AN: NYElizabeth asked when I was going to post next and it made me look at the calendar. I realized that classes start next week and I have quite a bit of posting to do so I'm not trying to edit this story and do coursework at the same time. I probably won't get the whole story posted by next week, but hopefully I'll be done editing by then and can just finish posting it a bit at a time.

Thanks so much to those that have taken time to review. I very much appreciate your kind words, and read them over and over again.

Hope you enjoy the next installment.

Chapter 5

June 1983

"Lizzie, if you could just sit up straight and lean forward a bit, I'm going to place the phoropter against your forehead. Alright, go ahead and make sure that your chin rests comfortably there. Uh huh. Good." The eye doctor swiveled a magnifier over the lens and shined a light through it. "Elizabeth, can you hold your eyes open and try not to blink? Okay, that's good. Look up. And down. Yes. To the right. Mmm, hmm."

Joan sat in the plastic covered chair by the door watching. She was seething, but tried her best to keep her emotions in check. She'd already hired a lawyer to take care of that asshole, Dr. Younger, who had completely dismissed Elizabeth's statement that she couldn't see. Of course it had been late the following afternoon before they could get into their regular eye doctor and by then it was too late.

"Detached retina," Dr. Windsor had gasped. She immediately stepped away and called the surgical center in Richmond. Of course, Joan and Will rushed Elizabeth there and the retina was reattached the next morning, but the damage was done. Elizabeth was permanently blind in her right eye.

Joan had since done entirely too much research on the subject. If the surgery had occurred within 24 hours of the injury, the chances of restoring her vision were close to 90%. What should've happened in the hospital that afternoon was that an opthamologist should've been consulted. A quick dilation would've immediately alerted the doctors to the problem.

However, that didn't happen. The sticking point was that Elizabeth had lost sight in both eyes and there was no indication of any injury to her left eye. She had no sense of light and dark or shadows that sometimes occurred with vision problems like glaucoma.

They'd been to numerous specialists and Elizabeth finally said that she was tired of people trying to fix her. She wasn't broken. Then she grew quiet and Joan knew that Elizabeth had conceded that she wasn't broken in that way.

Joan struggled with guilt and anger. She should've seen, should've insisted. At the time though, she was all tied up in the allegation of abuse and she just wanted to scoop the kids up and get them out of there. If she had listened closer and paid more attention in the moment, things might have turned out differently.

"Mrs. Bryan, may I see you outside for a moment?" Dr. Windsor asked. Joan quickly looked up and nodded, hoping that she hadn't missed anything important. The doctor pushed the instrument to the side. "Lizzie, you can go ahead and sit back. Your aunt and I will just be a moment." Dr. Windsor held the door and let Joan pass through and they went down the hall several paces away.

"Joan, I've done all of the tests. I've reached out to several specialists. They've looked at all the results and we've all come to the same conclusion."

"You think she's making it up?" Joan interjected, her agitation apparent.

"No. I don't think she's making it up. Not at all. She can't see. But I, and all of the other doctors, don't think the problem is her eyesight. There is a neural disconnect that is not allowing her brain to process the images she sees." Dr. Windsor quieted. "Lizzie has undergone a great deal of trauma the past few months. I think her body is reacting to the trauma. It's just in an unusual way. We'll continue to monitor her, but I don't think there is much more we can do from a medical standpoint. It's possible that, as she heals emotionally, she may regain the sight in her left eye. I'm not making any promises, it's just a possibility.

August 1983

"Joan, I need to go," Elizabeth begged. She'd laid out completely rational reasons and Joan had dug her heels in and was not budging.

"You can get what you need here," Joan argued.

"But I need to be independent."

"You're fifteen. You don't need to move thirteen hours away to be independent. You can stay here and work with the Center for the Blind out of Richmond. You can still go to school. I'll pay for tutors."

