My husband and I moved from the city after we were married back to the area where I had grown up. It was about as far removed from civilization as one could live, and still be close enough to the modern world so that one could drive for a couple of hours and be at a major shopping mall. Even the amenities were not what one was used to if they had lived all their life in the cities. Septic tanks had to be pumped out every few years. As well electricity might be out for hours, and water came from wells that sometimes had temperamental pumps. I was sort of used to the rural back woods life, but my husband, who had claimed to love the thoughts of being a country boy, was appalled at the stark isolation and the ruralness of it all. My mama was dying, and my little sister, who had been looking after her, was very pregnant, so Danny had agreed to move back here with me – just until we could get mama buried - I promised. Mama had done all her cancer treatments, and was in a bit of remission at the moment, but she was so weak that Lynette, in her final weeks of pregnancy, couldn’t manage lifting her from her bed to the chair. Daddy had been gone for about 10 years now, and Mama was ready to go, but sort of wanted to hang around long enough to see her first grandchild born. Danny had taken the police college training and had been hired on by the state police after he graduated. But they didn’t want to transfer him to this god forsaken part of the state. Fortunately Bill Thompson, the local Sheriff, had been a good friend of Daddy’s and he hired Danny as a deputy. I had put my application in with the school board, but it looked like the next vacancy was not going to happen until old Ms. Watts retired at the end of the next school year. By that time Mama would likely be gone and Danny and I would be heading back to the city, but I still left my application on file just in case. I spent most of my time during that first month looking after Mama and Lynette. Lynette had been going out with, and had gotten pregnant by Joe Bob Burnette, son of Joe Ray Burnette, who was the son of old man Joe Dan Burnette. The Burnette family thought that they were pretty big stuff in the county and Joe Dan didn’t want Joe Bob to marry my little sister, mostly because our family didn’t have any money. I didn’t want Joe Bob to marry my little sister either, but that was because Joe Bob was an asshole and a real jerk of a person. He had been quite a bully back when I went to school with him, and I had no reason to believe that he had changed his colors since. Lynette gave birth to a wonderful ball of joy. She picked the name Emma, which had been her favorite name since she and I had been kids. She had always had a doll named Emma, and I worried a little that she would treat the real Emma like she had treated her doll. She was good with the doll, but now she had a real person to look after and Lynette could be a little scatterbrained. Emma was born at home, and Danny and I helped with the birth as I had done a lot of reading about being a midwife. Mama’s cancer treatments had been covered by the state Medicaid, and the Sloan family name wasn’t exactly in their good books as we still owed the hospital whatever the state hadn’t paid. Emma was 6 months old when mama passed on, so at least mama got to hold her new granddaughter a few times and she was happy enough about that. Sheriff Thompson had a heart attack and while he was off sick the county made Danny the temporary Sheriff until the next election. Ms. Watts retired early and I got hired by the school board to teach grade 1 and 2. Danny and I bought a house cheap and we fixed it up so that it was pretty nice. Lynette and Emma stayed living in mama’s house, and while I didn’t like it, Joe Bob moved in with them. Emma was a little bit over 2 years old when Danny got a call late at night. Joe Bob had gone off the road in his car and had ended up deader than a doorknob. When Danny went out to inform Lynette he had to go into the house and see where she was. Joe Bob had left a few bruises on my sister over the last year or so, but this time he had beat her so bad he had killed her. I was willing to bet he had been stoned or drunk out of his mind when he rolled the car. But now Emma had no mother or father, and was left all alone in the house with her dead mother, by the drunken idiot that had fathered her. There were 2 good things that Lynette had done. She had refused to name Joe Bob as Emma’s father on the registration of her birth. And she had written out a good legal will in which she expressed her wishes to leave everything to myself and Dan, including the care and upkeep of Emma should anything happen to her. Children’s Services didn’t even bother to try to put Emma into protective custody, but instead let Dan and I have her immediately. And by leaving Joe Bob’s name off Emma’s birth certificate the Burnette family had no claim at all to Emma. Dan and I had been considering having children of our own when Emma was dropped into our laps. We were more than happy to have Emma as our daughter, although we still hoped to have another child or two while we were young enough to do so. I had been left half of mama’s estate, which only consisted of the house and an insurance policy that had mostly gone to pay off mama’s hospital bills and funeral expenses. It was a good enough house that it should sell and bring Dan, Emma and I a bit of money for raising Emma. However it could take time, because real estate here in the back of beyond wasn’t a hot seller. “Pick the man with Justice in his name for Sheriff.” “Re elect Dan Justice as Sheriff” read the posters we were nailing up all over the county. In this case having Justice as a last name certainly wasn’t going to hurt. And it didn’t as Dan was elected Sheriff by a large margin. The county had grown a little, and the population now called for 2 deputies, but that didn’t stop Dan from being called out in the middle of the night if there was trouble. Mrs. Wild, our neighbor had been looking after Emma since Lynette was killed and she was a real treasure. There is no way I would have been able to keep teaching without her help. And then, when I got pregnant shortly after Dan’s reelection, I was able to keep teaching until the end of June. Darrin was born right after school was out for the summer, and I had hopes that everything would work out so that I could go back in September. Emma was 4 that fall. Neither Dan, myself nor Mrs. Wild had noticed that Emma had something wrong with her. But when I did notice around Christmas time that Emma could not see much of anything I couldn’t help but wonder how long this had been going on. And when I took Emma to the city to have her eyesight tested by an ophthalmologist at the children’s hospital I felt like I had been a terrible mother. The specialist Emma saw told me that she was extremely nearsighted and had likely been this way since shortly after she was born. Her first glasses had lenses in them that were