CHAPTER THREE

Darla’s screams awakened her from nightmares of blindness and dependency. The dreams were always the same: Her RP had progressed. She could discern only dim shapes in a small field of tunnel vision directly in front of her face. She couldn’t read or experience her friend’s expressions of joy or sorrow. Immersing herself in films or television was impossible. Her hair was disheveled and her lipstick smeared. In the most terrifying night scenes, she lived in a filthy institution where vicious mental patients attacked her and she didn’t know who they were or why they hated her so.

Darla knew that blind didn’t mean helpless. She realized lack of sight was not a death sentence.

But at night when she was alone, her conscious defenses down, fear overwhelmed her reason. Many mornings, she awakened shaken, sweating and trembling. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her the root of her insomnia was her overwhelming fear of the perpetual, unrelenting darkness.

After her shower she felt better. Darla flipped on the television in the kitchen as she pushed the bread down into the toaster and poured coffee into the mug Marie’s son, Paul, had given her for Christmas. The mug displayed two stick figures drawn with crayons, one taller, wearing a skirt and the other with short, spiked brown hair. The hand-printed inscription said, “We love you, Darla.” Paul had made the drawing himself, but his mother had printed the words. This tangible evidence of Paul’s affection for Darla brought tears. On his good days, he could be such a gentle child.

Darla glanced outside. Still raining. The dull gray sky pressed down on the wetness stealing all color from the normally vivid Florida landscape. Wind whipped the palm trees from side to side as if their trunks were rubber. On mornings like this Darla longed to bundle up in her warm bathrobe, drink strong, sweetened coffee with heavy cream and read. She loved reading and she’d lose the ability, too soon. Marie encouraged her to learn Braille. Darla wasn’t ready to surrender to that yet.

As if her thoughts had conjured the young teacher, Darla noticed Marie’s picture on television, a crowd gathered around her. Where was she? A hospital? Darla turned up the sound.

Rosa Rodriguez, a local reporter, said, “Paul Webster was struck by a hit and run driver last night. Because he was supposed to be spending the night with a neighbor, his mother didn’t know he was injured until early this morning when she found him lying on the side of the road. He was airlifted here to Tampa Southern Hospital and remains in intensive care. His condition is listed as critical.”

Darla’s hand shook as she drew the coffee mug from her mouth and set it on the counter. Paul hurt and in the hospital, lying outside all night in the rain, alone. Her stomach roiled and her legs weakened. She sat heavily onto the chair, stared at the screen, and clasped her hands together to steady them.

She remembered the sickening thud against her car, the lump under the wheels. Surely, a plastic garbage can the wind tossed against her car? She couldn’t have hit a child? Paul was slight, but he weighed eighty pounds. If she’d hit him, wouldn’t she have known it?

Rodriguez turned to the uniformed man standing next to her. “This is Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Traffic Homicide Detective Kevin Cook. Detective Cook, can you tell us why you’re investigating this traffic accident? Homicide detectives don’t normally investigate hit and run vehicle accidents, do they?”

And Paul’s not dead, Darla whispered, Thank God.

Kevin Cook stood erect, his hands folded in front of him, shoulders broad, eyes staring forward, mouth pressed to judgmental hardness. Detective Kevin Cook had been one of Darla’s students long ago. A straight-arrow even then, she was not surprised when he joined the Sheriff’s Office after three years of service in the Navy right out of high school. He’d advanced rapidly and had to be one of the youngest detectives on the force. What was he? Twenty-five, maybe thirty? It was hard to keep track of her students, she’d taught so many.

Darla watched him now with a mixture of pride and fear. Detective Kevin Cook would exhaust all leads. Marie could be comforted by faith in his persistent resolve. Darla should expect hot pursuit until every aspect of the crime she’d committed was exposed.

She thought briefly of calling Willa Carson, but rejected the idea immediately. Willa was a friend, but she’d advise Darla to tell the police everything. At the moment, Darla wasn’t ready to face the consequences. She could always call Willa later. After she knew more facts.

“Paul Webster is in critical condition. We take the matter very seriously,” Detective Cook said, not actually answering the question Rodriguez asked him. Was Paul that close to death, then? Was the Sheriff’s office expecting the matter to become a homicide?

“Do you have any information you can share with us about the incident?” Rodriguez asked, seeking a pithy sound bite the local news stations could replay later.

“There is a witness,” he said. “A neighbor saw the car strike Paul, although he didn’t realize the driver had hit a child at the time. He describes the car as an older model, mid-sized sedan, dark color.”

“Oh, my God,” Darla whispered. She glanced at her six-year-old navy sedan sitting in the muddy driveway.

“We hear a lot about forensics. Can we expect some dramatic forensic solution to this crime?” Rodriguez suggested.

Kevin frowned. Anger roughened his tone and edged his features. “Rain washed most of the forensic evidence away.”

“So you’re saying you don’t know who hit Paul and you don’t think you’ll find the driver?” Rodriguez asked.

Detective Cook turned his hard gaze into the camera’s lens where he stared directly into Darla’s guilty heart.

“Oh, we’ll find him,” he said. “We won’t give up.”

Darla dropped her head onto the table and sobbed, tears meant for Paul, Marie and herself.

After awhile she moved to the back door, pulled an umbrella open, and walked out into the storm. She maneuvered around the puddles to the right side of her now monstrous car and stared.

Rain pelted the umbrella without mercy while the wind turned it almost inside out. Cleaner than the car had been in a long time, rain had washed away everything, even the crusty white bird droppings that had adorned the hood and roof for weeks.

Darla knelt down in the mud. She inspected the car’s side from the front bumper to the back one. She ran her palm over the cool, wet steel. All the dents she felt had been inflicted a while ago, as far as she could remember. And if there had been, God forbid, blood on the car, it was long gone. No, the hateful sedan appeared just as it had yesterday. Old, worn, dented.

She couldn’t have hit a little boy with this car and run over his body and leave no evidence of the carnage. She couldn’t have.

Drenched by the driving rain, Darla stood and felt her way back to the house. She stopped under the small, inadequate roof barely covering the back stoop, closed the umbrella and shook off the water as best she could. She turned to stare toward the car once more.

She would never drive it again. The thought offered little comfort.

“Too bad you didn’t make that decision yesterday,” she scolded herself aloud, in the same tone she used to discipline her worst-behaved students before calling their parents.

Inside, she pulled a different coffee mug out of the cabinet, filled it with strong black coffee, and returned to the television. She shivered in her cold, wet clothes as she checked all of the channels, but heard no further report on Paul’s accident.

She clicked her accuser off, laid the remote down, and considered what to do now. Calling Willa Carson was not an option. Willa was a judge, charged with dispensing justice not avoiding it. No. Darla would have to figure something out on her own.