I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!
Today, Dave confesses his secret to his friends, and Ben plays the hero…
< Read Chapter 30
Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter
with notifications of new chapters.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Party’s Over
“I’ll probably be blind by the end of the year.” Dave blinked. It felt good to say it.
The room around him went silent.
He’d meant to just tell Matteo and Diego, but he must have said it loud enough for the whole living room to hear.
Carmelina poked her head through the doorway that lead to the kitchen. “What the hell did you just say?”
Correction. The whole house. He sighed. Cat’s out of the bag now. “I have macular degeneration. They can slow it down, but I’ll be functionally blind, sooner rather than later.” He felt calm as he said it. Carmelina’s warmly appointed living room—avocado green walls, cozy leather furniture, bright accent pillows and cheery art on the walls—had lulled him into a state of complacency.
Not that he wasn’t still upset about the prospect. Who wants to go blind? But he’d had time to settle in with it. And he had Marcos, and Marissa.
“Holy crap.” Sam had followed Carmelina into the living room. He crossed the room to throw his arms around Dave. “I’m so sorry, buddy.”
“Thanks.” Dave blinked owlishly. He wasn’t used to such attention. Really, he just wanted everyone to treat him like normal. It felt strange for Sam, who just lost his husband, to be showing pity on him.
Mercifully, Sam let him go and stepped back. But then everyone else closed in, each person giving him a hug, squeezing his shoulder, whispering “I’m sorry” in his ear. Dave grew more and more uncomfortable with the attention, until at last he exploded, sending Justin’s new boyfriend scampering backward, windmilling his arms comically like Wile E. Coyote. “Hey, it’s all right, folks. I’m not dying!”
There was shocked silence, and then the party slowly returned to normal. Dave didn’t miss the worried looks sent his way.
Ben knelt next to him, putting a hand on his knee. “It’s so unnerving, how they treat you differently. Sam knows.”
Dave snorted. “It’s like they think I’m about to meet my maker.”
Ben laughed. “Exactly. But seriously, I know some great doctors. When Ella was sick…” A pained look crossed his face. “We talked to a lot of folks, including some doing cutting edge work. I can ask around…”
“Thanks. I might take you up on that.” His own doctors had been clear, though. The only course of action was delay. There was no cure.
“Of course. I’ll send you some names.” Ben’s phone buzzed. “I’m so sorry. I’ve got to run.” He stood, looked at Dave uncertainly, and then bent over to kiss his cheek. “We’ll all help you figure this out.” Then he was heading out the door.
Marcos squeezed his shoulder. “That must have been hard.”
Dave shook his head. “It really wasn’t. I didn’t mean to do it. An Ellen DeGeneres moment.” He might as well have leaned over a microphone when he said it. “At least it’s out there now. Everyone knows.”
Matteo nodded. “Mio padre… my father had that. Still, he could see light and color. He used to say to me that it was like an impressionist painting. The whole world full of fuzzy, bright colors.”
Dave nodded. “That’s a nice way to think about it.” He loved painting. Maybe he could paint what he saw once his sight diminished, even if it was just an impressionist blur. “Poor Marcos here is going to be stuck with the care and feeding of an old blind man.”
Marcos grinned. His face went blurry for a second, then sharpened up. “You’ll be all right, old man. Like Ben said, we’ll figure this out.”
Dave closed his eyes. The truth was, although he felt a certain calm settle over him, it was more numbness than tranquility. He wasn’t ready to never see Marcos again, or Marissa or his art or their home… any of it.
To be honest, he was totally freaking out inside, even as he struggled to hold it together for the ones who loved him. He forced a grin. “Yeah, I’ll be all right.”
“That’s the spirit.” Marcos kissed him and ruffled his hair, then turned back to Diego to discuss business at Ragazzi.
Dave kept the smile on his face, even as he felt like the worst kind of liar.
#
Ben hurried back to his car through the gorgeous late spring afternoon, his brow creased. The text had been explicit.
Ben, it’s Loralei. Help!
