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The venom in his voice is a warning, but I know down to my bones that it’s not directed at me this time. “But you don’t want to?”
“Of course I don’t want to,” he says. “If I do, it means I’ve accepted this fate. If I start doing that, I surrender.”
“Ah.”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Some, I suppose.”
“The house was the biggest concession,” he says.
“The house? The beach house?”
“Yes. Haven’t you noticed?”
I frown. “No. What?”
“The interior designer worked with a specialist on blindness. There are no sharp corners on tables or kitchen counters, no high thresholds. No high-stemmed wineglasses. Each knob on the cabinets is shaped differently.” The tone of his voice drips with self-hatred. “Figured I might as well get a place ready for when it happens.”
“When it happens,” I repeat softly. “Do you know when that might be?”
“The million-dollar question. I don’t, and neither does the doctor. Retinitis pigmentosa rarely shows up at my age, but when it does, it progresses fast. Most people have it diagnosed in childhood. It’s genetic. Nothing I can do to change it. Nothing I did caused it.”
My heart aches for him, and against it all, my eyes burn. I keep my eyes trained on the beach and fight against the instinct. If there’s one thing he’d hate, it’s being cried over.
“What’s it like now?” I ask.
“My vision?”
“Yes.”
“Tolerable, I suppose. Night vision was among the first things to go,” he says. Memories click into place, of Anthony asking me to read menus. “Second is peripheral vision. I don’t drive anymore, which you might have noticed.” His gaze shifts to the horizon and the setting sun. The rays dance across the waves, setting the world ablaze in color.
“I thought you preferred drivers,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “Some days, I’d give anything to be allowed behind the wheel again.”
I swallow at the knot in my throat. He clears his, breaks eye contact with me. We walk slowly, in silence, along the beach and the setting sun. None of the questions that hover on the tip of my tongue feel right. Not when he looks away from me more than he looks at me.
Blindness.
The weight of what he’s just told me hasn’t settled yet, but I can feel it. And if I can, it must be crushing him, strong as he is.
“Don’t think differently of me,” he tells me.
“I don’t. If anything, I feel—”
“If you’re going to say anything with the word compassion, sorry, or pity in it, don’t. Summer, I can’t bear it.”
He’s walking a knife’s edge with despair, I realize. And each day is a new struggle to keep his balance.
“I wasn’t,” I lie. The edge feels close enough to cut me, too. “I feel grateful you told me.”
Anthony doesn’t reply. He turns his face back to the golden sliver of sun kissing the horizon. “We should start to head back.”
“Sure.” I whistle for Ace and he bounds toward us, as happy to walk back to the house as he was to walk away from it.
Neither of us speaks until we’re almost at his house, and then only of practical matters. He goes to lie down again, and I order dinner for us. My eyes lock on the knobs in the kitchen when I’ve clicked off the call to the restaurant.
