my mother feel when people focus on her blindness.”
“I didn’t know your mother was blind,” Zelma said gently.
Victoria nodded and turned back to Tom’s painting. “She wasn’t born blind. But once she became an adult, her eyesight gradually failed.” Victoria didn’t like to think about her mother’s disease. In fact, she tried very hard not to dwell on it. If she ignored it, she could also ignore the haunting fact that her mother had inherited the disease from her mother. Victoria had never met her grandmother, but she’d learned from her father that her blind grandmother had fallen to her death from a lighthouse tower. Her mother never spoke of it. And no one in her family ever talked about the fact that the disease was passed from mother to daughter. It was almost as if in not speaking about it they could pretend the possibility didn’t exist for Victoria.
“Mother doesn’t want people to treat her like she’s blind,” Victoria said. “So we don’t talk about it, and we act as though she isn’t.”
“I see.” Zelma’s comment was soft. She was quiet for a moment, and the steady pelting of rain on the window filled the room. “Come sit down, dear.” Zelma reached for a wooden chair near hers. It scraped across the floor as she drew it nearer.
Victoria hesitated. She didn’t want to talk about her mother’s blindness perhaps any more than Tom wanted to talk about Zelma’s feet. She supposed they were both alike in their avoidance. But Zelma patted the cushion on the chair, and the kindness in her face was too difficult to refuse.
Reluctantly, Victoria sat down, and she didn’t resist when Zelma reached for her hands and clasped them in hers. “Don’t worry, dear. I won’t pressure you to talk about your mother’s blindness until you’re ready.”
Victoria would never be ready, but she kept that to herself.
“However, I want you to know that I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to talk about my condition. I think it’s better for us to be open and honest about everything rather than pretend nothing is wrong with me. Because the truth is, I don’t have feet. I can’t walk. And it doesn’t help us to ignore my condition.”
Victoria should have guessed that Zelma would be as frank about her lack of feet as she was about everything else. Even so, Victoria was surprised by the ease and openness with which Zelma discussed the matter.
“I lost my feet from severe frostbite,” she continued, her gaze unflinching. “At the time, James was an assistant keeper at Cape Henry Lighthouse in Virginia. It was the winter of 1864. Tom and our older son, Ike, had both joined up with the Jessie Scouts.”
“Arch, one of my bodyguards, was a Jessie Scout,” Victoria started. But then she caught herself, unsure how much information Tom would want her to share.
Zelma’s eyes widened, and she studied Victoria’s face for so long that Victoria wondered if perhaps she’d said something entirely wrong. “Arch is a good friend of Tom’s,” Zelma finally said. “I’ve only met him once, when he came to visit Tom after the escape. But I liked him, even if he’s part of the reason Tom chose to be a bodyguard.”
Victoria inwardly cringed and prayed that Zelma wouldn’t make any connections and figure out that Tom was actually her bodyguard. She attempted to steer the conversation to a different topic. “What do you mean ‘after the escape’?”
“You do know that the Jessie Scouts were spies and involved in dangerous missions behind Confederate lines?”
Victoria shook her head. Arch had told her only the basics, probably a watered-down version fitting for a young lady. But Tom had never once spoken of his days as a Jessie Scout. She was embarrassed to admit that she’d never known he was one.
“I wasn’t too keen on my boys being involved in such duplicitous operations. But once Ike became a scout, we couldn’t sway Tom. He always wanted to do everything his big brother did. He rode off one night to join up with Ike, and there was nothing we could do to stop him.”
Zelma released a long heavy sigh. “Only the Lord knows what kind of trouble those two faced every day. I still can’t bear to think on it. I prayed harder and more often in those two years than I ever have before or since.” She paused and glanced down to her folded hands, as though she’d traveled back in time. She was quiet again, and the raging