have you gotten me into this time?”
Julia Dalton paused at the threshold of the sturdy rock house and held her breath. Literally.
Nestled among two-story relics from the 1920s, the high ceilings and oak floors spoke of the leftover charm of this once-wealthy neighborhood near the Kansas City Museum. But this sweet little cottage just northeast of the Market area where she grew up had lost something over the years. What time and urban fatigue hadn’t done to the house, an interior tornado bent on destruction had.
Her mother, Barbara, followed a step behind. “Oh, my. What’s that smell?” Her scrunched-up nose brought an unexpected grin to Julia’s freckled face.
The faint pungency of formaldehyde hung in the air. “The sewer’s not backed up, is it?” asked Julia.
She lifted her foot over the crumpled doormat and led the way into the living room. Her mother’s best friend, Martha Taylor, closed the door and joined them. “No. Everything in the house works fine.” She shrugged her shoulders, clearly embarrassed by the mess, but ready with an explanation. “My oldest son, Brett, bought this place to fix up and resell. He’s just getting started on the remodeling, but the plumbing is fine. It’s the current tenant—”
“Martha.” The clear snap of her mother’s voice captured Julia’s attention as well. She caught the unsubtle message flashed from hazel eyes to blue.
Martha, taller, and a tad thinner, shook her head. “She’s bound to notice.”
Julia knew the dynamic duo was up to something, but she could never be sure where her mother’s good intentions might lead, much less when she was in cahoots with her lifelong pal since kindergarten.
She’d been home only a few days, but the urgency the two older women had used to get her out of the house that morning made her wonder if she had already overstayed her welcome.
“Anyone want to offer an explanation yet?” she asked. “You said you needed a nurse, not a housekeeper.”
Martha perked up at Julia’s comment. “As a professional health-care worker, do you think living like this presents a health risk?”
“Not if you’re a cockroach or a rat looking to make a new home.”
Julia stacked the magazines strewn across the couch and set them on the end table. She checked the dark stain on the seat cushion beneath for dryness before plopping her backpack that served as both purse and overnight bag on the empty spot.
Then she folded her arms across the front of her denim jacket and switched roles from daughter to authority figure. “So who’s going to fess up? You told me to pack a bag and my credentials because you had an emergency at home. But we didn’t walk across the street to your condo, Martha. We drove here. What’s going on?”
Though humor had always been her first best line of defense, she hadn’t managed the night shift of one of Chicago’s toughest emergency rooms without learning how to throw around a little intimidation. She knew how to draw up all five feet, six inches of her blocky figure into a not-to-be-messed-with show of force.
Unfortunately, she’d learned the trick from her mother. Barbara mimicked her daughter’s stance. “Don’t get mad at Martha. I agreed with her totally on this. I thought it was a good idea.”
“I’m not mad. I just want to know—” A solid thump from the back of the house rattled the chandelier above her head. Julia jumped in her boots. But other than a quick catch of her breath, she didn’t let her mother see how the unexpected sound unnerved her. A sense of impending dread pulsed through her at the uneven tread of heavy footsteps advancing toward them.
“Who’s the patient, Martha?” These women were not given to lying. But they might fudge a little bit if they believed it would help someone they loved. “Mom?” she prompted.
“Ma?!”
She knew that voice. Years ago she’d memorized the quiet authority, the distinct pitch of it. The deep tone had a raspy, strident ring to it now. But she’d know that voice anywhere.
Once, it had saved her life.
Today, it could destroy her.
“I’m not ready for this.”
Shreds of panic plummeted to her toes, robbing her of conscious thought and reliable self-assurance. She snatched her bag and flung it over her shoulder. Her mother hadn’t known then. She didn’t know now. Julia had never told a soul. Her humiliation ran too deep. The futility of her feelings was a raw, vulnerable wound, barely shielded now after all that had happened in Chicago.
She had to go. She had to…
“Ma, you there?”
She froze in her tracks when she came face-to-face with the man braced in the archway where the living and dining rooms joined.
Mac Taylor.
As tall and lean as she remembered. The broad shoulders and endless stretch of legs beneath the gray sweatshirt and faded jeans were the same. The long, dextrous fingers still fascinated her. But the lack of meat on his angular frame gave him a hard edge. And the tight slice of his mouth across the golden scrub of a beard indicated he was angry.
She’d never seen him angry before.
“Ma?”
“I’m here, son.” The fatigue in Martha’s voice distracted Julia’s attention for a moment. Like her own mother, Martha would be in her early sixties. But the heartbreak that suddenly creased her face made her seem years older.
“Who’s with you?” Julia turned back at Mac’s demand.
Time and injury hadn’t been kind to her childhood hero. His sandy blond hair had lost its burnished lustre. All trace of curl had been cut away, leaving it a short, spiky length. Jagged streaks of newly healed, baby-pink skin branched out over his left cheek and across his forehead in an intricate web of fresh scars.
But it was his eyes that held her captive.
Beneath the cut that bisected his eyebrow, a tiny white blemish blotted the symmetry of pupil and iris in his left eye. And the right looked through her, past her, without seeing her.
He was blind.
Those cool chips of granite, once silver behind the gold of his glasses, that she’d fantasized about through her teenage years, were blind.
Her fears scattered as shock rendered her silent. Her lips worked to mouth the question, Why?
“Ma? Who’s with you?” he repeated.
Tears of sorrow, and maybe even pity for all he had lost, stung her eyes.
Martha shrugged off her son’s harsh tone. “Barbara Dalton.”
He tipped his face up, sniffing the air with an almost feral focus. “Who else?”
Julia blinked back the moisture in her own eyes, sensing sympathy would not be appreciated. “It’s Jules, Mac. Julia Dalton.”
“Son of a bitch.”
