Page 44 of Up In Smoke

“She's been sitting there trying to figure out how to do her job if she's permanently blind. You need to tell her she's going to be okay!”

“Well, I can't promise anything,” the doctor replied, a small frown on his face.

“But you can tell her the statistics. When's the last time you saw someone who had their eyes damaged by smoke who didn't regain at least most of their vision relatively quickly?” Luke was angry now. How long had she been sitting here thinking that she might be permanently blind?

They hadn’t let him in until just then, and even then, they hadn’t really ‘let’ him in. He’d simply overheard the doctor from the hallway and had enough.

The doctors had likely been giving her this “we can't tell you anything” line since she’d arrived a few hours ago. Without her eyes or her phone or precious library, she wouldn't have been able to find the information for herself. Because Lord knows if she had any tools she would have found everything she needed in a heartbeat.

“Thank you, Luke.” She turned to face him despite the bandages over her eyes. “I'll be okay.”

“Yes, you will,” he replied, coming and sitting on the edge of the bed with her so she could feel him close. The doctor frowned at him again, but Luke frowned back harder. This time he asked. “When do you expect to take the bandages off to check her eyesight?”

“At least tomorrow. It's evening now. So probably tomorrow morning.”

That was at least a good time estimate and, from the way Ivy’s body released just a little more tension, he knew it was information she’d wanted, too.

Ivy nodded in response to the doctor’s words and when the doctor left, she reached out seeming to know where his hand was. Luke placed his fingers through hers, watching as once again her shoulders softened. The stress had to have been horrible.

For a moment, he was glad that he hadn't known she was in the fire until they’d brought her out. He was also glad that she couldn't see his own shoulders and the tension that he carried there now. His wasn't relieved by the fact that her bandages would come off tomorrow—he’d already known that.

His concern now was that Ivy had been targeted again. If the arsonist had come after Ivy, then it wasn't about his family, it was abouthim.

Now that she seemed to be calmer, Ivy launched into a discussion. “Why the spa? I mean they were lucky Joe was there!”

Luke grinned at her even though she couldn’t see it. “Honestly, they were lucky they had you, too. You always know what you're doing and you're competent in an emergency.”

Her smile pulled at one side of her mouth, but he had to say it, even though he didn’t think it would make her smile. “I think they might have gone after the spa because you were in it.”

Those harsh words stilled the soft fidgeting of her fingers, and he hated that he had done it to her.

“The location doesn't mean anything to you?” she asked softly, already sensing that he didn’t understand why that address had been targeted.

“No, I don't remember anything from there.”

“It's only been a spa for a little while,” she prompted. “In fact, the whole area has only been rezoned for businesses within the last ten years.”

He marveled at the fact that she knew that, given that she had not lived in town before the small area had gentrified and transformed, and that she'd had no reason to know about the history of this particular street until she'd been caught in a fire there this morning.

“I don't have anything,” he admitted, and he hated that that was all he had to contribute. “The only thing I can think of is that you were inside.”

He didn’t think the place meant anything to his brothers or even his mother. They sat quietly, a moment of careful thought on Ivy's part and worry on Luke's that he'd spoken too hastily. His fear knocked on the door and he wondered what would they do if Ivy didn't get her sight back? But as he was reminding himself that he didn't know anyone who hadn't recovered, he managed to keep his mouth shut.

But Ivy was still on their last topic. “What about your mother?”

“I don't think she was frequenting that spa … or that she’s ever been there.” Luke almost laughed at the idea. His mother didn't have the kind of disposable income for spa days, and if she did, she would have spent it on cigarettes or whiskey. In fact, if she had forty dollars, she'd buy four bottles of ten-dollar vodka rather than one good bottle of forty-dollar whiskey. If her nails were painted, she'd done it herself. And he didn't think she'd ever gotten a massage in her life.

But even without being able to see him, Ivy was grabbing his attention again. “No. That’s not what I meant. Ask her if she knows the area. She's lived here her whole life, right?”

Luke was catching on. He'd been a bit slow on the uptake on that one. “Yes, she has.”

He stayed with Ivy for a while longer, but it seemed both of them were anxious to know what his mother had to say.

By the time they'd gotten Ivy and Jo out of the fire and treated, it was late enough in the evening that Luke was relatively sure his mother would be home from her shift. It was Ivy who encouraged him to go and, twenty minutes later, he was standing on his mother's doorstep.

He was so wound up, that he was almost incapable of offering a decent greeting before asking a question. She stood on the threshold, cigarette poised near her lips, once again the ash burning long. “Oh, yeah. I know that place. I heard about that fire.”

He wasn’t surprised. Word traveled fast. At the factory where she worked, his mother stood on a line she was getting too old to stand on and gossiped with the locals on either side of her … all day.

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