He’d texted back.
Where are you?
Home.
Be right there.
He slipped behind the wheel of his old Honda and stuck the key in the ignition. The engine protested, but on the third try, it finally turned over with an annoyed growl.
Something was amiss. He felt it.
He looked out the windshield, down at the dashboard, and over at the passenger seat. The glove compartment was hanging open.
That’s weird. It was an old car, and sometimes the thing slipped open on its own, but he swore he’d closed it. I should really think about trading the ancient gal in.
Except…
This was the car he’d taken Ella to dinner in more times than he could count. The one they’d road tripped in when they went down to the Bay Area to see Kinky Boots at the Curran. The car that had carried so many picnic lunches to sundry parks and hiking trails. The one that reminded him of her. Looking at the passenger seat, he could still see her there, her laughing smile teasing him…
Nothing lasts forever.
He put the car in gear and let off the brake, and it lurched down the street. Home was fifteen minutes away, but he’d made it in ten before.
Loralei called me. She was in trouble, and she’d called him.
His luck held—he made it through East Sac and into Midtown at record speed, hitting all green lights—well, there might have been a yellow or two in there, but he’d squeaked through without a cop in sight. There was even a spot waiting for him in front of the building they shared. The gods were smiling on him.
He bounded up the stairs of the old Victorian and unlocked the front door. In five more seconds he was up the interior stairwell and pounding on her door.
It swung open, and there she was, standing in the entryway, soaked through and through. “Thank God you’re here.” She took his arm and dragged him inside.
Standing in the entryway. “You’re… on your feet.” His mind refused to accept what he was seeing, despite all the clues. The stomping around upstairs. The kitchen equipment up on top shelves, too high to reach in a wheelchair. The walking noise the last time he visited her.
“Yes, I am. It’s a miracle. Now come on. I need your help.” She pulled him through the living room and back to the master bedroom, where her wheelchair was folded up in one corner.
This was not how I thought I’d get here. He barely had time for the thought before she dragged him into the bathroom, stepping over a couple wet towels that were serving as a makeshift dam.
None of this was what he’d planned.
The toilet was gurgling angrily, overflowing its bowl.
Loralei took a towel and started sopping up water, wringing the damp towel into the tub. “I can’t get it to stop!”
Luckily the water was clean. Or clean enough. “Let me try.” He slipped past her and reached behind the toilet for the shutoff valve to give it a good twist.
No go. It was stuck.
“Did you think I didn’t try that first?”
He couldn’t tell if she sounded annoyed or amused. Maybe both. “Sorry. Had to check. Do you have a wrench?”
She shook her head, intent on her task. “No. My ex took all the tools.” Sop. Lift. Squeeze.
“Give me a sec.” He ran out of the room, slipping off his shoes so he wouldn’t track water all over the floor, and down the stairs to his place. He kept his toolbox in the bedroom closet, and he had an old wrench there that had belonged to his father… one of the few things he had left from the man.
He found it buried at the bottom of the toolbox. He popped his head into his own bathroom, which was directly below hers.
Water was dripping down from the ceiling into his tub.
Ben sighed. They’d have to get the property manager involved, and he was a pain in the ass. The owner was a bit of a skinflint, never wanting to spend money on the place.
He ran back up the stairs and through Loralei’s apartment, holding the wrench up triumphantly. “Found it.” He knelt by the still-erupting toilet and stuck his head behind the porcelain throne. Managing to get the wrench in place, he tightened it on the valve and pushed on it hard. He had very little leverage in the awkward position, but soon enough he got the valve to move—a little. A quarter turn—release, re-clamp—and then another, until it loosened up enough to turn by hand. At last the flow stopped.
“Got it.” He stepped back and set the wrench down on the bathroom counter, and picked up a towel to pitch in. “It’s dripping a bit downstairs in my bathroom. We’ll have to give Dale a call.”
“Dammit.” She squeezed out her towel again, and then sank down on the edge of the tub. “Last time I called him, he said he was about to throw me out. ‘Too much trouble,’ he said. ‘There are a hundred other tenants who would love to have a place like this.’”
