Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Rosie, what are you doing here by yourself? I told you I’d come see you and the baby tonight.

I missed you too much. And I want to look after Vivian. To make amends. I’ve wronged her, Rosalind signed back.

You haven’t wronged her! I’m the one who made you live under someone else’s name. I’m the one who’s wronged you and the baby.

He bent his head and kissed her, his eyes full of tenderness, then signed:

I’ve picked out names. If it’s a boy, Julian Jr. If it’s a girl, Rose—just like you.

I stared at them, and felt my heart being cut to pieces, one slice at a time.

This time last year, I found out I was pregnant.

Julian was over the moon. He booked out an entire ski lodge at Lake Tahoe and gave me a flash drive with 9,999 voice messages on it, every one of them telling me he loved me.

I was about to listen to them when his phone rang. Faintly, on the other end, I could hear a girl crying.

He kissed my stomach. “Honey, something urgent came up at work. Wait for me.”

I didn’t suspect a thing. I waited like a good girl, a whole day and a whole night. The man I loved never came. An avalanche did.

Our baby died that winter.

Now I watched him lay his hand on Rosalind’s stomach with that same tender gesture I knew so well, and I smiled bitterly.

So the only one buried in that avalanche had been me.

“Honey, I’ve been swamped lately, so I hired a nutritionist to look after you.”

Julian led Rosalind back over by the hand, his eyes soft.

“Hello, Ms. Morel,” the girl said shyly.

Ms. Morel. Not Mrs. Blackwood.

Julian frowned slightly at that. But he didn’t correct her.

My gaze lingered on Rosalind’s lips, still a little swollen from his kiss. My nails dug into my palms.

Something warm settled over my shoulders. Julian had draped his cashmere coat around me.

“It’s freezing out here. Let’s go home, honey.”

Before I could react, I saw Rosalind sign him a quick got it—and get a kiss for her trouble.

Half the castle had burned, so we moved into the guest rooms in the east wing.

I watched the two of them walk ahead of me, hand in hand, completely at ease with each other.

I watched the man who hated the smell of cooking put on an apron for Rosalind and laugh out loud over the roar of the range hood.

I watched him ladle soup into my bowl as attentively as ever—and in the next breath, wipe a grain of rice from the corner of Rosalind’s mouth.

You little dork. How are you so cute? he signed.

I took a sip of hot soup and kept my head down.

My eyes burned, but not a single tear would come.

It was because Julian had loved me once that I knew exactly what that look in his eyes meant.

He really had fallen in love with her.

Across the table, Rosalind signed something, slow and unhurried. Poor thing. She has no idea.

Then she lifted her eyes, looked straight at me, and slowly smiled.

It was the kind of smile you only dare to give a blind woman.

My hand tightened around my spoon.

After dinner, the private doctor came to check my eyes as usual.

“Mr. Blackwood, Dr. Carter couldn’t make it today, so I’m filling in. I’ve reviewed the chart. As long as your wife stays on her medication, there’s a very good chance she’ll regain her sight.”

I stood outside the door, listening, and my heart ached.

So what if my eyes healed? Julian and I could never go back.

In this game of lies, I’d rather stay “blind.”

Seven more days. All I wanted was to get out of San Francisco.

And never see him again for as long as I lived.

There was a short silence in the room. Then the man spoke, mildly.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Didn’t Dr. Carter tell you? For five years, I’ve had him give my wife nothing but ordinary vitamins.”

“If she could see again, what would happen to Rosie?”

There was a sharp crack.

I had snapped my diamond ring clean in two. Blood seeped between my fingers.

I fled back to my room, shaking uncontrollably, and knocked our wedding photo off the dresser.

In the photo, Julian was leaning down to place a reverent kiss on my forehead.

The tears came without warning, splashing onto the floor.

I cried, and then I started laughing, and my stomach clenched and heaved.

“Ha… haha… Well done, Julian. Well done.”

More than eighteen hundred days and nights of fear and helplessness in the dark—and he had arranged every one of them.

Feeling nothing at all, I slid the wedding photo out of its frame and fed it into the shredder.

As the paper was ground to nothing, all the sweet memories of him seemed to fade a little too.

At least it didn’t feel as suffocating as it had a moment ago.

“Honey, what are you doing?”

I tipped a handful of white shreds into the trash. My voice was dry. “Nothing. Just a document I printed by mistake.”

Julian frowned at the scraps, as if they looked familiar.

Before he could think about it, Rosalind walked in with an enormous bouquet, and his attention went straight to her.

She pushed the flowers into my arms.

“Happy birthday, Ms. Morel!”

The smell was overpowering, harsh and chemical. I coughed so hard my eyes watered.

Rosalind even covered my eyes with her hands and steered me to the dining table.

“Ready? Surprise~!”

On the white marble table sat a few steaks still bleeding at the center, and a plate of asparagus fried black.

Rosalind smacked her forehead. “Oh! I forgot Ms. Morel can’t s—”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, as if she’d said something terrible.

Julian immediately signed to comfort her. It’s okay. Vivian won’t mind.

“It’s okay, I made Ms. Morel a mango cake too!”

Julian’s face was soft with pity for her. “Honey? Come try the cake.”

I stood where I was, my fists clenched. My voice came out like sandpaper.

“Julian, today isn’t my birthday. It’s the day our baby died.”

“And I’m allergic to mango.”

He stopped short. Something like regret crossed his face. “Honey, I—”

I turned and walked out, and shut the door on her sobbing and his soothing.

I don’t know how long I slept before Julian woke me.

“Honey, she wants to make it up to you. She’s put together an animal act—she worked at a circus in college.”

I frowned and started to say no, but he’d already scooped me up and carried me downstairs.

It was a January night, and the wind cut like a knife. I was wearing nothing but a thin nightgown, shivering.

And I watched him carry a heavy coat straight past me—to Rosalind.

Rosalind pulled the cover off the cage. And my pupils shrank to pinpoints.