were becoming two parts of a single, well-oiled machine. Within the first four months I felt I knew this woman better than I'd known anyone else in my entire life. And, although I refused to use the word even to myself, I was quickly learning to love her.

And yet, there was something about Heather that bothered me, something so subtle that it was a long time before I could even put my finger on it. It wasn't anything big, and it didn't happen with any regularity, but sometimes Heather just seemed to know too much about what was going on around her.

I brooded about it off and on for several weeks, trying to remember everything Heather had ever said about her blindness. From her explanation I assumed her eyes and optic nerves were still healthy, that only the sight center of her brain had been affected, and for a while I wondered if her blindness was either incomplete or possibly intermittent. But neither explanation was satisfactory: if she was blind enough that she couldn't make out my face, she was too blind for any practical purpose; and if she occasionally regained her vision, her first reaction to my appearance would have been impossible for me to miss. Besides, there was no reason why she would keep such a thing secret, especially since she was so open about every other aspect of her Me.

Eventually I gave up thinking about it and chalked up her abilities to the enhanced senses blind people are reputed to have. It really wasn't important, after all, and Heather and I had come too far for me to start wondering if she was hiding something from me. Having overcome the problems of my face and her blindness, I wasn't about to let a figment of my imagination become a barrier between us.

So we worked and sweated, laughed and occasionally loafed, and generally got by pretty well. As the crops in our garden grew large enough that Heather could take over some of the weeding duties, I began to expand the network of