Becoming Ellen Read Free Page B

what Ellen now knew was a “French press.” Even after knowing Temerity for a year, Ellen was still fascinated by the way she could navigate the kitchen, not to mention the rest of the world, with nothing more than her “antennae,” as she called her hands.
    â€œYou have an overdeveloped sense of taste and smell,” Justice told her. “There’s nothing wrong with my coffee.”
    â€œNot if you’re using it to remove paint.” Temerity laughed. “Hey, Ellen!” she called out before Ellen had even closed the door.
    Blind people, Ellen had learned, have an overdeveloped sense of hearing, too.
    â€œHi,” Ellen responded. She didn’t know how she had come to be comfortable around these two people out of the mass of humanity she so invariably distrusted, but it had been that way from almost the moment she had met them. They were different from anyone else she’d ever met or observed. Ellen suspected that they always had been. She put the mail, which she picked up every morning on her way in, on the table.
    â€œIf you want some
drinkable
coffee, it’ll be ready in five minutes,” Temerity called out.
    â€œMy coffee is
fine
,” Justice retorted as he ducked down to pull something from the cabinets. “I put your mug out, Ellen.”
    â€œIf you value your stomach lining, you’ll wait,” Temerity warned.
    Since she already had the shakes, Ellen thanked them both but refused. She made it halfway across the open space before Runt, the twins’ big shaggy mutt, bounded up to her and ran in clumsy circles around her legs until she patted his head. On the sofa in the seating area, her cat, Mouse, raised his huge head, shook his tattered ear and a half, and stretched before tucking his butterball body back into sleep position. Runt galumphed over to Mouse and sniffed him. The cat made a low noise and placed a paw on the dog’s nose.
    Justice pulled out a frying pan and set it on the burner. “Eggs and toast?” he offered as Ellen reached the bickering sibs.
    â€œYes, please.”
    â€œYou’re late, young buttface,” Justice said, fixing his gray eyes on her with a mock look of disapproval.
    Temerity threw one hand onto a hip. “Oh no, you did
not
just call her buttface.”
    â€œDid they not take skin from Ellen’s backside to repair her scar?” Justice asked with a wink at Ellen, who actually liked the familiarity, though affectionate teasing was taking some getting used to. “So, I get to call her buttface.”
    â€œIt doesn’t surprise me you don’t know the difference between a butt and a thigh,” Temerity proclaimed.
    â€œWell, I can’t call her ‘thigh-face.’ That’s not nearly as much fun,” Justice objected. Then he turned to Ellen like the big brother he’d become to her. “If you’re this late again, I’m giving you a time-out.”
    â€œThere was an . . . accident,” Ellen said, feeling the unusual compulsion to tell them.
    Temerity was measuring coffee into the pot by scooping up the grounds, then running a finger over the top to level them off, but she froze. “What happened?” she asked, her pretty brow creasing in concern. Justice, too, had suspended his task. In that moment it wasn’t only their dark hair and similar body types that made them look like twins, it was also their matching expressions of deep concern.
    â€œUh, the bus kind of, well, crashed.”
    â€œWhat?”
Temerity dropped the scoop and hurried around the counter that separated the kitchen from the open living space. She found Ellen with two exploratory sweeps of her arms and took hold of her shoulder. Ellen could tell Temerity was holding herself back from enveloping her in a hug, with which she knew Ellen was not comfortable.
    â€œSome drugged-out guy got on the bus and attacked the driver. It turned over sideways, but luckily