leaning against each other for some time. When Bess finally drew away, she said, “If you lose your sight again, you’ll have to have special financial aid to stay in school. I can’t believe they would make you have two more surgical procedures before you could be reinstated.”

“Those are the breaks. I’ll have to drop out and reapply for the master’s program next year.”

“Oh, Carly, you’ve worked so long for this. If you drop out, I’m afraid you’ll never go back. With a child to support, getting that master’s degree will be all the more important. Not only will it make you more marketable, but it’ll substantially increase your income.”

“I already have my bachelor’s. At least I have that going for me.” Carly’s head was killing her. “I’ll get my master’s, Bess. One way or another. It may just take longer than I hoped.” Carly sat at the table. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

The following morning, Carly felt sick again. The nausea abated in the afternoon and was gone entirely by early evening, which she took as a bad sign. She lay on her bed, one hand pressed to her lower abdomen.
A baby
. She couldn’t believe that a life could begin in such a sordid way. Children should be wanted and loved by their parents, not looked upon as mistakes.

Until that instant, Carly hadn’t thought of the baby as a little person with feelings and needs, but now that she had, she couldn’t banish the images from her mind.
A child
.

Now that she had come to think of the baby as an individual, it was difficult for her to wish it gone. As a very young girl, she’d always wanted to have kids someday. Later, when she reached her teens and began to realize boys weren’t interested in her because of her blindness, she’d abandoned her dreams of motherhood and focused on becoming a teacher of the visually disabled instead.

Curling onto her side, she wrapped both arms around her waist, feeling suddenly protective of the life that might be growing inside her.

Bess came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Penny for them.”

Carly rolled onto her back. “I’ve just been coming to terms with the possibilities. Not knowing for sure if I’m pregnant yet, it’s kind of hard to decide how I feel, but I think—well, if I am, Bess, I think I owe it to the baby to be happy about it. So what if it turns my life upside down? There are worse things.”

Bess braced her arms on the mattress behind her. “I agree. Looking on the gloomy side doesn’t seem productive. If you’re going to keep this baby, we need to be upbeat about it.”

Carly stared at the ceiling. A few days ago, she’d been able to make out some of the texture swirls in the plaster. Now she couldn’t. She hoped that was due to the dim light. “I’ll definitely keep the baby. Clinical abortion goes against everything I’m about, everything I believe in.”

“We’ve never really discussed it, but I’ve always sensed you felt that way.”

“It’s the only way I can feel,” Carly murmured. “When I was conceived, my mom was forty-three. I’m sure they must have considered ending the pregnancy because of her age. If they’d made that decision, I wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s a pretty heavy thought to carry around all your life.”

Carly ran her fingertips over the chenille. “It’s kept things in perspective for me. There were times, particularly in my teens, when I felt bitter about being born blind. I always cheered myself up by considering the alternative, not being here at all. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve enjoyed my life, and before it’s all said and done, I hope to make it count for something by working with the visually disabled. When I think in terms of all or nothing, I’m really glad my folks had me.”

“I’ll second that. The world wouldn’t be the same without you in it.”

Carly smiled. “You just love me.” She fell silent for a moment. “Looking back on my childhood, I know it must have been difficult for my parents sometimes. Having a disabled kid is no walk in the park. But they never once seemed to regret having me. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

“I didn’t realize your mom was that old when you were born. Do you suppose her age was a contributing factor to your blindness?”

“Maybe.” Carly had wondered the same thing herself. There was no history of congenital cataracts or lattice dystrophy on either side of her family. “It doesn’t matter what caused it. What I look at is my quality of life. It’s been hard sometimes, but I’ve had a lot of fun, too, and I’m excited about the future. That being the case, how can I arbitrarily decide to deny my baby the chance my folks gave me?”

“I understand, Carly. You don’t have to explain. Abortion would never be an option for me, either.” Bess cast Carly a sideways glance rife with mischief. “I’ve always wanted to be an aunt. It’ll be fun to spoil a baby rotten and leave you to deal with the backlash.”