Red Heart Tattoo (14 page)

“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. “Is anything wrong with Morgan?” Concern rose in her voice.

“She made us both hot chocolate. She did a really good job too.”

“Why are you calling?”

He screwed up his courage and told her about what he’d witnessed beneath the tree on the front lawn. It was none of his business, but somehow it
was
his business. He was linked to Morgan.

Paige was silent, with only her breathing to let him know she was still on the line. Then realization hit Roth like a thrown brick. “She still doesn’t know, does she?” He stopped. “How have you kept it from her?”

“With difficulty,” Paige said softly.

“Crap!” He slammed his fist against his steering wheel, hesitating to say anything worse.

“You—you didn’t say anything, did you?” Alarm pitched Paige’s voice higher.

“No.”

“Good call.”

Roth didn’t know if she was talking about revealing the front-lawn scene or keeping his mouth shut. “She should know,” he said, tamping down his rising temper.

“My daughter. My timing. Goodbye, Roth.”

After Paige hung up, Roth’s temper boiled over. He shoved the truck into drive, peeled off the shoulder of the road and cursed a blue streak all the way back to his uncle’s shop.

Morgan had her iPod earbuds planted firmly in her ears, listening to songs Trent had downloaded for her, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and yanked out the tiny buds.

“Sorry,” her mom said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I knocked, but you didn’t answer.”

Morgan calmed her racing heart, turned off the music. “No problem.”

“Dad’s with me too.”

“Wow, you must have something big to say.”

She felt their weight settle on her bed on either side of her. “Yes, we do.”

“I’m not getting a car.” Morgan expressed the biggest disappointment she could think of.

“We’ll get you a car,” Hal said to her left.

“Okay … then what’s so serious?”

Paige closed her hand over Morgan’s. “There’s something we must tell you. Something hard. Something that’s going to hurt.”

Morgan’s heart went into trip-hammer mode and a
hard knot formed in her stomach. What could be so bad? “Out with it. You’re scaring me.”

“It’s … it’s about Trent,” Paige said.

Morgan groaned. They’d discovered he’d been sneaking into her room. “It isn’t Trent’s fault,” Morgan said defensively. “I let him visit me.”

Her mother’s grip tightened on her hand. “Morgan, honey, please listen to me. There is no Trent. He … he died in the explosion.”

“T
hat’s crazy talk,” Morgan said, dismissing her mother on the spot. “He visits me all the time.”

“No,” Paige said. “He doesn’t.”

Morgan jerked her hand away from her mother’s. “Why are you lying to me? I’m telling you, he’s been here to see me.”

Hal gently pulled her hands to his chest. “We should have told you sooner. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you sooner.”

Paige jumped in, saying, “You were so wounded, Morgan, both in body and spirit. I couldn’t bear to tell you the truth. That’s why we’ve waited.”

“But I talk to him every day!” She grew braver. “Every night, he visits me. He visited me in the hospital.”

“No. The doctor and nurses reported seeing you sitting up in bed, opening your arms and reaching out like you were trying to … to hold someone. We watched you
with our own eyes. But no one was there. No one
is
there. Trent … died.”

Morgan couldn’t absorb what she was being told. Trent had talked to her. He’d held her, kissed her … hadn’t he? “So I’m the crazy one?”

“No. You’re projecting. You made him up because you needed to. One of your doctors, a psychiatrist, told us that your brain, your memories, were as bruised as your body. He suggested we give you space to work out the loss on your own. So we did. You were so fragile.”

He couldn’t be—mustn’t be—gone. He couldn’t be dead! “But I’m home! Why didn’t you tell me this the minute I came home?”

“Cowardice. You were coping so well, progressing. I couldn’t stand to see you crash.”

Morgan pulled her arms free from her father, pummeled him, flailing and crying the whole time. Once her strength was spent, he pulled her close and soothed her.

“We were trying to protect you.”

“Did Kelli know? Did the whole world know except me?” Her anger was replaced by despair. “Is that why Trent’s parents never came to visit me?” She hadn’t realized the last thing had been gnawing at her until the words spilled out of her mouth. She liked them; they liked her. Why hadn’t they come?

“They
did
come, but you were out of it. And they were dealing with their own grief, the wrongness of his dying. They’ve called to check on you a few times.”

Morgan couldn’t believe everyone had so carefully and
ruthlessly kept Trent’s death a secret from her. It wasn’t fair! “You should have told me! How did you hide it for so long?”

“We begged everyone who came to visit you to say nothing. We kept the TV turned off in your room while you were in and out of consciousness. The media stopped listing the names of the deceased after two days, so we felt as if you wouldn’t hear the names even when you began recovering. And because of your eyes, you couldn’t read a paper or surf the Web.”

“But I didn’t know the truth!” Fresh tears flowed with her recriminations.

“You never once asked us about him. You never said, ‘I talked to Trent today.’ ” Paige’s voice went soft and sad.

That stopped Morgan cold. She hadn’t asked—not point-blank, anyway.
How are my friends?
was what she’d asked. And according to Paige and Hal, the visits, the manifestations of Trent’s presence, were all illusions, self-created and self-fulfilled. Resignation and defensiveness hit her at the same time. “I didn’t ask because he was coming to visit me.”

“Oh, honey …,” Paige said, smoothing Morgan’s hair. “I’m so sorry.”

Morgan pulled free of Hal’s embrace. Why should she be alive and Trent be gone forever? She’d been sitting next to him on the wall. How could she have lived and he have died? It wasn’t right. Her eyes stung from the salt of her tears, and her face felt puffy and wet.

Paige said, “Let me rebandage your eyes.”

