SANTA BARBARA. THE home for Leah that San Diego now could never be. A hole concaved my chest and sank into my stomach. The discordant, yet happy little life I’d greedily clung to was over. If I wanted to grab hold of what remained of it, I’d have to move to Santa Barbara. Shouldn’t be a hard choice. The woman I loved lived there. A ready-made new life was waiting for me.
All I had left in San Diego was responsibility.
I didn’t say anything.
“Let’s get a fresh start in Santa Barbara. Where we fell in love.” Leah’s lips pressed against my cheek. “You know I love Midnight and he liked my house and my yard. As long as he’s with you, he’ll be happy. This is a chance of a lifetime for me and a chance for you to start your new life.”
“My life is here.” My voice, a hollow echo.
“It doesn’t have to be.” A wavering thread of optimism clung to her voice. “I understand that you want to be here for Turk. We don’t have to decide anything right now. Let’s drive up to Santa Barbara tomorrow. You, me, and Midnight. I have to interview potential assistants all day tomorrow and Thursday, but Friday and the weekend, I’m yours. Maybe you could talk to Mike at DefenseAble while I’m interviewing people. I know he’s really excited to meet you.”
Arms around my neck and another kiss on the cheek.
“Turk’s arraignment is tomorrow. I have to be there.”
“We can leave after the arraignment.” Her grip around my neck loosened. “If you really think you have to be there, I can push my interviews back a few hours.”
“I want to be there. I can’t go up to Santa Barbara with you tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
“I understand your wanting to be at the arraignment to show support for Turk. And I know you have to be here every day for the trial.” Her arms released from my neck. “But what are you going to do between now and then?”
“I’m going to help with his defense.”
“How?” No derision in her voice. Leah didn’t mean it as an insult. She genuinely didn’t understand how I could aid the defense investigation. I was blind, not yet DefenseAble.
“Elk Fenton wants me to be by his side at every press conference.” I realized as soon as I spoke the words that they didn’t give credence to my belief I was vital to Turk’s defense. My only contribution was as a figurehead.
“He’s not going to give a press conference every day or even every week. You can come down to San Diego when Elk needs you and then stay during the trial. I’m sure you could work something out with Mike Higginbotham if you take the job.” Another long exhale. “Why are you making excuses not to come with me to Santa Barbara to at least hear what he has to say?”
“I don’t want to be the sun-glassed face for DefenseAble. A symbol they prop up at a podium whenever they’re on a fundraising drive. And even if I did, they wouldn’t want their figurehead to be seen in court supporting an accused murderer. The kind of person their service was supposed to protect against.” I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want to live in Santa Barbara. That it would always be the place where Colleen was murdered. “I know you’re trying to help, but that kind of job is not for me. I’m not exactly a people person.”
“Can’t you at least talk to Mike?” Desperate. “I’m sure the job is more than that. Whatever it is, it will be a new challenge. Something you may grow to love.”
“I love you, Leah.” My throat tightened. “I know the last year hasn’t been fair to you. That I’ve been drifting and not doing my part while you tried to juggle living in two cities. You have to pursue your dreams in Santa Barbara. I want you to be happy. But in all the time I’ve been drifting, I missed the one thing that gave my life meaning. And I finally found it again.”
“What?” Anxious.
“Pursuing the truth.”
“What the hell does that mean?” The outline of her arms rose, like her palms were open in front of her chest.
“Helping people who have no other place to go. Working as a private investigator.”
“Does Turk have nowhere else to go?” Her voice rising. “Are there no other investigators in San Diego who can help in his defense?”
“This is what I need to do.”
“But how much can you really help? You can’t drive. You can’t see.” Hard truth.
“Elk Fenton thinks I can help with Turk’s defense.”
“Doing what? Standing next to an accused killer while his lawyer lies to the press? The kind of symbol you don’t want to be for a nonprofit that actually helps people? Innocent people.” Grit in Leah’s voice. “Moira sent me a link to the press conference in front of police headquarters. Fenton and Turk are using you. You think either one of them cares about your well-being? About what this job has done to you? Turk doesn’t. He broke your nose trying to run away from the police when you tried to keep him from getting shot. Is that what an innocent person does? Is that what a friend does?”
“Nobody knows how they’ll react to facing the possibility of living the rest of their life behind bars until the police knock on their door. I know. I’ve been through it. I thought about running when my time came.”
“But you didn’t run because you were innocent. Only guilty people run.”
“That’s not true.” But I knew it was ninety-nine percent of the time. I’d convinced myself Turk was in that rare one percent.
“I know you, Rick. You can’t just be an impartial investigator taking direction from some lawyer or client on a case. You have to follow the facts wherever they take you, even if that puts you in danger.” Frantic now. Her voice pleading. “You lost your eyesight because you wouldn’t wait for the police to catch up with you on the bastard who killed my sister. You don’t have a badge. You can’t even see. This job almost killed you when you were completely physically capable. What’s it going to do to you now that you’re disabled?”
There it was. Disabled.
“I can’t live cushioned in a bubble-wrapped world.” I looked at the rounded outline of Leah’s face. She lifted her arm up to it. To wipe a tear away? I didn’t have comfort for her. Only the truth. “And my vision is starting to come back.”
“What? You can see?” Joy blanketed in tears.
“I can’t see objects, but I can see fuzzy outlines. I can see the yellow light of the sun coming through the outline of the kitchen windows, but I can’t make out the color of your clothes. I can’t see the beautiful features of your face, but I can see the outline of your head.”
Arms around my neck pulled me to Leah’s face. Her cheek, wet with tears, pressed against mine. Her body convulsed in gasps.
“I’ve prayed for this every day since you came out of the ICU.” Her face pulled away, then I felt wet lips pressed against the concave scar under my left eye. “At first I prayed for you just to survive. I didn’t care whether you could see or talk or even walk. I just wanted you to live. Once you got out of the ICU, I almost felt greedy to ask God to give you back your sight after he answered my prayers for you to live. But I asked him anyway and he’s still listening.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get my full vision back. I saw my ophthalmologist a few weeks ago when I first noticed a slight change, and she did some tests and didn’t discern any change. She put it down to Charles Bonnet Syndrome. But it’s real. The outlines of things are becoming clearer every day. I haven’t gone back to Doctor Kim because I don’t want her to tell me I’m not seeing what I’m seeing and convince my brain to stop registering it. I don’t want scientific proof of what I can’t see.”
We held each other until Midnight wedged himself in between us. Leah laughed and pressed her head against his, probably in a kiss.
“You’re the best man I’ve ever known, Rick. And the most stubborn, the most infuriating, and the most dangerous.” Hands held each side of my face and Leah pushed her face close to mine. “But I don’t want to lose you. You’re my miracle. You should have died on my living room floor, but you didn’t. Your will to live and God saved you. He saved you for a reason. We can figure out Santa Barbara and San Diego. We can make this work. Don’t you want to try?”
“Yes.” A tear ran down the edge of my broken nose.
We made love that night. Silently. Desperately. Like we feared, despite our efforts, that this might be the last night we’d be together under a roof we both considered home.