Elizabeth sighed. "You're right. I could stay here and do it, but I'll never escape it. I'm always going to be Lizzie Adams, the poor blind, orphan girl. I can't do it anymore. Every time I turn around, I'm faced with it. I need to start over." Elizabeth reached out and landed her hand on Joan's leg. "I need to do this, to overcome this, or at least learn to be independent and live with this. I don't want to end up here with you always having to take care of me."

"Lizzie, you may look like your mother, but dammit if you aren't just like your dad. He always could talk me into damned near anything."

Elizabeth turned toward her aunt. "So you'll let me go?" As her eyebrows raised, the corners of her mouth turned up. It wasn't a real smile, full of joy, but a small one that held hope. Joan would take that. It was a start.

It was at dinner that night that Joan made the announcement. "You're what?" Will screamed at Elizabeth, then he turned on Joan, gesturing wildly toward his sister. "And you think this is a good idea?" He jumped from the table, sending the chair screeching across the floor behind him. Elizabeth flinched and her heart fell into the pit of her stomach. It never occurred to her that Will would even care. Will was rarely home. He'd picked up a job with a local landscaper and left at dawn when the truck pulled up in front of the house. He rarely returned before dark where he showered, played a few video games or went over to the neighbor's house before going to bed. She was usually able to catch him on Sunday morning and they would talk for a few minutes over a bowl of cereal or a slice of toast while Joan was at Mass. That typically consisted of Will seeming annoyed at Elizabeth's questions as he answered them as briefly as possible before retreating outside or to his room.

Now, she could see that he did have an opinion and it certainly wasn't favorable. Elizabeth put every ounce of positive energy she could muster into this, thinking that it would be best for both Joan and Will, and now Will was mad at her. That was the last thing she wanted. Quietly, she stood and carried her plate and glass to the sink and set them down. Hurt was welling up and she absolutely refused to cry in front of Joan. Those days had long since passed. Instead, she rushed from the room, counting quickly, but not taking into consideration that her strides were longer and she careened into the wall at the end of the hallway, just outside her bedroom door. She winced as her hand flew up to her cheek, her shoulder aching as well. Elizabeth turned and retreated to her room.

Joan sat alone at the table and buried her head in her hands. Will and Elizabeth had such different needs and she struggled to meet both where they were. She knew that Will loved Lizzie, and was probably more conscious of it, now that Ben and Susie were gone. But, he was a teenage boy, and even under the best of circumstances, that was challenging, but Will had some high expectations set and was driven to meet them. She couldn't be sure if he was trying to prove himself to her, Lizzie, or Ben and Susie, and she worried what might happen if he ever fell short.

Then there was Lizzie. Normally, she was more introspective, but since Ben and Susie died, it was like pulling teeth to get her out of her shell. To Joan's knowledge, she'd never once cried about losing her sight and after those first few days, she hadn't cried about the loss of her parents. She was, at least outwardly, emotionless. She didn't get angry or hurt or mad. She just moved through the motions. That's why, going against every protective cell in her body, she'd agreed to let Lizzie go to Arkansas's School for the Blind. It was the first time in months that Lizzie wanted anything. She could see that Lizzie would benefit from it. If it helped Lizzie overcome her obstacles, Joan didn't feel like she should stand in her way.

Pushing herself to her feet, she looked to her right, through the back door, out into the backyard and spotted Will sitting on the step at the end of the deck. Looking left, she knew that Lizzie was holed up in her room. "Six of one, half a dozen of the other. I doubt I can fix any of it." Joan sighed and headed outside.

Joan stood a few feet away from Will for a full minute and he didn't acknowledge her. "You're mad," she finally said.

"Of course I'm mad. No one is using any sense here," Will huffed.

"Why do you say that?" Joan asked.

Will gave her an incredulous look. "Because she's blind and you are letting her go to god forsaken Arkansas, BY HERSELF! Who even knows what could happen? She'll have no one there to help her."

"Will, stop. Please. First, your sister is blind, not incapable. She says she couldn't see for weeks before the accident and we had no idea. Second, we aren't sending her out there alone. She's going to school, a school for blind people to learn skills to be able to succeed in life. Don't you want that for her? You know Lizzie. Do you think she'll really be happy just sitting around, waiting for other people to help her? She wants to live life on her own terms."

