Chapter 10

Epilogue

Jarrod Barkley hadn't been with a woman – any woman – since he lost his vision more than a year earlier. He admitted to himself, although not to anyone else, that he was simply too nervous to even consider it. Being blind had made him feel inadequate about too many things, and even as things like his legal abilities were recovering, they and a lot of other things would never be what they were. Being with a woman, fumbling around in the dark trying to please her and himself, was one thing when the darkness was simply because the lights weren't on. When it was solid and permanent and you could never turn the lights on, it was a totally different story. You couldn't see her body, and you couldn't see if she was pleased with yours. As Jarrod had to admit, his experience before being blinded was that he had chosen partners who were pleased with his and he liked that a lot. It made for a lot of confidence that he just didn't have anymore.

Which was why he was startled when Beth Randall took his hand, saying, "I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Barkley." Hands coming to him out of his darkness were usually cold, sometimes shaky, often uncomfortable to be touching a blind man, but Beth's hand was warm, soft, startlingly so. It felt like silk. He actually didn't want to let it go.

Jarrod moved his right hand to touch his wife's left hand, still as soft as silk and warm as a late spring day. He and his family were coming from San Francisco, where they lived, to visit the rest of the family in Stockton.

Jarrod daydreamed a lot when traveling. Unable to look at the scenery, he looked inward and remembered things that made him smile. He thought about that day in Denver four years ago a lot, and he always smiled at the memory. He was thinking about it now as the train headed toward Stockton, as he and Beth sat side by side in first class, each of them holding a three-year-old asleep on their laps. Eva Marie (called "Evy") and Victoria Ann (called "Vicki") were identical twins, generally sweet little girls unless they were tired, when they got cranky, but that's what little girls really were made of.

His life had changed so completely since that day in Denver when he first touched Beth's hand. He remembered how she had flipped his world into the air and caught it in her heart on the way down. Planning a retirement that would turn his law firm over to his partner and brother-in-law Clarence Robinson, he was contemplating teaching as a "retirement career," and Beth was a teacher. Clarence wanted her to talk to Jarrod about teaching, but Jarrod came to know very quickly that wasn't the only reason Clarence wanted him to meet Beth.

Not that her advice about him becoming a teacher wasn't sound. It was. It had changed his life. He could still hear her voice from that very first conversation they'd had.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that new attorneys are trained the way you trained Clarence – by a practicing attorney working with them closely? I think it's called 'reading law.'"

Jarrod was impressed that she knew that. "That's true, at least west of the Mississippi. I did attend law school back east, and Clarence did too, but attending law school and practicing law are two different things."

"You don't finish your education in law school," Clarence said. "You pretty much have to work with a practicing attorney to learn the profession, whether you go to law school or not."

"And you've enjoyed having Clarence work with you?" Beth asked.

"Yes, I have."

"Well," Beth said, "being honest, I have to tell you, that teaching children is probably not for you. They need a lot of looking after, and I mean that literally. Not only do you teach them many things they – and you – need vision for. They can be a herd of little devils when they want to be."

Maybe her honesty was brutal, but Jarrod had to chuckle at her depiction of a herd of little devils. One thing he did like about being blind – he found it easier to translate words into pictures, and right now he was picturing a lot of little children with horns, dressed in red and carrying toy pitchforks, running around a school room.

Beth was a little surprised at his reaction. She thought her bluntness might be offensive, but he didn't seem to find it that way. She smiled and went on. "To teach children, you need vision," she said, "but to train lawyers – apparently not. You've trained Clarence. I think the teaching you want to do is with adults, training lawyers."

Beth had been so very right, and Jarrod was especially grateful for her advice when an offer came from the law firm of Jarrod's old friend Nat Springer. Clarence had talked to him in San Francisco, and Nat wanted to explore the possibility of Jarrod hiring on as the lawyer in his growing law firm who would be in charge of the new associates who were "reading law."

Beth had remained in Denver, but before he and Clarence left, Jarrod asked for and got permission for a moment that moved both him and Beth to the core.

"May I see you?" he asked. "With my fingers - it's the way I 'see' things. I touch them. May I touch you?"

Beth shivered. "Yes."

Jarrod reached slowly, letting both hands find her hair first, then her forehead. Beth closed her eyes, luxuriating in the sensations as his fingers drifted over her cheeks, her nose, her lips, her chin, then slightly down her neck before he moved them away. "You're lovely," Jarrod said.

"You make me feel that way," she said. And he kissed her for the first time.

They had come to care for each other so much in just two days that Jarrod had started writing to her as soon as he and Clarence got home. The letters had to be prim and proper, since someone had to read Beth's to Jarrod. He had mastered writing his own letters by then and could write his own feelings to her, but she had to be more careful. They managed to work out a sort of code, and by the time Nat Springer's offer came, they knew how to tell each other more intimate things.

Jarrod traveled to San Francisco for the first time since retiring, talked to Nat, and been offered the job on the spot. He took it. He wrote to Beth.

Please come to San Francisco. I have a home here where Clarence stays with me when he is in town. Come be with me for a little while and see if you could learn to love it here, and to love me enough to marry me, because I am asking you to marry me, Beth.

Beth had responded in their code language. "Never too late," she said, a code he had come to understand to mean, "I really, really want to be with you and I don't mean for just a few hours." And then she said, no code involved, "Yes, I will marry you."

It was only a week after she arrived that the two of them were married. Whirlwind, but not really, not after all the letters back and forth, not after the soft, warm touch of her hand became a regular presence in his day.

