Perfect in My Sight Read Free

completely forgotten about her tea.
    “Come in,” she said, a bit unsettled as the door opened.
    “Your tea, Miss Woodard.”
    Sarah straightened. “Yes, thank you, Hopkins.”
    He entered, bearing his tray, and she ignored the slight raise of his brows as he
     glanced down his nose at the paper in her hand. She held her tongue, resenting in
     herself the need to explain. Why should she be forced to? What man felt obliged to
     explain himself when caught with a paper in his hand? One he’d paid for twice at that!
     Having scarcely read a word of it, she refused to set it aside, just on principle.
     Her tea could wait.
    “Thank you, Hopkins,” she said again, dismissing him, and didn’t bother to wait until
     he left to continue her perusal of the morning edition. With Hopkins dismissed and
     her morose thoughts chased away, she began to scan the articles in earnest, finding
     little of interest...
    She perused an article about some new headache and hangover remedy:
     
    Coca-Cola goes on sale May 8 at Jacob ’ s Pharmacy in Atlanta, where local pharmacist John S. Pemberton has formulated his
     esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage from ingredients which include dried
     leaves from the South American coca shrub…
     
    She flipped the page. What a name for a hangover remedy: Esteemed Brain Tonic and
     Intellectual Beverage!
    A model Bloomingdale’s department store to open on Third Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street...
    And then ... there it was ...
    His name in bold print, as it so often was.
    Peter Holland’s personal life was fodder for gossip, and his business dealings carefully
     scrutinized by his peers and the press, but rarely was there a single word spoken
     of the one person Sarah most wanted to know about. Christopher. And here it was at
     last, though indirectly.
    And more.
    Wanted. Personal instructor familiar with the systems of Louis Braille and William
     B. Waite. Must be willing to work and reside in house, and must deal well with children.
     Generous pay with benefits. Willing to employ the blind. Send resume directly to Peter
     Holland at corner of University Place and Twelfth Street. Applicants will be personally
     selected and interviewed.
    Sarah inhaled a breath, and her hands began to tremble. She was forced to set the
     paper aside. Good Lord ... this was precisely the opportunity she had been hoping
     for ... waiting for... six long years...
    “Miss Woodard?”
    It couldn’t have presented itself more propitiously. “Miss Woodard?”
    Shivering away her thoughts, she peered up to find Hopkins standing at the doorway
     still, the knob in hand, but he was frozen in his stance, staring at her. Waiting
     for some response.
    She blinked, her thoughts still upon the article, and its import. Her mind raced with
     unmade plans. “Yes?”
    “Are you quite all right? You appear as though you’ve a sudden malaise.”
    “Oh yes,” Sarah declared, “I’m fine, thank you.” Never better, in truth! Despite that
     she had hoped and prayed for such an opportunity—prepared for it even!—she simply
     hadn’t expected to find it this dreary morn, not when she’d checked the paper literally
     hundreds of mornings before to no avail.
    She peered up from the paper, placing it upon the table beside her. “I’m quite well
     indeed. That will be all, Hopkins, thank you.”
    This time she waited for him to leave her before rising from the chair and going to
     her desk. There was so much yet to be done! So little time! But no matter what it
     took, no matter what the risk, she was going to do this—she wanted Mary’s journals.
     She needed to know the truth.
    Mary’s journals had all been discovered and dissected by the police and the press,
     but for that one—the one that held the accounts of her days until the date of her
     death. Sarah wanted that diary. All her carefully laid plans would not go to waste, and Peter Holland was
     going to pay the consequences of his actions. Sarah was