"But she doesn't need to leave to do it." Will bent down resting his head on his knees.

Joan moved to sit beside him. She placed her hand on his back, her thumb moving back and forth several times before stilling. "I think if you asked her, she'd tell you that she has to leave to do it." Joan was quiet for a bit, then she turned to Will. "Do people still come up to you and say how sorry they are about your mom and dad? Or ask how you're doing? Or tell you a story about how they knew your parents?"

"Yeah, of course. People want to feel some sort of connection with you," Will replied.

"Does it bother you?" Joan asked.

"Sometimes, I guess, maybe. But not usually. I like hearing stories about Mom and Dad. Just with some people, it's annoying. Some people's stories are kind of dumb and it's like they are trying to make a connection that isn't really there. It makes the whole conversation about them, but what does that have to do with anything?" Will asked as he looked over at Joan.

"What you and I see as an occasional inconvenience, Lizzie sees as a hurtful invasion. She isn't ready to hear stories or reminisce about them, And now, she's just known as the poor blind girl whose parents died. It doesn't matter what she does here. That's always how she will be known."

Will's head dropped and he thought about it. "How can she not want to remember them? I just don't get it. Did she not love them?"

Joan shook her head. "It's not that at all. We all work through grief differently. She's just not in the same place as you are.

"I don't want her to go," Will finally said.

"Then tell her that, and then tell her to go anyway." Joan pulled Will against her side and pecked his temple "Because it's what she needs to do. We'll be okay."

Elizabeth sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed with a photo frame in her lap. She clutched it tightly. Of course she could no longer see the photo, but she knew which one it was. It was of their family of four taken only a few weeks before the accident. As her fingers nimbly floated over the ridges on the frame, her mind drifted.

It was mid-February and had been unseasonably warm for several days, just long enough to convince the trees to open their buds and the tulips to push their first shoots through the recently thawed earth. It was a Saturday afternoon and Joan had stopped by for a visit. She was showing her father the new camera she'd purchased. "I'm just going to dabble. Photography could be a fun hobby," Joan had said.

"If I had a nickel for every scatter-brained idea you come up with, I don't think I'd have to work, Joanie," he remarked.

Aunt Joan scoffed and they bantered back and forth while Will played his video game, her mother baked cookies and she flipped through the latest teen magazine. They'd taken a walk to the horse barn and Joan had snapped a few pictures. Suddenly, Joan stopped them all. "You need to take a family picture and it needs to be right there." She pointed at the gate on the riding circle. "The lighting is perfect."

There was mild grumbling from both her and Will, but their mother had shooed them toward the gate. "It wouldn't hurt for us to be in a picture with something other than the Christmas tree as a backdrop." Her father chuckled and crowded in beside them and Joan snapped several shots.

It wasn't until several days after the funeral that anyone even remembered those pictures existed. Joan's son, Billy, used up the rest of the roll of film taking pictures of family members after the funeral, when they gathered to share a meal. She picked them up from the photo shop and the envelope laid on the table for a day or so until Will opened it. Joan joined him and peeked over his shoulder as they looked at each one before Will slid it off the top of the stack and moved it to the bottom.

She had been sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to be immersed in something else in hopes of not being called to join them. Then they both gasped and Elizabeth's head popped up. Joan immediately wiped her eyes with her sleeve and Will sniffed. "It's a good picture," he said. Lizzie doesn't even look like a total nerd."

Joan stepped over and held it in front of her. Elizabeth plastered on a fake smile and nodded. "It's nice," she said. Of course, she couldn't really see it and, even if she could, she didn't want to. But later, when Will and Joan were in the living room watching TV, Elizabeth slipped out to the kitchen. She picked the envelope up off of the table and slid the pile of pictures into her hand. Holding the stack by the edge, she moved through them quickly, wanting to find the blurred image that Joan had shown her earlier. When she came across it, she held it up close to her face and squinted to bring the picture into view.

