I'll Be Seeing You by Lurlene McDaniel Read Free Book Online Page A

she’d simply avoided telling him the truth by not divulging certain details. Now she’d told him two outright lies. Truthfully she
was
upset, and there was no pain in her leg.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought maybe I’d offended you by asking to touch your face. I don’t know why I asked. Maybe because the woman from blind services encouraged me to explore the world with my sense of touch. She said it would help me ‘see’ things. Forget it.”
    “It’s all right. I—I really don’t mind.”
Another lie!
“But you know what I think would be better?”
    “What?”
    “I think it would be better to wait until you can actually see my face for yourself. Yes, that’s what I want. I want to greet you face-to-face once your bandages come off.”
    He didn’t say a word right away. He only held her hand and brushed his thumb repeatedly across her knuckles. “Even whenthe bandages come off, there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to see again.”
    “But I think you will,” she insisted. “And because I think so, I want you to wait until you can see me with your own eyes.”
    “And if I can’t?”
    “Then you can touch away.”
    He slumped back in the chair.
    She disliked bringing Kyle’s mood from happy to glum; it wasn’t a nice way to treat him. But she’d been desperate to take his mind off the idea of exploring her face with his touch. What a disaster it would have been. She didn’t understand why it was so important to her that he maintain his illusions about her looks, but it was.
    “Do you know what?” she asked brightly. “The orderly will be here any minute to take me down to PT.” She told him another lie. She wasn’t scheduled for another PT session until Monday morning.
    “I’ll go back to my room.” Kyle stood.
    “Let me walk with you.”
    “How? You’re on crutches, remember?”
    “We’ll manage.”
    “Then let me take your elbow and followabout a half step behind. That’s the way I was taught to have someone lead me.”
    Carley let him grasp her right elbow and slowly she began to take small steps with her crutches so that he could keep up. Back in his room again, he climbed into the bed. “I think I’ll listen to another one of those books you loaned me. I’m not much good at doing anything
but
listening.”
    “I have more,” she said, eager to make up for any distress she might have caused him. “Mom and Dad brought me a bunch of new ones today.”
    “Will you come visit me later?” he asked.
    “Absolutely.”
    “My parents are coming this afternoon. I’d like for them to meet you.”
    “Um—all right,” she declared, knowing full well that she’d find something to keep her busy and away from her room so that she wouldn’t have to meet them.
    Carley returned to her room, grateful to be out of her awkward situation. How had she gotten herself into this mess? Was it wrong of her to want to protect herself from his discovering what she really looked like?Was it wrong to want him to believe that she was normal, even pretty?
    Later, when she figured Kyle’s parents might be on their way up, Carley went to visit Reba. The girl was still recovering from her surgery, but fortunately she was alone in her room. IVs hung by her bed, and tubes leading from her stomach were partially concealed by bedcovers.
    “For drainage,” she explained to Carley.
    “Are you in pain?” Carley might have felt revulsion if she hadn’t been through so much medical trauma herself.
    “Not much,” Reba said. Her voice sounded soft and she spoke slowly, but at least she was lucid. She nodded toward a small machine next to her bed with its IV line threaded into her arm. “Morphine dispenser,” she said. “If I start to hurt too bad, I can make the drip come faster.”
    “How long before you’re able to get up?”
    “Don’t know.” Reba’s eyes closed, but soon opened again. “Talk to me. Take my mind off this stuff.”
    Carley told her about Kyle’s visit and him wanting