Free Helen Keller in Love by Kristin Cashore Page A

arms smooth as blended butter. He’d reach for Annie. Under the sheets I stretched my hands over my breasts, my thighs, the darkness suddenly brilliant around my body.
    Did I love him? I loved his sexual awakening of me. He was Annie’s husband, he never touched me in any inappropriate way, but in the morning he smelled of fir trees, brine, and green apples after making love with Annie at night.
    “Helen.” Annie shook my shoulder once more as we came out of the woods. “Let’s get a move on. We’ve got to get dinner, then there’s laundry, and letters to do, too.” The stack of chores was so high that in my imagination it reached the roof of my house.
    “All right,” I said. “But just tell me. Is Peter still there, in the doorway?”
    “Helen.” For once Annie felt kind, tender, almost. “Sweetheart. Let’s face it. The last time I looked that old saying still stood.”
    If Ihad been able to hear, I would have covered my ears. As it was, I tried to withdraw my hand, but Annie grabbed it right back.
    “John’s the one who found Peter. And you know that old saying, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’”
    For one of the few times in our years together, I formed a fist so that she couldn’t tell me more.
    “Helen.” She opened my hand. “Don’t make this harder on me than it already is. I didn’t come down here to fight about Peter. I came to tell you my own news.”
    Then she began to cough so roughly it seemed to break open the air. Her muscles contracted under my hand as I rubbed her back, trying to make the cough stop. She bent over, almost double, and when she finally stood up I said, “It’s not just a cough.”
    “Worst case, tuberculosis. You know. The White Death.”
    The White Death. Annie had lost a lot of weight, and in my fever over Peter I hadn’t noticed. I knew only that tubercular patients were kept, often, in isolation from their families to avoid the spread of infection, their eyes burning, their faces flushed, then pallid, so pallid, as they wasted away. Their bodies empty caves where the skin faded to the whitest of white, as if they were angels, rather than the pale face of death.
    Her hand in mine was a hollowed-out shell. I traced her face with my fingers until she shook me off.
    “It could be just a bad cough. But we have to prepare for the worst. Now zip your lip. Not a word of this to Peter—or anyone else.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” As Annie and I stood next to the house, her hand in mine, it must have been hard to tell which one of us was blind. Annie was so afraid that her sleeve caught the wire John had strung up for me: she stumbled and I caught her, led her through the twilight as if my care alone would bring her home.
    Wewalked up to the porch. Peter took Annie’s arm and helped us up the steps, took Annie to her room, then came back to me.
    “Don’t take this wrong,” Peter said. “But who’s handicapped? You? Or her?”
    Both,
I thought. Much more than you know.

Chapter Twelve

    T
uberculosis, the White Death
, I thought as I made my way from my second floor bedroom to Annie’s at the far end of the hall the next day. The morning sun fell on me. A series of rounded thumps told me the wash was banging against the house from the clothesline where I’d hung it that morning, my fingers fumbling in the basket Annie had set out full of damp dresses, thick wooden clothespins, and instructions to be a little more careful than usual: we wouldn’t want Peter seeing our underthings. Those were to drip dry inside the bathroom off the kitchen, away from his prying eyes. But I was not thinking about daily chores. As I pushed open the door to Annie’s room I was thinking about tuberculosis.
    Trucks rumbled past outside as I walked to her room. Inside, the scent of sulfur, quinine, and bitters led me to Annie’s bed.
H-e-l-e-n
, Annie nervously spelled into my palm as I stood by her bed. A metallic scent rose from her sweating skin; a migraine pierced her