THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART EIGHTY-NINE:

While Marshall and Eden ate lunch, Sylvie went to their bedroom to take care of some of

the damage. The glass from the lamp was cleaned up, the bedding changed, the blood-stained

items being treated and then put in cold water to wash, and the bathroom sink and floor

cleaned. She called for a new mirror to be installed.

Afterwards she shooed the two of them to the bedroom so they could have some privacy and

talk more. On her trips through the kitchen while they ate, they'd seemed too silent to her.

She hadn't even been able to coax Marshall into a real smile with a cookie.

He sat on the side of the bed, his shoulders slumped. Eden came up in front of him, straddling

his legs, resting her wrists on his shoulders. "I love you," she said softly.

"I know," he replied in a whisper. "I love you, too."

"We need to talk about this," she added.

"I have a lot of thinking to do," he said, not lifting his head.

"You're hurting." He nodded. "I can't let you hurt alone."

"I need to think," he repeated, turning his head to one side.

"Baby's coming. Thinking's not going to change that."

"I know. It's not just that. It's...."

"What?"

"Everything. Me."

"And me? Am I in that?"

"Most of everything is you," he replied, finally turning his face toward hers.

"Do you wish we'd never...."

"No! Not for a minute! You are all that's good in my life."

She slipped the tips of the fingers of her right hand under his chin. "So what's there to think

about?"

"I need to...I have to...I...."

"You really want some quiet time right now?"

He nodded. "If...if you...."

"For you, anything." She got off his lap, kissed him gently, and walked toward the door. "I'll

be back after while."  She remained standing in the doorway long enough to see him lie back on

the bed, his feet still on the floor, and fold his arms over his face. Sighing, she closed the door

so that he could hear her close it, then went back to the kitchen.

"He asleep?" Sylvie asked, putting the last of the lunch dishes in the dish washer.

"No. Suffering."

Sylvie's left eyebrow shot up but she didn't say anything about it. Instead, she asked, "Want to

whip up something special?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Maybe a lemon meringue pie from scratch?"

Eden remembered what he'd said about that kind of pie when they'd stopped at Dick's Diner

in Murrysville on the way back from the inn. It would give her something to do other than

staring out a window and worrying. "Sure," she half-smiled.

Marshall lay like that a long time, his thoughts a tangle of half-followed trails with no endings.

He knew from all the places he'd walked while searching for Eden that he must've come within

a matter of inches from her right toward the beginning. What if it had been an artery that the

lamp glass had cut? He simply did not know what to do with the fact that she could have bled

to death right there in their bedroom while he was only inches away.

It all came back to the whole damn sight thing! Most people in the world would have found

her instantly, using this special...something...they all had. He went over every second of that

odd rise of his there on Christmas Day when his heart wasn't beating. Was there something

there...anything...that he could latch on to, that would have helped him find her when finding

was an utter necessity? But what Eden had said were probably snowy pine boughs hadn't

even seemed like that to him. They were a mishmash of unrecognizable forms and he had no

way of discerning what they even were. His mind didn't work that way, didn't connect form

with vision. There was simply no connection. And the punctures. That was almost worse,

absolutely totally confusing to him. How did the sighted take...that...and use it to gather all

the information they did?

He remembered sitting on the blanket with Eden that fall day when she'd described the

distant trees, the presence of the groundhog, the slope of the hill, the stumps and rocks.

She did all that from where she sat, without touching any of them. She knew. Dammit...she

KNEW! How...how did she know? How did that work?

He thought of Horatio or little Cindy Lou Sinclair crawling toward the top of the staircase

or picking up a piece of glass. He wouldn't know. Never before had the need to know mattered

so much. As a boy he'd gone blithely about, quite secure in his world with all its enclosing

parameters of little import. He went where he wanted to go, did what he wanted to do. Or so

it had seemed. Jeffrey made it seem that way. So did his parents. And he had believed it had

been enough. It had been enough. Until now. He was almost overwhelmed with the sudden

fall from grace he was experiencing. Even alone on Coopers Ridge, he hadn't felt like this.

