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And if she ever let herself think so, then she’d be the biggest fool of all.
Chapter Two (#u2657647f-54b3-5eb5-a2c4-5fdb59e4a466)
“STARGARDT’S DISEASE?”
Amberley strained to bring the wavy lines of her ophthalmologist, Dr. Hamilton, into focus. Shameful tears pricked the back of her eyes. It’d been a long six weeks of appointments and tests since she’d returned home and begun searching for an answer about her failing eyesight, and now this...some strange name that seemed like it had nothing to do with her.
Dr. Hamilton’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “It’s a genetic disorder that causes macular degeneration.”
Her heart dropped all the way to the floor and splattered.
Was there a cure?
Lately, her central vision had deteriorated at a terrifying rate, hobbling her at home, her spirit and independence vanishing with it.
“Should we have discovered this when she was born?” her mother asked in what Amberley called her “Interrogation Voice.” She’d been a Carbondale county judge for almost ten years and a prosecutor for fifteen before that.
Out of the corner of Amberley’s eye, she spied her mother’s white face in sharp detail. A line where she hadn’t blended her makeup. A mole the size of a pencil eraser. A few strands of gray-brown hair that’d escaped her braid and fell across her cheek.
Strange that while the center of her vision failed, her peripheral vision still worked fine.
“Not necessarily. The condition appears, symptomatically, in childhood with some vision deficit that’s correctable with glasses or contacts. However, the loss of sight increases rapidly in the twenties, in some instances progressing to legal blindness.”
Her gasp cracked loud in the ophthalmologist’s office.
A hand—her mother’s—fell on Amberley’s knee. Squeezed.
Suddenly it became hard to breath.
“Am I going blind?”
Dr. Hamilton moved his head toward her. That much she could tell, but if he nodded or made a face, she didn’t have a clue. He appeared as just a fuzzy blob of tan and brown wearing something white—a lab coat she guessed.
“Complete blindness?” He paused—maybe waiting for her to affirm the question? Her mouth froze along with the rest of her, her heart beating down deep in a block of ice. “That would be rare, but we can’t rule it out.”
Panic rose. Would her vision be this way from now on? Forever? The world had morphed into a carnival fun house full of twisted, stretched and squashed reflections.
“There isn’t a procedure that could help? An implant? Gene therapy?” Her mother’s crisp voice turned sharp.
Another knee squeeze.
A drumming sound signaled Dr. Hamilton tapping on his desk. Then a long sigh.
“Gene therapy studies are still too early to be conclusive. Charlotte, I wish I had a better prognosis for Amberley. This is a heck of a thing.”
“So—so that’s it?” Amberley’s voice shook.
“We can arrange for a service dog.”
“I don’t need a dog,” she cried. “I need my eyes back.”
My life.
“The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can handle—”
Easy for a sighted person to say. Amberley shook off her mother’s hand, shot to her feet, stepped forward, then bumped into the desk with her thigh. Hard. Her teeth ground together. She’d become a hermit these last few weeks for this exact reason. At home, she navigated the space well enough, keeping the tormenting sense of helpless, hopeless at bay.
But here—here she couldn’t hide from it. In the real world, her vision blossomed into a bigger problem and she shrunk into someone incompetent, dependent, weak, a person she never wanted to be.
“I can handle a fifteen-hundred-pound stallion at fifty miles an hour. But this—I can’t deal with this. What am I supposed to do with my life?”
She’d been planning on trying out for the ERA Premier tour team again at their end-of-summer qualifiers. Now she’d never be good enough to ride with them.
Or ride at all...
The life she’d always wanted ended before it’d even started, and she had no contingency plan.
“Honey, let’s not think so far ahead.”
Dr. Hamilton made a soothing noise. “Your mother’s right. Take it day by day.”
“And what do I do with those days?”
Unable to pace for fear of smacking into anything else in her obstacle course of a world, she dropped back into her seat. A sense of helplessness washed over her. Crushing. Unfamiliar. Did her life matter anymore? One without riding? Competing? Winning?
If you aren’t first, you’re last. Her father’s words floated inside, stinging.
What am I if I can’t compete?
Nothing.
No. Less than nothing.
You may as well not even exist.
She dropped her head in her hands.
“There’s plenty you can do,” her no-nonsense mother protested. Staunch as her pioneer ancestry.
“Like...”
After a painful beat of silence, her mother cleared her throat. “You could come down and assist my office clerk.”
“Doesn’t that require reading?”
Metal grated on metal. A drawer opened by the sound of it. Then Dr. Hamilton said, “There’s an equine therapy program for people with disabilities.”
