“Now we will drink this together.”

She tried to scurry backwards, away from him, off the bed, but his right hand caught her wrist while, with his left hand, he held the glass of liquid high out of her reach.

“Now, stop it, Rose.” He growled between his clenched teeth. “For the love of God, do this with dignity.”

Suddenly a pair of headlamps sent their beams over the master-bedroom windows.

Rose began to scream as loud as she could. It was nothing like those nightmares in which you try to scream and you can’t. She was shrieking. The screams just erupted uncontrollably.

He dragged her towards him as he went on and on, shouting over her screams: “You are the most dreadful disappointment of my life,” he cried, “and now as I seek to make all things new, to make all things whole, for you and for me, Rose, you do this to me, to me!”

With the back of his hand, he slammed her into the pillow. Out. When she opened her eyes, a foul burning fluid was in her mouth. He had her nose pinched between his fingers. She gagged, and bucked and struggled to scream. The taste was ghastly. Her throat was burning. So was her chest.

He thrust the half-full glass at her and the liquid inside it splashed on her face, burning her. The smell was acrid, chemical, caustic. It burned into her cheek and neck.

Twisting around as she struggled against his grip, she vomited on the bed. She kicked at him with both feet. But he wouldn’t let go. He threw the liquid at her and she turned with all her strength, feeling it splash against her face. It went into her eyes. It blinded her. Her eyes were on fire.

Murray’s voice sounded from the hallway door.

“Let her go.”

And then she was free, screaming, crying, grabbing for the covers to wipe the burning liquid off her face, and from out of her eyes.

The men were scuffling and the furniture was breaking. There was a loud crash as the mirror on the dresser broke.

“I’ve got you,” said Murray as he grabbed up Rose and carried her out of the room, running down the steps with her.

She could hear sirens approaching. “Murray, I’m blind!” she sobbed. “Murray, my throat is on fire.”

Rose woke up in the ICU. Her eyes were bandaged, her throat was aching unbelievably, and her hands were strapped so that she couldn’t move.

Aunt Marge and Murray were with her. Desperately, they were trying to reach Uncle Lestan. They would not give up trying. They would find him.

“I’m blind now, aren’t I?” Rose wanted to ask, but she couldn’t talk. Her throat wouldn’t open. The pain in her chest was grinding.

Gardner Paleston was dead, Murray assured her. He’d died from a blow to the head in the fight with Murray.

It was an open-and-shut case of attempted murder-suicide. The bastard, as Murray called him, had already posted his suicide note online fully describing his plan to give Rose “the burning hemlock,” along with an ode to their mingled decomposing remains. She heard Aunt Marge begging Murray to stop talking.

“We’re going to find Uncle Lestan,” Marge said.

Terror engulfed Rose. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t beg for reassurance; she couldn’t even tell them about the pain, the unrelenting pain. But Uncle Lestan was coming. He was coming. Oh, what a fool she’d been, such a fool, to have loved Gardner, to have trusted Gardner. She was so ashamed, ashamed as she’d been years ago lying on the floor of Amazing Grace Home, so ashamed.

And all the confusion about the books, those books which had affected her so deeply that for days she’d lived in them, imagining Uncle Lestan to be the hero, rising with him, in his arms, towards the stars. Give me the stars.

She lapsed back into sleep because there was no place else to go.

There was no day or night, only an alternating rhythm of activity and noise. More commotion in the room, and in the corridor beyond, more voices near at hand yet muffled, indistinct.

Then a doctor was talking to her.

He was close by her ear. His voice was soft, deep, resonant, sharpened by an accent she didn’t know.

“I am caring for you now,” he said. “I will make you well.”

They were in an ambulance moving through traffic, and she could feel every bump of the road. The siren was distant but steady. And when she woke next she knew she was on a plane. She could hear Marge talking softly to someone, but it wasn’t Murray. She couldn’t hear Murray.

Next time she woke she was in a new bed, a very soft bed, and there was music playing, a lovely song from Romberg’s The Student Prince. It was the “Serenade” that long ago Uncle Lestan had sung to her. If her eyes had not been wrapped tight, they would have filled with tears. Maybe they did fill with tears.

“Don’t cry, precious dear,” said the doctor, the doctor with the accent. She felt his silken hand on her forehead. “Our medicines are healing you. By tomorrow this time, your vision will be restored.”

Slowly it dawned on her that her chest no longer hurt. There was no pain in her throat. She swallowed freely for the first time in so long.

She was dreaming again, and a soft tenor voice, a rather deep voice, was singing Romberg’s “Serenade.”

Morning. Rose opened her eyes very slowly, and she saw the light of the sun coming in the windows, and gradually the deep sleep left her, falling away from her as if veils were being drawn back, one after another.

It was a beautiful room. A wall of glass looked out on the distant mountains, and between here and there was the desert, golden in the burning sun.

There was a man standing with his back to her. At first the image of him was indistinct against the bright distant mountains and the deep blue sky.

She sighed deeply and turned her head easily back and forth on the pillow.

Her hands were free and she brought them up to touch her face. She touched her lips, her moist lips.

The young man came into focus. Broad shoulders, tall, maybe six feet tall, with luxuriant blond hair. Could it be Uncle Lestan?

Just as his name rose to her lips, the figure turned to face her and came towards the bed. Oh, how completely he resembled Uncle Lestan, but he was younger, definitely younger; he was the image of Uncle Lestan in a young boy.

“Hello, Rose,” he said, smiling down at her. “I’m so glad you’re awake.”

Suddenly her vision dimmed, blurred, and a pain shot through her temples and her eyes. But it was gone, this pain, as quickly as it had come, and she could see again. Her eyes were only dry and itching. She could see perfectly.