Sleep With The Lights On by MAGGIE SHAYNE

Mom.” He’d heard the story a thousand times.
    “For him, too, though.”
    That part, he hadn’t heard before. It got his attention.
    “He lit up when we brought you home, Mason. For the first time I thought maybe he was finally coming out of his shell. He seemed happy. For a little while, anyway. Until middle school. Then he just seemed to...shut down again.”
    There wasn’t an answer for that. Had he been older, Mason would have personally kicked the asses of the school-yard bullies who’d tormented his brother. As it was...he wondered if that had anything to do with what Eric had eventually become.
    And now he was playing his mother’s game, with the whys and what-ifs. It wouldn’t do any good.
    “I had a call from the hospital this morning,” she said.
    “What about?” he asked, glad of the new subject.
    “The person who got the corneas is asking to meet the family of the donor.”
    Mason nodded slowly. He knew who that person was, but the rest of the family didn’t. Mother and Marie had asked him to handle all the details, and he had. He wondered why they’d phoned his mother and not him, or even Marie, but those answers could wait. As could the reaming out he intended to give to whoever had phoned his mother about it on the day of his brother’s funeral. “What did you tell them?”
    She sighed, and her eyes flooded. “I said I’d ask you. I don’t think I can...I don’t think I can bear to see my son’s eyes staring at me from some stranger’s face.” The tears spilled over, streaming silently down her pale, papery cheeks.
    “It’s okay. It’s okay, you don’t have to do that.” He closed his hand around hers, not bothering to explain yet again that Eric’s eyes were still with Eric’s body, that only a thin layer of tissue had been removed. “I’ll take care of this, okay? You don’t need to think any more about it. Just put it out of your mind, all right?”
    “Thank you, Mason. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She sniffed and wiped her cheeks with two manicured fingertips. “Remind me to phone the doctor when I get home, before things get too crazy and I forget. I’m going to need a refill on my Ativan.”
    He withheld comment and decided in that moment that yes, he would, eventually, agree to meet with the self-help guru who’d gotten Eric’s corneas. The one who’d said maybe the accident had been supposed to happen. Maybe if he could see one good thing that had come out of this entire mess, he could shake the dark feeling of impending doom that had been clinging like a shadow ever since that day. Maybe if he could see that blind woman, looking at him, seeing him, because of his brother, he could start to move past all this.
    But not yet. He was nowhere near ready yet.

5
     
    I ’d been seeing pretty much twenty-twenty for a solid six weeks. And you know, it was mostly a good month and a half. Not all good. And definitely not serene, with the nightmares recurring. Still no word from Tommy. Or the cops, except to say they had nothing new. Myrtle continued to make herself at home, while I continued pretending to just barely tolerate her, because God forbid my entourage should think I was going soft. I totally was, though. I was putty in that fat little dog’s paws. I took her everywhere I went. I’d had a safety harness installed in my car—an ’02 T-Bird convertible. A classic, she was. Inspiration Yellow, with black-and-yellow leather and every available option. Yes, I’d learned to drive, and even while my sister was teaching me, Myrtle was my constant copilot. I bought her a yellow scarf to match the car, and a pair of tinted glam-dog goggles to protect her poor useless eyes from the sun and windborne grit.
    I hadn’t gone back to work in any way, shape or form, though. Everyone thought I was taking time to readjust to sighted life. But it was actually because I didn’t want to continue using my voice-recognition software now that I could see. I