Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder by Lisa Verge Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

wedding anniversary.
    “I heard your mother reading to Brian and Brianna,” she said, casting about for anything to fill the tense silence. “She must
     have been at it for a good hour. She’s likely to coddle and feed them so well that they won’t want me to come home.”
    “That’s Mom’s way of showing you that you don’t have to worry about the kids. All you have to worry about is enjoying the
     vacation.” He pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans and glanced at the face. “This was incredibly generous
     of Monique.”
    Becky heard the undercurrent of meaning, the vague discomfort that Monique was gifting Becky something luxurious and much-needed,
     something he, as a man temporarily out of work, could not provide.
    “She is as big-hearted as always,” Becky said, “bringing both Judy and me along.”
    His gaze flickered to the notebook lying next to the open suitcase. “You’ll get to sketch. That’s good.”
     “Castles, castles, castles.”
    Unwittingly, her gaze slipped to the drawing hanging on the wall near the closet, a framed sketch Marco had playfully drawn
     of this old house, just after they’d committed to buy it. Upon Marco’s rendering with all its sharp corners and straight lines,
     she’d made a few fanciful renovations with his wry approval—adding two turrets, topped with flags.
     “I’m glad she talked you into this, Beck.”
    She paused at the use of her nickname, at the low timbre of Marco’s voice. That sound always rippled through her, like a low
     mournful note of a cello in a darkened room. She hardly ever heard it anymore.
    She spoke in careful, even tones. “I’m glad too.”
    “Last week I thought you were going to back out.”
    “It was a moment of panic.” Nudged by the knowledge that someday she’d be a blind mother in a kitchen full of pots of boiling
     water and hot grease and sharp knives and small children. “I’m fine now.”
    Then with a sliding drop of her stomach it overwhelmed her all over again, the explanations the doctors had repeated while
     she struggled to understand. How the photoreceptors of her eyes were slowly deteriorating. How they had been failing for perhaps
     all her life. How the rods—sensitive to low light—were the first to go, which is why night blindness was her first symptom.
     She had argued with the specialist. She’d told him that she’d always had perfect vision in the right light, able to read up
     close and see the whole landscape in the distance. But in his flat, unarguable voice, the doctor informed her that her vision
     was tunneling, and within that good sphere, there were spots already deteriorating. She wouldn’t necessarily notice it, he’d
     said, because her brain struggled to fill in the information. But those watery little rings of spaces would eventually grow
     and merge, and eventually her brain would no longer be able to fill in the blanks.
    Right now those blanks in between were big enough to eclipse the sight of a small fawn, running in front of her car.
    No, this trip wouldn’t help anything. As far as she knew, only Jesus was on record curing the blind.
    “Beck, maybe we should reconsider the phone situation.”
    She glanced up. Marco stood by his bedside table, his attention fixed on his phone as he scrolled through email.
    “There’s no reason.”
    “I could call tomorrow, add international service.”
    “It’s an unnecessary expense.” She wiggled a pair of flats between her cosmetic case and her sneakers. “I agreed to this trip
     only because it won’t cost us anything.”
    He went silent for a moment, the only sound in the room the nudge of his finger on the face of his phone. Since the furlough
     from his job began, mentioning “expenses” or “costs” or “money” was a fresh new way to bring tension between them.
     “Bring your phone,” he said. “I may do it anyway.”
    “Monique and Judy both have cell phones with international service. Their phone