“I can’t help people with disabilities,” Amberley protested. “Not when I’m...”
Silence. Shifting in chairs. A light cough from Dr. Hamilton. A short exhale from her mother.
And then it dawned on her. She had the disability. She was a disability. And a liability. The realization settled in her chest like pneumonia, cold, dense and painful.
A strange urge to seek out her gelding, Harley, and share the news seized her. He’d always been her rock. Her confidant. Him and...
Jared.
Suddenly she pictured her best friend’s wide-open smile and his teasing, amber eyes. What would he think of her if he knew her marginalized status, someone without a purpose or real worth? A loser. Not a winner at all.
She hoped she’d never find out.
Sidelined by an injury last season, he’d return to the Broncos’ preseason training in a few weeks. Until then, she’d continue dodging his texts and calls and hole up in her room.
After that...
Her future stretched ahead of her, as narrow, bleak and distorted as her vision.
“So what do I do now?” she asked when the silence in the room stretched to its—her—breaking point.
“I’ll give you the number for the equine program and write you a referral to an occupational therapist. They’ll help you regain your independence and improve your quality of life.”
Her fingers curled around the worn wooden edge of her seat. Her quality of life? That made her sound a hundred years old. Then again, maybe the description fit: someone barely hanging on to a life that was, for all intents and purposes, over.
“No, thanks.”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Hamilton’s chair scraped and he stood.
“We’ll take the number and the referral, Doctor,” her mother interjected smoothly, in a brook-no-argument voice which had secured her status as the state’s most successful prosecutor turned judge.
Amberley’s nose tingled and her eyes ached with the effort to hold back her grief. She needed to get home, crawl into bed and bury herself under the covers.
“Is our time up?” She headed in the direction of the door, unmoored. Her life whirled, out of control, her independence—gone. She couldn’t even take off when she wanted—not when she couldn’t drive. And she missed her other Harley, a 2010 black Breakout that matched the one Jared bought the same year.
No more hopping on her bike and chasing down sunsets, free, the wind on her face, blowing through her hair, as close to flying as any human could get. No. With her wings clipped, she just wanted to duck under her covers and hide.
Her foot connected with the bottom of a tree stand. It tilted forward and fell on top of her.
“Amberley!”
Her mother and the doctor rushed to help, and she balled her hands at her sides.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
You may not have much, but you still have your pride.
A few minutes later, they were out the door and in her mother’s pickup. The warm June air flowed through her cracked-open window as they drove home. She picked out the scent of Smokey’s barbecue, sweet and tangy, and pictured the crispy, white-and-red awning and blue-covered picnic tables instead of the passing color smear.
Would she ever see it again?
No.
Another loss, one of the many ahead to grieve. Her future rose black and immutable, her past a cemetery filled with everything she once loved and now lost.
“Listen, sweetheart, I’m going to be with you every step of the way. Don’t worry.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of.”
The faint twang of a country song crooned through the radio. “No,” her mother said gently. “I suppose you don’t. You never did.”
Amberley let out a breath. “I love you, Ma. It’s just that I need not to need you right now.”
“Of course.”
They rode a while more in silence. Amberley dropped the back of her head to her seat and shut her eyes. When the air turned thick with pine scent, she imagined them crossing out of town and onto the highway that led to their home, a small log cabin with a deep porch that her father had built himself.
What would her dad say to her now?
He’d be so let down.
Sorry, Daddy.
Three more turns and the truck bounced on rough track. When the right side dipped, she imagined the ruts that marked the halfway point up her packed-dirt drive. Then her mother pulled to a stop and Amberley jerked open the door.
“I’m going to bed,” she called once she found the porch banister and stepped up the stairs.
“Shoot!” her mother exclaimed behind her.
Amberley stopped and turned—a pointless gesture since she could make out only her mother’s tall, thin shape. She pictured the narrow oval of her face, the long brow and upturned nose that’d always given her comfort as a child. Her heart squeezed. She’d never see her mother’s face again.
This was real.
Not temporary.
Not fixable.
Forever.
The porch step creaked, and her mother’s soft hand fell on Amberley’s wrist. “I completely forgot. We have company coming for supper.”
“I’ll just stay in my room. Tell them I have a headache.” A deep ache now clawed her brain.
Her mother guided her up to the porch, then paused by the front door. In the distance, chickens squawked and the American flag atop a flower bed’s pole snapped. The warm wind carried the scent of newly blooming wildflowers. “I don’t think he’ll accept that.”
“Why?” she asked through a yawn. Her heavy-lidded eyes closed. Sleep. She just wanted to sleep and not wake up for a long, long time.
Or ever.
“It’s Jared.”