They married in Stockton but were living in San Francisco permanently. Jarrod began mentoring the new associates in Nat's firm – which also meant trying cases in court with his students assisting, and then assisting his charges in doing the same thing. Beth's plans to find a teaching position had to be put on hold, because she became pregnant pretty quickly.

"I marvel at how you've changed my life and how much I've gained when I once thought I had lost everything," Jarrod said when she told him she would have a baby.

"Let's see if you feel that way when this baby wants to be fed at three o'clock in the morning, and changed every time you turn around," Beth said.

It had turned out to be two hungry babies squealing in the middle of the night. Beth and her doctor had worked out a system for her to store her milk and she could feed one baby while Jarrod fed the other from a bottle. More than once they practically fell asleep against one another while Evy and Vicky fell asleep in their arms.

"Are you ever sorry you married a blind man?" Jarrod asked, but only once, when he'd accidentally tripped, fallen on the stairs and broken his left wrist.

"Never," Beth had said. "Even one who breaks a wrist to get out of changing diapers."

"We just crossed that last creek before we get into Stockton," Beth said.

That meant they had about three minutes to get the girls and their things together. The porter came to help them with their bags even before the train stopped. As it jerked to a halt, Jarrod and Beth got up, and Evy and Vicki woke up.

Vicki rubbed her eyes and said, "I'm thirsty."

"We'll get you a drink in just a moment," Beth said.

"Are we at Grandma's house?" Evy asked.

"Not just yet," Jarrod said. "We still have a wagon ride to get there."

They detrained, and in a moment Jarrod heard the jingle of Nick's spurs and the happy voices of his brothers and brother-in-law. Everyone was talking, greeting each other. Jarrod felt his back slapped several times and there was more than one "Welcome home!" in the air.

"How's the firm doing, Clarence?" Jarrod always asked first. The law firm, his other baby, still growing up.

Clarence usually said it was doing fine, but his time he said, "Well, I lost Mr. Banner a couple weeks ago – he finally passed from that cancer."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Jarrod said. Josh Banner had been one of his first clients. Jarrod was grateful he remembered him as a young, healthy man, not a man ravaged by cancer.

"But Stockton is growing, and I picked up one of the new freight line owners as a client," Clarence said. "Audra and I are doing very well."

"Indeed we are," Audra's voice came.

"Audra!" Jarrod said and reached an arm toward her. In a moment she kissed his cheek. "I didn't know you were here!"

"I'm here, too," Victoria's voice came and soon she was kissing him.

"Wow, the whole clan," Jarrod said.

"Plus two," Nick said.

"The kids?" Jarrod asked Clarence.

"No, they're with the nursemaid at home," Clarence said. "Two young ladies you haven't met yet., Betty and Louisa North."

"Sisters," Nick said. "They're waiting in the depot."

"Sisters," Jarrod repeated.

"Soon to be in-laws," Heath said. "Nick and I have both proposed, and they both said yes."

"Wait a minute!" Jarrod said. "I haven't even met them yet!"

"Pappy's back," Heath said to Nick.

"They're lovely women," Victoria said. "What they see in Nick and Heath, I don't know, but you'll be happy to welcome them to the family."

Clarence said, "Their family hired me to write their wills when they moved to California. I introduced Nick and Heath to them before anybody else could snatch them up."

"I should have known," Jarrod said.

Beth was laughing at all this, but Evy and Vicki were beginning to wriggle. "I'm thirsty," Vicki repeated.

"Betty and Louisa have lemonade waiting inside," Audra said.

"Oh, I like them already," Jarrod said.

"Put me down, Daddy," Evy said.

Jarrod put her on her feet, and she took hold of his hand. He felt Vicki take hold of his other hand. Since they had really gotten to be stable walkers, they always insisted on taking his hands and walking with him. Jarrod ate it up.

Dear God, I'm so happy, Jarrod thought to himself. Everything I ever wanted, I have. And when he thought about that these days, he didn't even think about the fact that he didn't have his vision. Not that it didn't matter – it did. But everything else – his family, his "retirement career," everything – just filled him with such joy that he couldn't deny it.

He felt his wife's soft, silky hand against his cheek, and he kissed it.

Life will be good, eyes or no eyes.

Jarrod remembered saying that to Beth when he proposed, and now she was remembering it too. "You were right," she said. "Life is good. Thank you for giving it to me."

"Thank you for giving it to me," Jarrod said.

Jarrod remembered what Clarence had said to him to help pull him out of his doldrums after Julia Saxon had come to Stockton. I'm not saying that you should think that maybe it's not so bad being blind, but Jarrod, there is a strong possibility that if you were not blind, you'd be dead now.

Jarrod thanked God over and over that he was not dead, and if Clarence had been right – if blindness had saved him – he blessed his blindness over and over again.

"Clarence?" he said as they walked.

"Right here," Clarence said from slightly behind him.

"Thank you for giving it to me, too," Jarrod said. "I don't know where you came from, but I'm awfully glad you came."

"My pleasure," Clarence said.

As they walked to the depot, to meet the two young women who would be joining the family, Jarrod felt Evy tug on his hand. He bent a little as they walked. "What is it, sweetheart?"

"I love you, Daddy," Evy said quietly to him.

"I love you too!" Vicki said.

It was too much. Jarrod melted into a lump of sentimental goo, right there on the platform. "I love you too, ladies," he said, squeezing their hands.

Life was wonderful, eyes or no eyes.

The End