Malorie(71)

Malorie, Olympia knows, has suffered enough.

“No,” Olympia says. “Honestly, Mom. You’ve been the best mom in the world to us.”

Malorie grips her hand, and Olympia squeezes back.

Around the next turn, she sees it. Just as she’s seen so many of them through the years. There were dozens on the rudderless hike from the school for the blind to Camp Yadin. That journey remains the most frightening of Olympia’s life. It marked the beginning of guiding her family in secret.

This way, guys.

Look out, guys.

Uphill now.

I’ll go ahead a little. Don’t worry, I like doing it.

You hear that, Tom? So do I.

But she hadn’t heard it. She’d seen it. All of it.

Her ears are no match for her brother’s. Another secret.

“Anything?” Malorie asks.

Olympia still considers that first walk, six years old, as the time she became a woman. She’s read enough books to know that the good ones tell of a character who experiences something that changes their life. For her, it was coming to grips with immunity alone.

And how many more did she see once they got there? Really, how many through the years? How many creatures, if that’s what they must be called, stood outside their cabin, stood within others, roamed the lodge and its kitchen? How many did she find in the basement of the lodge as Malorie fished for canned goods on the shelves, believing her daughter to be blindfolded, too?

Oh, there were so many times she wanted to tell Malorie about Annette; wanted her mom to know the woman was not touched, that they didn’t have to wear sleeves, hoods, gloves. Oh, how she wanted Malorie to know her secret. The truth.

But even now, as they turn with the road, as a creature is revealed to be standing ahead, Olympia’s instinct is to say nothing, only to guide.

But things have changed. And maybe people experience more than one life-changing event.

“There’s one about forty feet away, Mom.”

Malorie comes to a stop.

“Close your eyes,” she says.

But Olympia doesn’t close them. Instead, she eyes a way around the thing, just as she has done so many times before.

The path curves this way, when it did not.

There’s an object in the road, when it was everything Malorie feared.

“Olympia,” Malorie says.

But this is something Malorie will have to get used to.

“It’s in the center of the road,” Olympia says. “Follow me, we’ll go around it.”

She hears Malorie’s breathing intensify. She knows her mom is as afraid as she’s ever been.

“I won’t go mad,” Olympia says. “I promise.”

It sounds so silly to say, yet Malorie squeezes her hand again.

And Olympia leads.

She guides Malorie around it, but near it, coming as close as Olympia’s ever come, emboldened by her reveal.

“Okay,” she says. “It’s behind us. But…”

“There are more ahead,” Malorie says.

“Yes,” Olympia says. “So many that we’re going to have to take this slow.”

“Olympia.” Malorie pulls on her arm.

But Olympia understands Malorie is only scared.

And if she’s not keeping secrets anymore, she may as well admit that she’s scared, too.

She pulls back on Malorie’s hand.

“Tom,” she says.

Malorie breathes in, holds it, breathes out.

“All right,” she says. “Guide us.”

Then Olympia, with pride, new, changed, does that.





TWENTY-NINE


This is everything Tom has ever wanted. The opposite of the life he’s lived.

A community where people are trying.

It’s all he’s ever asked Malorie to be okay with. Trying. New things. New ways. He knows not to look. And here he won’t be told what he already knows ever again.

Henry understands. Oh, boy, does he. It was Henry who said go, go to where the people think like you do. Be bold as you were born to be! And how those words connected with Tom. They electrified him in a way Malorie never could. Nobody has ever spoken to him like Henry does. Not Mom, not Olympia, not anybody at the school for the blind. The more Tom thinks about it, the more he believes the train was an intervention of Fate. Olympia’s told him about Fate before. Without that knock on the door by the census man, and without Tom asking him to leave the papers, he never would’ve heard about Indian River, Malorie never would’ve seen her parents’ names on the page, and he never would’ve met Henry. It scares him how close he was to spending the rest of his life at Camp Yadin, never knowing there was a whole world that felt like he does.

And they really, really do.

The man, Allan, has already retrieved the two-way mirror. He and some others are testing it out inside a large ten-person tent right now. Tom is in the next tent over, where the two volunteers, Jacob and Calvin, have been discussing the philosophy of Tom’s invention for a while. They’re next on the list, Henry reminds Tom, and the people of Indian River can’t wait to try new ideas.

Tom knows why. It’s because they want to be a part of something bigger than the life Tom was leading. It’s because they understand that, yes, someone might get hurt, but someone might also not. The people of Indian River want to be the ones to break down the door, the ones who discover a safe way to look, who return sight and seeing to a world that’s already mourned the loss of both.