Red Heart Tattoo (12 page)

Self-conscious, he shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see any of his gestures or movements. “I saw your red hair under a pile of junk. If you hadn’t had that red hair, I would have missed you.” He playfully tugged on a generous hank of her hair. “I’m glad you’re all right.” After a moment of embarrassed silence, he asked, “So what’s with all this stuff on the tray?”

“Therapy,” she said, glad for the distraction. She ran her free hand over a couple of objects. “Hairbrush, toothbrush, makeup brush. I need to figure out how to do things for myself until the bandages come off.”

“Makes sense.”

“Why would someone do this, Roth? Why would anyone blow up our school? What did we do to deserve such hate?” Her voice caught, trembled, the magnitude of the disaster descending on her like an anvil.

“I guess that’s the million-dollar question.”

“People died, Roth. They died!”

He slipped his arm around her, rested his cheek on the crown of her head. He felt her stiffen, then relax and lean into him. “The cops and the FBI will figure it out. They’ll catch the jerks who did this.” He didn’t add that he was somehow a suspect. And Paige, as his attorney, obviously hadn’t mentioned it either.

She felt warm and safe in his arms. Guiltily she remembered
that Trent was just down the hall and pulled away. “Tissue, please.”

He passed her the box from the bedside table. She fumbled, pulled out several, held the wad against her bandaged eyes. “I keep crying and soaking my bandages.” She laughed self-consciously. “I’m driving the nurses crazy, making them change my bandages all the time.” She eased back onto the pillows.

He wanted to soothe her, make her feel better. He remembered the toy dog he’d bought, fished it out of the pocket of his hoodie. “I brought you something to keep you company.” He set the dog in her hand.

She turned it over, sniffed the freshness and newness of the fuzzy material, rubbed it against her cheek. “A dog?”

“Bingo.”

She laughed. “That’ll be his name—B-I-N-G-O. Thank you.” She hugged the stuffed animal to her. “What color is he?”

“White. Black ears and nose. Red tongue.”

“I love him.”

Roth’s eyes swept over her. No need to pretend now. He could look at her all he wanted because she wouldn’t know. “Can I come visit you again?”

“I’m supposed to be going home tomorrow. But you can come to my house and visit me anytime.”

“I might do that.” He silently swore that he would.

She rested the stuffed dog on her chest and continued to stroke its softness. “One thing I’m grateful for, though.”

“What’s that?”

“At least my friends made it through. I’m so happy they’re all safe.”

Roth straightened, reeled slightly as realization washed over him. He clenched his jaw. She didn’t know! No one had told her. Morgan didn’t know!

“I
’m sorry, Morgan. Really sorry I didn’t tell you before now. Will you forgive me?”

The plea came from Kelli. Her mother had brought her down from her room to Morgan’s room in a wheelchair because that was hospital protocol. Jane and Paige had left the room, leaving the girls alone. Seeing her friend in the bed, eyes bandaged, broke Kelli’s heart, made her feel guiltier than she already did. “How are you?” Kelli asked.

“I’ll be all right. What about you?”

“They said I’ll be fine. I ache all over, but I’m going home today.”

“Wish I were,” Morgan said. “Why didn’t you tell me? We’ve been friends forever, and yet you couldn’t confide in me that you were pregnant?”

“I—I don’t know. I was so ashamed, I guess. I mean, Mark dumped me like a bad dream when I told him in
August. I kept telling myself that I could change his mind. That I could make him want to get married. I couldn’t.”

“Did Trent know?” If he did, Morgan was going to skewer him the next time he visited her in the night.

“I don’t know. Guys don’t talk to other guys like girls—” She stopped. “I mean, like girls are
supposed
to talk.”

“And all the times I asked you, ‘What’s wrong?’, you just pushed me away.”

“I wanted to tell you more than anything. I started to a hundred times. When Mom found out, she made me swear to keep it a secret. But I should never have kept it from you.”

Morgan picked at the bedcovers, needing something to do with her hands. She longed to see people’s expressions when they spoke. Without her sight it was like filling in a puzzle piece that didn’t exist. She could fall back on images of people she knew, but with strangers, she had no road map, no way to gather an image except through their voices and touch. In many ways Kelli was a stranger to her at the moment. “How did she find out?”

“You know Mom.” Kelli offered a short derisive laugh. “She watches my weight like a hawk. She saw I was gaining around the middle.”

Morgan had seen it too but had said nothing. She should have. She’d watched Kelli change right before her eyes but had been too caught up in her own life to press her friend very hard. She realized she shared some of the blame for Kelli’s silence. “I might have helped you figure it out,” she mumbled. “I should have helped you.”

“Once Mom figured it out, I was almost five months along. I’d already made up my mind I was going to have the baby. What I hadn’t decided was what I was going to do after he was born.”

“You were going to have a boy?”

“Yes.” Kelli’s voice quavered. “But I didn’t know it was a boy until …” Her voice trailed off, ebbed into a heavy silence. Morgan felt Kelli’s pain and loss. “Mom took me to a free clinic in Grand Rapids because I hadn’t been going to a doctor.”

“Not at all?”

“Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” Kelli quoted the old joke. She forced herself to smile, but realized Morgan couldn’t see her effort.

“And after he was born, what were you going to do?”

Kelli didn’t answer right away, and when she did, Morgan heard the resignation in her tone. “There were only two choices—keep him and raise him or put him up for adoption. I kept bouncing between the two. Couldn’t decide. One day I wanted to raise him. The next day I wanted to give him up.”

“What did Mark want?”

