you haven’t always been blind.” It was more a statement than a question. “I thought from some of your mannerisms that you had been able to see once.”
“I was sighted until I was twenty-one. While I was in college, I fell over a balcony railing at a frat party and landed mostly on my head.”
“Holy cow. You’re lucky you survived.”
He nodded. “Very.”
“A frat party,” she said reflectively. “I never went to college. Are those as wild and debauched as I’ve heard?”
He grinned. “I’ve been to a few that fit that description. But I hadn’t been drinking that night. A guy behind me tripped, and it was just sheer lousy luck that he plowed into me.”
“No kidding,” she said with feeling. “Did you know right away that you were blind?”
“Not right away.” He hesitated as the memories of those early days in the hospital welled up. Kendra had been with him when he’d asked the doctor about his vision.
“Let’s change the subject,” Lynne said. “I think it’s your turn to ask the questions.”
He realized he’d been silent too long, and he mentally smacked himself. He really was out of touch with socializing. Entertaining clients was a lot different from dating. Even if this wasn’t really a date. “Sorry. It brings back a lot of memories. It was…a time of enormous change for me.”
“I can imagine,” she murmured.
He decided to take her up on her offer. “What kind of work do you do?”
He felt a subtle change in the room, a tension that surprised him. He’d expected that to be a fairly safe question.
“I’m not working right now,” she said. “But I have a couple of interviews this week, so I’m hoping to have an answer to that question soon.”
“Okay,” he said. She’d probably just lost a job, and since that often happened under difficult circumstances even to the best of people, she might feel embarrassed or humiliated. “Let me rephrase that. What kind of work would you like to do?”
“My interviews are at a preschool and at an elementary school as an aide,” she responded. “But what I’d really like to do is go to college and learn to teach.”
“What age would you prefer?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I enjoy little kids, but I honestly don’t know enough about older children or teens to know whether or not I’d also like those age groups. Hence the job choices.”
“So you haven’t worked with children in the past?”
“No.” He heard her stand. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Iced tea?” he asked.
“I happen to have some. Sugar or lemon?”
“Just lemon, please.” He listened to the pad of her feet across the room and into what sounded like her kitchen, judging from the tile floor onto which she walked. Her place appeared to be laid out just like his, except with the floor plan reversed. The jingle of Feather’s tags alerted him that she had followed Lynne.
Was it his imagination or had his hostess become uncomfortable the moment he’d asked about her past? She’d leaped into action right after that, and she certainly hadn’t volunteered any information about what she’d been doing before she moved to Gettysburg.
He heard the clink of ice cubes, and a minute later Lynne returned with his tea.
“Is there anyplace in particular you would like me to put this?” she asked.
“Is there a table near me?”
“There’s an end table on the right side of your chair.”
“You can set it down there.”
He heard her moving toward him, and as the glass settled on the table, a whiff of clean, womanly fragrance enveloped him. She was close.
How tall was she? He thought she was probably pretty tall for a woman because her voice didn’t sound as if it was coming from miles below him when she was facing him.
“There,” she said. “It’s toward the front of the table on the corner closest to you.”
He reached out and lightly followed the lip of the table forward until his hand encountered the cool, smooth glass. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Dinner will be ready in a little bit. I played it safe and baked a chicken.”
“I like baked chicken. Any potatoes?” he asked hopefully.
“Also baked. Double-stuffed.”
“The kind with sour cream and cheese all mashed up with the potato and then put back in the shell?”
She laughed. “The skin, not the shell.”
“Whatever.” He dismissed semantics. “Sounds great, especially to someone who eats most of his food out of take-out containers or microwave dishes.”
“I guess cooking is difficult,” she said tentatively.
He laughed, picking up his tea and taking a sip. “I know another blind guy who’s a fabulous cook. He’s a partial, which makes it a little easier for him—”
“A partial?”
“A person who still has some vision, although it’s usually pretty limited. Some partials have more vision in one eye than the other, some have vision in certain quadrants of their field of vision. I have no vision, so I’m a total.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted. You were talking about your friend who cooks.”
He smiled. “No problem. I was only going to say that even when I could see, it wasn’t at the top of my list of fun stuff to do.”
“I always enjoyed cooking, even when I was a little girl. I haven’t done much of it in a long time, though.”
It seemed like an odd statement, and he wished he could have seen her face. “Life too busy?”
“Something like that,” she murmured. “Have you always lived here?”
He recognized an about-face in conversational direction when he heard one. “No. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, out near Pittsburgh. How about you?”
“A teeny little town called Barboursville in Virginia.”
“Is that anywhere near Williamsburg?”
“No. It’s above Richmond. Why?”
“One of the partners in my firm went to college at William & Mary. We were high school buddies so I was down there to visit a couple of times.”
“I
