I should have held at sixteen,” said Vince.
He was back at home in the comfort of his bed. Sam lay quietly on the rug beside the dresser. His wife was at his side, still awake.
“What did you say, honey?” asked Alicia.
“In Dr. Feldman’s office today,” he said. “I was sitting on a king and the six of clubs, and like an idiot, I say, Hit me. Of course I busted. He dealt me a seven.”
Vince felt the gentle caress of her hand at his chin, then the warmth of her kiss at the side of his mouth.
“I’m so happy for you,” she whispered.
Vince smiled as she rolled back to her side of the mattress. It was late and he needed rest after such a full day, but he was too excited to sleep.
The Brainport session had lasted two hours. The first hurdle was to understand that it wasn’t like seeing with your eyes. “It’s more akin to a language in that you develop a skill,” Dr. Feldman had told him. After five minutes he was able to operate the device. Within an hour he was recognizing sensations on his tongue and reaching out for a ball as it rolled in front of him. By the end of the session he was playing blackjack-not with Braille cards, but with regular ones. The next goal was to get him through an obstacle course, and from there the sky was the limit. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take it home. Brainport was experimental. But it gave him hope. Today had been a great day, and nothing was going to spoil it.
Not even Jamal Wakefield.
“Vince?” asked Alicia. “Do you think… Will you have to testify at the trial?”
Jamal Wakefield, the three-year-old unsolved murder of McKenna Mays, and “the horrible price Miami police officer Vincent Paulo paid trying to bring the alleged killer to justice,” had been the lead story on the local evening news. Vince had received a heads-up that morning from the assistant state attorney. He and Alicia had skirted the topic all night long, talking nonstop about Brainport. It had become the elephant in the room.
“I’m meeting with the assistant state attorney tomorrow. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Vince peeled back the bedsheet to feel the night air on his chest. All of Florida was basking in glorious January weather, perfect for sleeping with the window open. Then, slowly but surely, Vince could almost feel a 101-degree cloud coming over him-a cloud so noxious that it probably violated several articles of the Geneva Conventions. Sam was a terror when there was fallen fruit in the backyard.
“Damn, Sammy,” he said as he pulled the sheet up over his head. “Can you lay off the avocados?”
The cloud evaporated, cool air rustled the window sheers-and Vince could all but hear the wheels still turning in Alicia’s head.
“Vince?” she asked in a tentative voice. “What do you think the prosecutor will tell you tomorrow?”
He lowered the bedsheet and sighed. Even after three years, it wasn’t easy to talk about it. “I’m sure I’ll have to testify.”
“But they didn’t call you before the grand jury.”
“They used the written affidavit I signed three years ago. Not that they even needed it. All they had to do was play the recording of McKenna naming her boyfriend as the killer. The trial will be a different story. I was the only one there when McKenna died. I was holding the cell phone to her mouth when she identified her killer.”
Vince could feel his wife rise up on her elbow, her concern palpable. “I’m scared,” she said.
Those words hit him hard; Alicia didn’t scare easily. They’d met on the force, when Alicia’s father had been Miami’s mayor, and she’d risen to become one of the top young cops in the department. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Vince.
“I mean I’m afraid for us,” she said. “I don’t want this to take us back to the bad old days.”
She was talking about a stretch of time before they were married, a few weeks after he became a hero, soon after the doctors removed the bandages-when Vince came to the frightening realization that he would never again see her smile, never look into those eyes as her heart pounded against his chest, never see the expression on her face when she was happy or sad or just plain bored. That was the same day he’d told her it would be best to stop seeing each other, and the unintended pun had made them both cry.
Vince held her tight. “That’s not going to happen.”
She unwound from his embrace and pressed her forehead against his, as if willing him to look her in the eye.
“Do you promise?”
It gave him goose bumps, this latest confirmation of how foolish he had been to push Alicia away, assuming as he had that it was only a matter of time before a beautiful young woman fell out of love with a blind man.
“Yes,” he said. “I promise.”
A strange noise reverberated near the dresser. They froze, each one processing it in a separate darkness, and then shared a laugh as they dove beneath the sheets.
“Sam!”