Morgan was too drained to move.

“You’ll regain your sight. Things will be better,” Hal offered.

“We love you, Morgan,” Paige said.

She sat numbly on the bed with her dad holding her hand while her mother left to gather gauze and tape. Hal talked soothingly, but his words didn’t register with her. She felt sick to her stomach, and cold, so very cold. Morgan struggled to button down her pain. How could she have allowed her mind to trick her? How could she have pretended Trent into existence with such veracity that she’d had whole conversations with a dead person? Wasn’t this the definition of insanity?

When Paige returned and began to apply fresh bandages, Morgan asked, “Did Trent’s parents bury him?”

Paige’s moving fingers paused, then quickly resumed their work. “Yes, but we’re going to have a memorial service as soon as you feel up to it. When your bandages come off for good.”

Morgan sat straight and still, feeling as if her limbs had turned to stone. When she could see again. Except there was no Trent to see.

“What do you mean they haven’t told her?” Liza was incredulous. She’d stopped by Max’s shop to see Roth.

Roth shook his head. “Nope. Haven’t said a word about him dying. Nutso, huh?”

Liza blew air through her closed lips. “Cruel too.” She felt genuinely sympathetic toward Morgan. “You think they’ll tell her soon?”

“They’ll have to.”

“Will you tell her if they don’t?”

Roth glanced up from his chore of sterilizing Max’s inking equipment. “No way.” He hadn’t shared with Liza his witnessing of Morgan’s bizarre behavior under the old tree from the day before. Remembering gave him shivers. “I think today’s the day she’s supposed to get her bandages off for good,” he said.

“They should say something about Trent before then,” Liza said sagely. “She shouldn’t be thinking he’s going to be waiting for her.” Yet even as Liza spoke, it dawned on her that without Trent around, Roth would have a clear path to Morgan. Why had it taken until now for her to get it? Jealousy crept up her back. She added, “Morgan will probably never get over Trent. That happens sometimes, you know. Love that never dies.”

Roth felt a tightening across his shoulders. He wished he hadn’t said anything to Liza. He’d forgotten how much Liza disliked Morgan. He laid the sterilized tools out on a clean towel.

“You want to do something tonight?” Liza asked casually.

“Like what?”

All she wanted was to be with him. With him, near him, close to him, in his arms, kissing him. That hadn’t happened in so long that she could hardly remember the last time.
How do you make somebody want you the same way you want him?
she wondered. “Movie? I have a few bucks saved.” She didn’t want him to think it was a real date, just a way to hang, so if she paid her own way maybe he’d go.

“I promised Carla I’d help her wrap presents tonight.”

“For who?”

“Some charity. She does it every year, then drops the gifts off at some shelter. I’d better stick with the plan.”

“Maybe I could help and we could go to a late show,” Liza suggested hopefully.

Roth hunched over the clean equipment and began to sort it into groupings. “Some other time,” he told her without meeting her gaze. “Maybe after Christmas.”

Bitterness swelled in Liza. Roth was putting her off, rejecting her. He couldn’t see what was right in front of his face—Liza loved him desperately. Morgan may have been the one with bandaged eyes, but when it came to Liza, Roth was the one who was blind.

Morgan sat in Dr. Harvey’s exam chair as he cut through the bandages around her eyes. Paige sat close by. Morgan could hear her deep breathing. The doctor said, “The room’s darkened, Morgan. Your eyes will have to adjust to light gradually, so keep them closed until I tell you to open them.”

Morgan’s heart was pumping hard, boosted by adrenaline and tension. Her world had been dark for so long. She’d learned to navigate without vision, had fallen back on her other senses, discovered them enhanced in ways even she hadn’t expected. Her hearing was sharper, more acute. Smells had depth and direction as never before. Her sense of touch was amazingly honed, textures seeming to come alive beneath her fingertips. Even her sense of taste was better developed. Still, she longed to see the
world again. She craved color and intensity to flood her senses and bring brightness back into her life.

And yet, no amount of sight would bring back Trent. Adjusting to that loss was depleting her, drying her up from the inside out. Without him, would the world ever be colorful again? Without his smile or his touch—even his imaginary touch—would she ever be the same?

The last of the gauze fell away. Morgan felt the cool air on skin that had been covered for so long.

“I’m lifting the plastic shields,” Dr. Harvey said. “Keep your eyes closed, though. You should open them gradually.”

Although the soft shields and bandages weighed little, Morgan felt as if weights had fallen off her face. The freedom felt delicious. She heard Paige stifle a sob of emotion.

Dr. Harvey touched his gloved thumb to one eyelid. “Feel that?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He touched the other closed eyelid. “Your eyes are going to feel as if they’ve been glued shut, so lifting those eyelids may be sticky at first.”

Dr. Harvey dipped cotton pads into sterile water and smoothed them over Morgan’s eyes, explaining every step as he went along. “Don’t be alarmed if you only see shapes at first. Everything will be fuzzy, but your vision will clear and brighten over the next few days. That’s why you must wear sunglasses for a while.”

“I have them,” Paige said.

Morgan heard her mother fumble with something in
her purse. Morgan’s heart continued its wild thundering thud in her chest.

“All right,” Dr. Harvey said. “Let’s open those pretty eyes of yours.”

Morgan urged her lids to lift. When they obeyed, she sat wide-eyed, staring into the room.

“So what can you see?” Paige asked.

“There should be a little bit of light,” Dr. Harvey said.

Morgan turned her head to the right, to the left. She brought her head back to center position. “Well, you’re wrong, Dr. Harvey. Everything’s black. I can’t see a thing.”