Ben laughed. “Yeah, Dale’s an asshole.” He squeezed out his own towel, and then wiped up more of the water.
She laughed. “He really is.” A heavy sigh. “If he kicks me out—”
“He won’t. This isn’t your fault. I’ll talk to him.” He found a couple more towels under the sink. “Okay if I use these?”
She nodded. “I’m so glad you came. I didn’t know who else to call. I hope I didn’t pull you away from anything.”
“Just a wake.” He finished drying the floor and the side of the toilet, and hung the towels over the edge of the tub next to her to dry, next to her leopard print shower curtain.
Loralei’s eyes went wide. “Are you serious? I am so sorry—”
Ben laughed. “It’s all right. It was over. Really. They were just about to kick all of us out anyhow.” He put down the toilet lid and sat on it, fixing her with his best Will Trent stare. “So… the standing and walking around thing?”
She sighed. “You don’t think you could just forget that you saw that?”
“’Fraid not.” She’d been lying to him, after all. He didn’t know quite how to feel about that.
She was silent for a moment, looking down at the still damp white linoleum tiles. At last, she nodded to herself, and looked up at him again. “I really was injured—I was driving the kids to soccer practice, and a guy broadsided me over on Broadway. Thank god the boys weren’t injured.” She rubbed her temples. “I couldn’t walk for half a year. When Jack left me… it was hard. But the whole disabled thing helped with the judge. She was sympathetic, and granted me partial custody. So when I moved in here… I just kept it up so Jack wouldn’t have any reason to try to change the agreement. I’ve been doing physical therapy, and now I can get around pretty well without the chair.”
“Do your kids know?” Did she even really have kids? He was pretty sure he’d heard them in the background, that first time he’d come knocking on her door.
“Yeah. They won’t tell their father. They don’t like him much, either.” She laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Ben.” She put her hand on his arm, and a shock went through him.
It didn’t seem so bad, now that she’d explained it to him. “It’s… all right.” After all, he had his own secret. Or several. “I have a confession to make.”
Her warm brown eyes met his, sparkling with anticipation. “Tell me.”
“When I brought you dinner the other day… I was hoping we would eat it together.”
“I know.” She looked away again, wringing her hands.
“You… knew? Then why did you send me away?” He’d been so sure she would say yes, that they’d hit it off, and then…
It won’t be an easy path. Was this what Miz Fortune had meant?
“Things for me are complicated. I have two kids. I barely make ends meet. And there’s the whole handicap deception thing. You don’t want to get involved with me.”
He reached out and put his hand under her chin, gently turning her face toward his. “Another confession, then. That first time I saw you, when I pounded on your door and you opened it, sitting there in your chair, looking up at me, I was enchanted. Something inside me knew I wanted to get to know you better. That you could be someone who mattered. It’s the first time I’ve felt that way since… since Ella.” Oof. That hurt to say. Ella would have liked her.
She searched his eyes. “You don’t want me—”
Ben grinned. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
“I’ll bring you down.”
“One date.”
“I’m a liar. You really don’t want to be with me.”
He squeezed her hands. “Just give me one date. Then if you want to be rid of me, I’ll go, and leave you alone forever.”
She bit her lip. “One date?”
“One date. What do you say?” He waited, his nerves thrumming with electricity.
She took a deep breath, then let it all out at once. “One date. Saturday night. Jack has the kids this weekend.” She pulled an offending strand of blond hair back behind her ear. “Pick me up at six?”
“Six o’clock it is.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
“You’re a rare kind of man, Ben.” Her eyes followed him as he retrieved his wrench.
You have no idea. Soon, he’d have to tell her his other secret. But not on the first date. “See you Saturday.” He headed out the door, feeling her eyes on his back.
He whistled all the way down the stairs to his own flat.
< Read Chapter 30
Like what you read? if you haven’t tried it yet, check out book one, The River City Chronicles, here.