Chapter Four
Anxiety jerks me awake, but as soon as my eyes open I recognize it as an old feeling that tastes stale.
Its tendrils drip off me as I look around the room and remind myself that I’ve made it to this point in my life.
I am doing just fine. I roll over and look at my phone to see what time it is, but it’s not yet three-thirty.
I close my eyes and will my body to sleep, but nothing comes for me but the slow hour of four.
By four-fifteen, I’m as awake as one can be, so I give up and pull some clothes on.
I quietly walk down the hallway and into the spare bedroom where Lane’s computer is set up.
I turn it on and wait for it to boot up.
As I do, I rummage around his stuff. I flip through his bills and open every desk drawer, but everything is so boring it almost puts me back to sleep.
My fingers ache to dig deeper, to find his little secrets and make them my own, but I force myself to turn away from that.
To kill some time, I play on the computer for a few hours, but by the time I’m bored of that, I can’t stop the itch to nose through his room.
After having already combed through the desk, the only spot left is the closet.
When I open it, I notice there are a lot of blankets neatly folded.
I mean, there’s nothing else in the house, why the heck does he have so many blankets?
I push them over and notice that it’s not quite all blankets but a safe hidden beneath them.
I kneel and look at the safe and the tantalizing key lock.
I instantly want to know what’s inside of it, but I know not to snoop.
I force myself not to snoop, but it’s really quite hard.
To distract myself, I head to the living room and turn on the TV. For hours I laze around until I hear Lane getting up. The sound of movement is like a starting gun going off and has me up and rushing into his bedroom without knocking.
“Lane?”
“Oh, come right in. No sense in knocking.”
“What’s in that safe?” I ask.
“What safe?”
“The one in your spare bedroom. What’s in there?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t seen it.”
“Please tell me,” I say, absolutely dying to know. It’s probably just a birth certificate or social security card, but I feel like there has to be something better in there than that.
“Why do you need to know?” he asks as I pull open the dresser and grab some clothes for him.
“Because I want to,” I say stubbornly.
“You’re like a child.”
“So? Just tell me.”
“Make me something to eat.”
“You’ll tell me if I do?”
“No…that definitely wasn’t even in the equation. I’m just hungry and really confused about where the food is.”
I sigh and toss his clothes at him. They hit his chest and he manages to grab the shirt in time, but the pants fall to the ground.
“Why won’t you let me snoop? You’re so mean!”
“Says the person that is getting paid to help a blind man, but instead just chucks clothes at him.”
“I’m teaching you independence. You don’t want anyone to dote on you, so I’m respecting your wishes.”
“Oh! Well, thank you for your care,” he says, making me smile.
I plop down on his bed so I can watch the view while he gets dressed. “You’re welcome. Flex your arm a little when you put your shirt on.”
“You want to see them up close? Come here. I’ll bench press you.”
“You can’t lift me,” I say with a snort. I refuse to go over to him because I really don’t feel like I need that much embarrassment at eight in the morning.
As soon as he’s dressed and his teeth are brushed, I grab him by the hand.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Showing you around,” I say as I lead him to the entrance of his bedroom. “You were never in this house before you were blind, were you?”
He ignores my question, so I take that as confirmation.
“Okay, so starting from your bedroom, we have a left and a right. Let’s go left,” I say as I pull him after me. “Let’s see, four steps down the hallway—”
“Are those dwarf steps or regular steps?” Lane asks.
I snort. I’m sure it was a very attractive sound. “I am not a dwarf .”
“So?”
I sigh dramatically. “Four regular steps or eight dwarf steps and you reach the doorway,” I say as I take his hand and press it against the doorway.
“Room on the left is mine, the right is the spare bedroom with the super secretive safe inside.” I pull him into my bedroom and set his hand on my dresser.
“Dresser…there’s a chair here…and the bed.
The rest of the room is pretty bare,” I say as we head out into the next room until we’ve gone through every single room.
I make sure to run his hand over every piece of furniture and never once does he say anything, but he goes along with me.
“Let’s do it again,” I say once we’re back to the spot we’d started. “If we turn left, where do we go?”
He ignores me, so I pinch his nipple that is showing too clearly through his tight shirt. I feel like I should make fun of him, but then again, I probably just feel bad about myself since the last push-up I did was back in high school. “I’m talking to you.”
“Why do I have to narrate it?” he asks.
“It’ll help you remember. Now come on or I’m done helping you.”
