Two months. Two more months and she wouldn’t have to complete the odd contortion of movements it took to wriggle out of her seat and stand on a moving bus.

Finally gaining her balance, Eleanor automatically curled her hand around the iron bar overhead and made her way to the rear doors, her body leaning backward to adjust to the rocking of the vehicle.

Once she was positioned in front of the exit, she hooked an elbow around the vertical pole and used her free hand to unfold the red-tipped cane she’d slipped into her purse, taking great care not to bump the strident bicycle bell attached to the handle. Burt came unglued if she rang it on his bus. Something to do with the fact that he was an ex-police officer—go figure.

Looping her wrist through the strap, Eleanor clasped her coat more tightly around her neck, tapping her toe in an impatient tattoo as she waited for the city bus to come to a standstill. Not that she had anything important waiting for her when she arrived home. She merely hated waste—wasted time, wasted energy, wasted emotion.

Vainly she tried to shake off the impatience and frustration that invariably settled under her skin with bad weather. The smells of exhaust, damp earth and wet wool hung in the air around her, infiltrating her consciousness like mustard gas. The noise of raindrops splatting against the windows and drumming to the ground muted the sounds she’d become accustomed to absorbing on her ride home from work—the snore of Ed Mecham, who would sleep to the end of the line, the rustle of newspapers, the chatter of the Selma sisters who rode the number nine to mass each Wednesday and Friday. Calming sounds. Ritualistic sounds.

The thump of the doors roused her from her stupor, and she descended the steep steps, feeling carefully with her toe before stepping onto the curb. Once safe and sound, she hit the bicycle bell with her thumb, a signal to Burt Mescalero that he could drive on.

Behind her, the engine grumbled and whined, and a fine spray of water splashed the backs of her legs. Then she was alone.

Eleanor arched her neck to relieve it of the kink the muscles had developed after an hour huddled at the cramped food counter of The Flick Theatre, an establishment near old Larimer Square that was devoted to playing classic movies in their original, wide-screen format.

“Damn those gumdrops,” she said to herself, referring to a case of candies that had fallen down the back stairs, spilling cellophane-wrapped packages all over the storeroom floor. Eleanor had spent a half hour on her hands and knees picking them up. If not for that small disaster, she would have been home on one of Burt’s earlier runs. But…c’est la vie, as her mother would say. Everything happened for a reason.

Absolutely everything.

A sharp gust of cold air swirled around her ankles, and she huddled even tighter into the shelter of her coat. It was cold this evening. Too cold for the beginning of May, she decided, as she took three precise steps to the center of the sidewalk, turned right and began to count.

One, two, three, four…

She tapped her cane on the wet pavement ahead of her, seeking out the obstacles her eyes couldn’t see. Not clearly, anyhow. Sometimes she experienced hazy patches of gray or muted blotches of light. But for the most part her world was one of darkness. An inescapable darkness that would be her constant companion at least until the baby was born. And then…

She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about the corneal transplant surgery her ophthalmologist had proposed, not knowing whether such an operation would allow her to see as she once had or leave her fumbling in a world of light and shadows.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…

Everyone she knew said Eleanor had adjusted beautifully—her doctor, her mother, her co-workers. But Eleanor wasn’t so certain. Oh, she could find her way around town, perform her duties at work and live on her own. But sometimes, on nights like these, when she was angry and tired and out of sorts, she couldn’t help thinking that she was a poor sport in God’s little game of life. Perhaps if she hadn’t relied so heavily upon her sight as an artist, she might not have regarded the loss with such bitterness. She might have been able to “suffer with elegance” as her sister Blythe had once advised her to do.

As it happened, she couldn’t seem to resign herself to the fact that her identity had been shattered the moment her head had collided with the window frame of her car. The change in fortunes bothered the hell out of her, burning at the pit of her stomach whenever she allowed herself to think about it.

She’d been a good artist, dammit.

She’d been asked to have a show at the National Gallery.

And a partial return of her sight would never allow her to retain the finesse she’d once mastered.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…

Eleanor Rappaport’s boot heels rapped sharply against the pavement—and for a moment she thought she heard an accompanying set of footsteps behind her. Automatically she quickened her pace. It annoyed her how some people felt that her being blind was the same as being incompetent. She didn’t want help crossing the street, she didn’t want anyone leading her home like a stray puppy. She could do it herself.

But as she quickened her step, the sounds behind her increased their speed, echoing her own pace. Thinking whoever was behind her wanted to pass, she stopped and turned.

The noises stopped, as well.

The anger that had been building in her all day raged even hotter. She hated being made to appear a fool, almost as much as she hated being made to appear helpless.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

No answer. Only the sputter of the rain gurgling down a nearby gutter.

Eleanor squinted, blinking against the moisture dripping from her hair, down her face, off her dark glasses, hoping to catch a shadow, a shape. But the light was too poor to allow her even the haziest of images.

Shivering, she began to walk again, crossing the quiet street, moving as quickly as she could. She didn’t have the patience for such pranks. It was time she arrived home, out of the rain.

But after only a few steps she realized she’d lost count.

Damn.

Damn, damn, damn.

Ringing the bell on her cane, she lifted her head calling out, “Minnie! Maude!”

As she waited for a response from her landladies, who were elderly, unmarried and avid game-show fanatics, a tightness closed around her throat and she paused, swallowing hard. For a moment the frustration closed in on her like a shroud. The same frustration that had dogged her since that night when she’d been pulled from the mangled wreckage of her car. While waiting for an ambulance, she’d focused on a stranger’s face. The red glow of flares had flickered over dark hair and even darker eyes. Then the colors had grown dim and died completely away, leaving her grasping at the hand of a stranger as she was plunged into nothingness.

Stop it! She didn’t want to remember that night. Not tonight.

Ringing the bell more stridently than before, Eleanor shouted, “Minnie—”

“Here, dear,” a sweet, old voice interrupted, providing Eleanor with the bearings she needed.

Minnie.

Since Eleanor’s grandmother had lived in this neighborhood before she’d died, Minnie and Maude Vanderbilt had been her dearest friends. They’d even been godmothers to Eleanor’s mother, and Eleanor had known them both as a child. She pictured Minnie as she’d been then. Short and plump with cotton-candy hair rinsed a pale shade of yellow. She was the perfect foil for her older sister, Maude, who was tall and reed thin and wore an array of different-colored wigs.

“My lands, you’re soaked to the skin, child. Maude’s not home right now, but I could fix you a cup of tea. Jeopardy! is about to start, and you can watch it with me as you dry out.”