stronger than -20D, and the doctor told me that she could not see much more than a few inches in front of her face clearly. No one in my family had ever worn glasses other than for reading so why Emma was so very nearsighted was a real mystery to me. Joe Bob’s younger brother, Joe Sam, had married well before Emma was born. His wife was a rather rotund young lady, but Edith was very nice, and was quite a good mother and wife to Joe Sam. Rachel, their daughter had started grade 1 in the fall, and it wasn’t long before I noticed that 5 year old Rachel seemed to be bringing everything very close to her eyes. I suspected that she was as nearsighted as Emma, and if this was the case, the myopia that both she and Emma had was likely a genetic defect, as the 2 girls were fathered by brothers and were first cousins. I did suggest to Edith that Rachel appeared to have very poor eyesight and that they should have her vision checked by an eye doctor. When Rachel did not show up wearing glasses but still showed evidence of having to bring everything close to her face to see I made sure I spoke to Edith at the first available opportunity. Edith told me that she had spoken to Joe Sam. Joe Sam had talked with his father Joe Ray in the presence of his grandfather Joe Dan, who had both been adamant that no one in their family had ever needed glasses and they weren’t going to go along with that foolishness because everybody knows if you put a pair of glasses on someone the darned things ruin their eyes. I didn’t dare tell Edith that Joe Bob had been the father of Emma, because if Joe Dan or Joe Ray had ever demanded to have DNA testing done this would have proven that Joe Bob was Emma’s dad, and they could likely have sued for custody. Even if they were not awarded custody it would have been a court battle and lawyer’s costs that Dan and I could not have afforded. I hated to see this little child going around half blind, but self-preservation won out. Most children are moved from Grade 1 to Grade 2 without a problem. Even though poor little Rachel could barely see anything past the end of her nose, she was moved into Grade 2 at the end of the year. I could not figure out how it would be possible to move her from Grade 2 into Grade 3 unless she got glasses so I figured I would just have to keep my mouth shut and give Rachel a passing grade at the end of the school year. Then it would become the problem of the grade 3 teacher, Mary Nettle. Emma went back to the eye doctor late that summer so that she could go into grade 2 with the best vision correction possible. Her eyesight had not changed much since she got her glasses, but Dan and I still got her a new pair with the slightly updated prescription. Emma started grade 3 wearing new glasses that were almost -21D for both eyes. She had taken to the wearing of glasses almost immediately. As soon as her first glasses were put on her face she became a much more active child and now at the age of 8 she could do just about everything that someone her age group should be able to do. Of course Edith knew that Emma was quite likely her late brother in law’s child and when Edith brought Rachel back to school for grade 3 Rachel was in Mary Nettles class.. Edith had never seen Emma before but as soon as she saw her wearing her new, strong glasses she came up to me and asked me point blank if Emma was Joe Bob’s daughter. I told her I did not know that for sure, but I sort of maybe, without any proof, did suspect that. With a wise look on her face she smiled at me and told me that now she understood where Rachel’s myopia came from. And when it was time for Rachel to move on to grade 3 I had gone against my better judgement as a teacher and just moved her on. I didn’t want to have any further discussion with Edith, but Edith told me not to worry. The 3 Joe’s would never believe that their bloodline was imperfect and that some genetic fault could have caused severe myopia in the 2 girls. But Edith was very worried about Rachel, and her ability to succeed in school. She didn’t know what to do, and she was almost making herself sick with worry. I knew that Rachel was a sweet child from being her teacher the year before and I just felt terrible about the fact that she could not see. At the end of our little chat I told Edith that Emma had gotten new glasses, and if she wanted to stop by our house after school that afternoon I would let Rachel try on Emma’s first pair of glasses to see if they helped Rachel at all. I did warn her though that if they did help her see there would really be no way she could ever go without glasses anymore. Edith didn’t understand this, so I had to explain that when a very nearsighted person has never worn glasses their brain has become conditioned to decipher the blur in such a way that they can still function. But once they wear glasses and the brain and the eye muscles relax, the person becomes so accustomed to seeing properly with glasses the brain and the focusing muscles cannot just go back to seeing anything but a blur. When Edith stopped by with Rachel after Emma and I got home that afternoon I let Rachel wear Emma’s first glasses. Rachel was amazed at what she was able to see and, like I had suspected, she cried like a baby when Edith told her she could not wear Emma’s glasses home. It almost broke my heart when they left with Rachel still crying. I called Edith that night and I suggested that I would bring Emma’s old glasses to school with me and I would let Rachel wear them in school. But Edith thanked me and told me that she just needed to work on Joe Sam a bit and she was sure that she could make him see that Rachel really had very poor eyesight. It took until the end of September before Rachel showed up in school wearing glasses. They looked very similar in frame style and lens thickness to Emma’s glasses, and when I managed to chat with Edith I found out that both girls had almost the same prescription. Joe Sam had not wanted to believe that Rachel was almost blind, but Edith and Rachel were finally able to convince him that Rachel had very poor eyesight. They also took Rachel’s 3 year old sister for an eye exam, and Violet was found to be very nearsighted as well. Of course Joe Dan and Joe Ray believed that the problem lay with Edith’s background, and fortunately Edith kept my little secret so I didn’t have to worry about having our custody rights challenged. I had checked with a lawyer just in case, and he told me that my sister’s will was pretty much ironclad and would have taken a lot of time and money for Joe Dan’s family to contest it. Edith and I became quite friendly, and often on a Saturday she would drop by with Violet and Rachel so they could play with Emma. I had told Emma that Rachel and Violet were her first cousins, but I think they would have become good friends anyway as the thick glasses the three girls wore due to the Burnette family genetic defect bound them together like nothing else in life ever would. Specs4ever August 2018.