And he'd managed to get down, to get himself out, get to a place where he could be found.

Just like he'd always done. And as hard as it was, he had done it...and it had been enough.

Not now.

Eden could have bled to death, and he would not have been enough. The baby...the stairs...

whatever. He wouldn't be enough. Reaching for a pillow, he grabbed it and put it over his

face, refolding his arms over that. Nothing helped. He couldn't shut out the fact of his lack.

It was screaming loudly in his ears, pounding in his veins, and his head hurt with it. He tossed

the pillow aside and lay still, hoping the inner cacophony would calm.

The loss of something important lay over him heavily, so heavily that his ribs almost ached

with the weight of it. It was new and he wasn't used to it, didn't know what to do with it.

Balling both hands into fists, he pressed them over his eyes. He wasn't sure it was so much

that he needed to see as that he was desperate to understand what seeing was. How could he

not know something as important as that, as common?

He thought back to that rainy day on the inn porch when he'd described to Eden all the

different sounds the rain made, how they revealed the world to him, gave it presence and

dimension it didn't have without it. How feeble that now seemed. With a single turn of her

head, she would know all that and so much, much more. He felt...circumscribed. And there

was nothing to be done about it. This was the way life was for him, always had been, always

would be. But, before, it had been enough.

He'd never really had to be responsible for anybody but himself, and a narrowed world...for

himself...had always worked fine. He went, he did, he functioned damn well. But a wife was

in his world now, a child was coming, and that changed everything. A convulsive sob rose

up from his chest and he clamped both hands over his mouth, rolling sideways, burying his

face in the bedspread.

He was like that when Eden quietly opened the door. Tears instantly stung her eyes. He

was hurting even more than she'd thought. She couldn't turn away and go back to the kitchen

now, not now, so she went to him, sat on the bed beside him and lay her hand on his head.

He hadn't known she was there, not until then, hadn't wanted her to find him like this. "I'm...

I'm sorry," he murmured, moving his hand away from his lips.

"For what? For loving me, for wanting to take care of me?"

He stayed on his side, but his arms went around her waist. "I wanted...wanted to...."

"Marshall, I want you to hear me. Everything I need, absolutely everything...and more than

I ever thought or imagined...all of it...you give me that. I had lost myself and you even gave

that back to me. You found me and returned me, made me whole again, made me more

whole than I'd ever been in my life. You, you did that. You do that. You not only gave me

you, you gave me back me. And now you've given me someone who's a part of both you and

me.  I'm so happy about that. And it'll be all right, really it will. We'll work together and

we'll make it all right. I need you to believe me on that."

He sighed, the longest, most ragged sigh she'd ever heard. She began to comb the fingers of

her right hand through his hair. "Just let me love you, darling. Just let that be enough."

"You've always been enough," he whispered. "I'm just not...."

She put a finger over his lips. "You are. My God, you so very much are."

"I want...."

"Shhhh!" she murmured, leaning back so she was beside him, running the backs of her

fingers along his cheek. "You are what I want. Just the way you are." She touched his cheek

some more. "And that happens to be absolutely perfect in every way, you hear me, in every

way. I adore the man you are and no man has ever...ever...done more for a woman than

you've done for me. I mean that with all my heart and I mean it because it's the truth."

"But...."

"No, no but's. Not a single one. Not ever. You fill me up so that I overflow, lift me to places

where joy dances naked in the wind."

"Naked in the wind?" he repeated.

"Umm humm."

"We should try that sometime."

She smiled. He was coming back. "In the daffodils preferably."

"Definitely daffodils," he agreed, nuzzling his face in her hair.

"Definitely Daffodils. Is he related to Sincerely Sinclair?" she asked with a small chuckle.

"Lovers," he whispered. "Most scandalous."

"Well, then," she said, unbuttoning his shirt, "why don't we...?" But his mouth had found

hers and she couldn't finish whatever it was she'd been going to say.

ON TO PART 90

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