He stops close to my room and waves his hand through the air. “This is the dwarf’s room.”
“Good,” I say as he slowly steps through the door and feels around.
“And the dwarf’s dresser.”
“Yep.”
Then he reaches back and hits me in the face in an attempt to grab me. “And this the dwarf!”
“Funny,” I sarcastically say, but I continue to follow him around the house.
After I feel like he’s gotten the hang of it, I head back to the kitchen and start making him breakfast. Which I slave over, by sticking a waffle in the toaster.
While he’s eating breakfast, I head into his bedroom and throw all his clothes onto his bed. There, I begin putting safety pins on the tags of each shirt and pair of colored pants until I have them all done. Then I retrieve Lane and drag him into his bedroom.
“Alright,” I say. “I put safety pins on the tags of your shirts.”
“So they’ll poke me?” he guesses.
“Close,” I say. “It’s so you can figure out what color they are without me. One small pin is red, one large pin is blue, two small pins are green…get it?”
He grabs a shirt off the bed and feels around for a moment until he finds the tag. “So, this is red?”
“Yes,” I say with a smile. “Why do you sound so skeptical? Do you really not trust me that much?”
“No, I trust you as far as I can throw you. Oh, wait…I could probably throw you pretty far. Basically, I just don’t trust you.”
I watch as he picks up another shirt.
“This one is green?”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying really hard to trust you, and I just can’t.”
“Good,” I say when I hear the doorbell. “I like keeping you on your toes. I’ll be back.”
I walk up to the front door and notice James standing outside. I pull it open and smile at him. “Hey! I didn’t know you were swinging by.”
“Hey, kiddo. How are things going?”
“Wonderfully,” I say, and he looks at me like I’m suddenly very suspicious.
“Who is it?” Lane calls from within his bedroom.
“It’s the blow-up doll you ordered!” I yell back then turn to James with a smile. “We get along splendidly, if that’s what you came here to ask.”
He laughs. “I see,” he says with a shake of his head. “Is he in his bedroom?”
“Yeah.”
“Mind if I go have a word with him?”
“Of course not. Would you like to stay for supper?” I ask.
“Don’t do it!” Lane yells from in the back.
“Shut up, Lane!” I yell in response.
“I’d love to,” James says with a smile before heading to Lane’s bedroom.
Like the saintly human being I am, I at least wait until he’s closed the door to Lane’s room before sneaking up to it and eavesdropping.
“You just made the biggest mistake of your life,” Lane says.
“What’s that?” James asks.
“Eating that kid’s food.”
He’s even mean when I’m not around! Although…my food really is quite awful.
“Can’t be that bad,” James says. “Do you have a moment?”
“What do you think?” Lane grumbles. It’s clearly not a topic he likes to bring up.
“I think we have a lead, but that’s about as much as we have,” James says.
I press harder against the door, so I can hear everything they’re saying. What do they have a lead on? Is this some soap opera drama? Are they cops? Or are they the bad guys?
“Is this green?” Lane asks, clearing not caring as much about the “lead” as I am.
“The shirt? Yes, it is...” James says, sounding confused.
“Huh,” he says. “And this one is blue?”
“It is blue…how do you know that?” James asks curiously.
“Felix put safety pins inside to color coordinate them. So, what have you figured out?” Lane asks.
“Not a lot. Just have an idea of someone that may be working with them.”
“Hmm…name?”
“Jonah Robertson.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar. Criminal record?”
“None, but this guy has reportedly been seen with Red.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing.”
“Shit.”
“I know, I’m working on it,” James says.
They’re silent for a moment, making me question if I should back away from the door and actually head toward the kitchen, so it looks like I’m doing something when they come out.
“How are you doing?” James asks.
“I’m so sick of this. I want to be out there, doing something.”
“I know. We have to take this slow. Is Felix at least entertaining you?”
“Yeah…He’s honestly helped quite a bit. Makes this place a little less boring.”
“That’s good. He seems like a good kid.”
“What’s Felix look like? He doesn’t tell me much when I ask him. Just says he’s plain,” Lane says.
James snorts.
“What?”
“Oh nothing, I just wouldn’t say he’s plain. When I asked Dani why she hired him over the lady that had the experience she told me it was because Felix was, and I quote, ‘so adorable, I just wanted to take him home.’”
Lane laughs. “I just…dammit, James, you don’t understand how hard it is not being able to see anything. I want to know what he looks like.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I did, he won’t tell me much.”