Kelli took a deep rattling breath. “He said he didn’t care, but I knew he wanted me to give him up. Mark said that he loved me, but that nothing was going to derail his plans for a football career.”

Morgan heard the forlorn hopelessness in Kelli’s voice. The words made her mad. How could Mark be so cruel? “And your mother?”

“Adoption.” Kelli’s voice fell to a whisper. “No one wanted him except me.”

“I’m really sorry, Kelli.” Morgan held out her hands and was rewarded by Kelli grasping them tightly.

“Doesn’t make any difference now, does it? I lost the baby. And Mark’s going to be a paraplegic for the rest of his life.”

Morgan already knew Mark’s fate—her mother had told her yesterday—but sorrow in Kelli’s voice made fresh tears well up and spill into the bandages on her eyes.

“Why did this happen, Morgan? Why did someone set off a bomb and change all our lives?”

Morgan had no answers. She tugged Kelli out of the wheelchair and pulled her onto the bed with her. The friends wrapped their arms around each other and cried for what was gone and for what could never be again.

Morgan went home on Monday, five days after the bombing. She was both happy and scared about going home, away from the security of the nurses. Her dad took her on a tour of the house, with her holding his elbow as the therapist had trained her to do when she was being led. The trainer had given her one of the sticks used by blind people. She used it gingerly, halfheartedly, self-conscious about the red-tipped stick that announced she couldn’t see. Inside the house, her father insisted that she use it.

“This is just temporary,” he kept saying. “The bandages won’t be on forever.”

Weeks seemed like an eternity to Morgan at the moment.

“I picked up in every room,” Paige said, following along behind, then walking beside and finally in front of Morgan and Hal as they toured. “Nothing to trip you up, honey.”

Morgan made a complete circuit of the first floor and stopped at the stairs. “I don’t need help to get up to my room,” she said, grabbing hold of the banister and dropping her dad’s arm.

“Maybe you shouldn’t—”

“Mom … I can do this.” The therapist had been very clear with Morgan’s parents about allowing her to navigate her own path through the days of darkness and letting her choose what she felt comfortable doing. It wasn’t as if she’d been blind since birth. She had been part of the seeing world and would be again. All she needed were basics to help her through the short haul. “You and Dad have to go back to work.”

“Not right away.”

“We can hire a helper,” Hal said. “You don’t need to be alone.”

Morgan knew her parents were anxious to fence her in, keep her safe. She didn’t want to be afraid either, but when she’d been a kid learning how to ride a bike, she got back on it immediately no matter how many times she fell, no matter how many scrapes she received. “I know how to make a sandwich, get around the house, go to the bathroom by myself, wipe my backside—”

“No need to enumerate your skills,” Paige said, cutting Morgan off. “We get the message.”

Hal chuckled.

Morgan stepped onto the stairs she’d once crawled up as an infant, grasped the rail with both hands. By the time she reached the top, she’d figured out her pace, the width and height of each step. At the top she felt her way along the wall to her bedroom, opened the door and was rewarded by a familiar sense of comfort and belonging. Her parents followed behind her.

“Uh-oh,” Paige muttered.

Hal cleared his throat awkwardly.

“What’s happening?” Morgan asked.

“Um … I put up a banner and helium balloons to welcome you home, but …,” Paige said meekly.

“But I can’t see them.”

“A miscalculation,” Paige said contritely.

Morgan burst out laughing. She turned and opened her arms and the three of them stood hugging and laughing until they were weeping with the absurdity of a mother’s carefully planned homecoming for the daughter who could not see it.

M
organ woke that night to the sound of Trent whispering her name. She bolted upright in bed. “Trent?”

“None other.”

Incredulous, she asked, “How did you get in?”

“Climbed,” he said.

“To the second floor?” He’d never done that in the past. He’d always just tossed grit at her window until she opened it, then she’d meet him under their tree.

“Well, I can’t fly,” he said.

“But—but Dad put up storm windows. And Mom always locks them.”

“Must have forgotten this one. Hey, aren’t you glad I’m here?”

“Oh yes.” She opened her arms, still warm from being under her covers. She held him. “You’re cold as ice.”

“Yeah. Cold climb. Maybe I could get under the covers with you.”

Tempting. “Can I trust you?”

“Babe! You wound me. Of course you can trust me.”

She scooted over, but snuggling up to him proved difficult because it felt so strange to have him in her bed. “How are you doing?”

“Hanging in.”

“Sad about Mark, huh?”

Trent said nothing.

“Did you know Kelli was pregnant?”

Silence.

“Trent, talk to me. Tell me what you know.”

“He didn’t love her like I love you.”

He always knew the right thing to say and what she needed to hear. “When this is over, when my bandages come off and we go back to school, how will Mark and Kelli … I mean, how will they …?”

“Let’s not talk about them,” Trent said, his voice soft in her ear.

She didn’t really want to talk about them either. She wanted the warmth and comfort of Trent’s arms around her. She was afraid to ask him for too much physical contact because one thing could so easily lead to another, so she said, “If I fall asleep, please don’t let my parents catch you in my room with me.”

“It’s a promise.”

Her brain was growing fuzzy and sleep was coming for her. She hugged something close to her chest and with a
start realized it was Bingo, the stuffed dog Roth had given her. His image unfolded in her mind’s eye. Roth, darkly dressed, full lips and amazing blue eyes, looking as if he wanted to kiss her. Guilt shot through her like a cannonball. What was wrong with her? How could she be lying under the covers with one boy while her memory was clinging to another?