Free Helen Keller in Love by Kristin Cashore Page B

temples.
    Outside, wind drove past the pine trees to the road, flowed down East Main Street, and rattled into town.
    “You’re going to be all right, aren’t you?”
    “Do I look all right?” Annie’s voice under my fingers was dry sand.
    Her cough filled the room with its vibrations. Suddenly a rush of cool air. Annie spelled into my hand, “It’s Dr. Webb. It’s about time he showed up; I called him hours ago.” Dr. Webb strode into the room and leaned over Annie’s bed. I put my fingers, gingerly, to his mouth and throat and read his words: his voice felt reedy when, after a few moments, he told Annie, “You’ll go to St. Joseph’s today for a test.”
    I feltthe
ca-rip
of paper as he handed his orders to Annie.
    Is Annie going to die?
I thought.
    “This is very dangerous,” Dr. Webb said. “You may not under any circumstances expose others. And if you have it, you’ll go to a sanatorium—”
    “No. I know about these ‘rest cures.’ If you’re lucky you come back in a year.”
    “If you’re lucky you come back. Today. Get the test. It takes weeks to process, so don’t delay.”
    “All right, just to show you that you’re wrong.”
    Even in sickness Annie was defiant. I loved her for that.
    After Dr. Webb left, Annie and I sat together. Time slid by. Finally she said, “This is perfect. I’m sick, my eyesight is going, and now I have to drive to Boston for a TB test. The luck of the Irish, all right.”
    I followed her as she opened her closet door and started to dress.
    “I’ll come with you.”
    “Helen, no.” She patted her hair, and picked up her purse. When I leaned in to kiss her good-bye the onion scent of her breath made me draw back in fear.
    “Who will take care of me while you’re gone?”
    Annie ignored me. She picked up the phone on her bureau and began to dial. I felt the
chut-chut-chut
of the metal disk turning beneath her fingers. “If tuberculosis doesn’t kill me this will.”
    “What will?”
    “Isn’t it obvious? I’m calling Peter. I can’t leave you here alone, but having him here is no picnic either.”
    Annie taught me the words for colors I could not see. Pink, Annie said when I was a seven-year-old on a rampage for new words, is like “a soft Southern breeze.” Yellow is “like the sun. It means life is rich in promise.” But I can find no color to describe the day I realized Annie might be sent away from me. Her hand in mine as she prepared to leave the room didn’t feel pink or white or even green, as she’d once told me green was “warm and friendly as a new leaf.” No. Her hands gave off the white of death. A husky, graspable thing.
    “Don’t go,” I had said. “Stay.”
    I felt like a cut-down forest tree, rootless.
    Annie was slipping away. I began to feel panic. I write this to explain the contradiction in my thoughts. I wanted to stay by Annie and I wanted to bind Peter to me more closely. Maybe because I was desperate. Yes, I was desperate for Peter.
    “Cheer up,” Annie had said. “The worst is yet to come.” Then she kissed me on both cheeks. The thrum of a cab’s engine moved through me. Annie closed the front door, then Peter opened it.
    He came in.

Chapter Thirteen

    A t times when I trace the pieces of my patchwork quilt I feel their lightness rather than the weight, as if something new is about to reveal itself. The moment Peter stepped over the threshold I knew things would change in ways I could not have predicted.
    “Tell me you don’t need me around here.” Peter draped his tobacco-scented leather bag over a broken wicker chair in my study, pulled out my desk chair with a scrape, and sat down. The farmhouse filled with cool fall air.
    “She looks like she saw a ghost.” Peter laughed about seeing Annie rush down the steps to the car and race off.
    “Maybe she has.” The possibility that Annie had TB filled me with panic. “The doctor was just here. She’s very sick. She’s gone to Boston today for a test