There they were. She and Will sat on the top rail. Her mom pushed in next her, turned in, with her arm reaching all the way around her and catching her fingers in Will's back middle belt loop. Elizabeth's lips turned into a small smile remembering that Will had fussed about her holding on to him, that he wasn't a baby that was going to fall off the gate.

Her father was standing close to Will and he reached around and had his hand on Elizabeth's back. It was dusk and there was just enough sunlight left that it illuminated the girls' hair, making it look like they wore halos. They were all smiling and she remembered being happy. It was hard to remember how that felt now, in the midst of her devastation, but she knew she was. Quietly, she slipped the photos back in the envelope and when she turned around, Joan was standing in the doorway. "Are you okay?" Joan asked.

Elizabeth hurriedly nodded. "I was just getting some water," she said and picked her empty glass up from the table and moved to the sink. The next day when Elizabeth came home from school, she found the picture in the middle of her bed encased in a dark wood frame that was intricately carved. The picture was the first thing she looked at each morning and the last thing before she took her glasses off to go to sleep. As each day passed, it became harder to make the picture come into focus, but she knew what it looked like. It was etched in her mind.

Now, she held it. Her parents were gone and Joan had done a remarkable job stepping in to take care of them. Elizabeth knew that, but she still felt responsibility for Will. He seemed like he didn't need her, but his outburst definitely indicated something different. She really wanted to go away to school, but if Will wanted her to stay, then she wouldn't go. She'd just do what Joan had wanted in the beginning. That would probably make them both happier anyway.

The sting of that decision hurt a little more than Elizabeth wanted it to, but she had priorities and Will's happiness was higher on the list than her own, she was certain of that. Elizabeth leaned over and felt around until she caught the edge of the nightstand. Replacing the photo, she swung her legs off the bed and was getting ready to go talk to Joan when there was shuffling of feet and a knock on the door.

"Perfect timing," she muttered before answering the knock. "Come in." Will pushed the door open and stood there for a moment. "Will!" she said.

"How did you know it was me?" he asked.

"You walk differently than Joan and you breathe differently." When there was no movement, she gestured to the desk to the left of the door. "You can sit down." Will shuffled the few feet and pulled the chair out and turned it to face her.

"Listen," they both said at the same time. "You go first. No, you go." They chuckled nervously.

"I'm going first, Will. I'm older," Elizabeth started.

"Are you seriously always going to use that rationale?" Will complained.

Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the bed, the creaking springs echoing in her head. "Yes. It will always be true and it always works in my favor. So anyway, I'm sorry that you're upset about me leaving. I really just didn't think you'd care that much."

"Seriously? I wouldn't care?" Will stood and started pacing the room.

Elizabeth stood too. "Maybe not care, but more like you wouldn't be bothered? I don't know. You're always just doing your own thing. It's not like we do much together. Other than living in the same house, we barely speak." Will sighed. Elizabeth wanted to point out his dramatic side, but refrained from doing so. "If you want me to stay, I will stay. I won't go."

"Lizzie, don't do that," Will huffed.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't be all martyr-y?" Will snapped.

"That's not a word," Elizabeth snapped back.

Will rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean. I don't want you to go, but I don't want you to stay either." Will shifted his weight in the chair, making the floor squeak beneath him...

"That doesn't make any sense. You can't have it both ways."

"You need to go, Go, and find some peace or happiness or independence or something. Whatever it is you think you need, you won't find it here." Will shoved his hands in his pockets and headed toward the door.

"Will." He stopped just inside the doorway, keeping his back to her. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"I'm sure. Joan will just have to up her 'disapproving glare' game in your absence." Will offered a self deprecating chuckle.

"I don't glare. I can't even see you to glare at you."

"It's a whole facial expression and you obviously don't need to see to use it. Trust me, you have it down to a fine science." He shuffled out into the hall.

"You know I love you, right?" she called.

"I know, Lizzie. I know." Then the bottom of her door brushed across the carpet and clicked shut.