Free Jericho (A Redemption Novel) by Ginger Jamison

I see you. What do you say we get the kids together and get some ice cream?”
    “I say...” Say yes. It might be good for you. It’s time for you to move on. But she didn’t say that. “Your son is standing on top of the swing set.”
    “Shit. Connor!”
    He was off, and while his back was turned Georgia took her baby and went home.
    * * *
    “Okay, toss me another one.”
    Tobias held out his hands, waiting for Christian to throw him another object. They had been playing this game for the better part of a half hour. Tobias had somehow managed to make his way into Christian’s daily routine, often spending hours in his room just talking or listening to baseball games on the radio. Christian wasn’t the type of man who was easily impressed, but he had to admit he was amazed by Tobias. He was the type of soldier that he would have liked to have had in his unit in Iraq. The kid was good for morale. He always seemed so damn happy.
    Christian never met somebody so damn accepting of his fate. He was nineteen years old and suddenly blind. Why the hell wasn’t he mad? Or at least acting like a bratty teenager about it? But he took everything in stride. Christian wished he could feel the same way about his fate as Tobias.
    “Ready?” He threw the item so it hit him square in the chest. “What do you think that is?”
    Tobias rubbed his hands over it, then put it to his cheek for a feel before finally bringing it to his nose to smell. “Is it a plum?”
    “It is. Good work, kid.”
    “Thanks.” His grinned widely at the praise. “Throw me another, sir.”
    “Can’t. Ran out of stuff.” He had already thrown an empty water pitcher, a tube of toothpaste and the socks Georgia had given him that had been freshly laundered. Christian didn’t have any other personal possessions.
    “What you need is a mama. Mine brings me all types of stuff. My room is getting so full we’re going to need a moving truck when I get out of here.”
    Christian thought back to his mother for a moment. He tried not to think about her often—the pain of her death, even after more than ten years, was still fresh. She would have brought him whatever he wanted. She would have made him chicken soup. She would have knitted him a sweater. She would have done anything.
    As a kid, he’d never appreciated her mothering. He’d felt smothered by it. That was another thing he would change if he could go back in time. He would let her know how much he loved her. His dad, too. Joining the marines was the last thing his parents would have wanted him to do, but after he lost them there didn’t seem like any other choice. But he didn’t want to think about a past he couldn’t change, so he turned the conversation back to Tobias instead.
    “When are you leaving here?”
    He shrugged. “Nobody’s said for sure. They want to try one more surgery. A corneal transplant, but I don’t know. Nothing’s helped so far and they said this operation only has a thirty percent chance of working due to my type of injury. I’m not sure if I want to go through all of that for something that might not work.”
    “So you’re going to give up on your eyesight?”
    Tobias turned his head, his sightless sunglasses-covered eyes nearly connecting with Christian’s. “Does it seem like I’m giving up, sir?”
    He wasn’t judging Tobias’s choice. He just wanted to make sure he understood him. “Don’t you want to see again?”
    “You know I do.” For the first time since they met, the boy’s face grew stormy. “You know what’s worse than not being able to see? Getting your hopes up that the next thing will work only to find that it only made things worse. I could see shadows before the last surgery. Now I can’t. I can barely tell if it’s day or night. What’s the next thing that’s going to happen? Total fucking darkness? And even if it does take, I have to be worried that my body’s going to reject the transplant for the rest of my life, and where