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“Have they hurt her yet?” he repeated slowly, his deep voice low and angry. “You know, pinching her or pricking her with needles just to make her cry out in pain, just to reassure you that she still has a voice worth saving to give you hope so you’ll agree to continue their treatments and their payments.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. He’d gone too far that time, and the infuriating man knew it, too, based on his instantly wary but resolved expression. As if he were waiting to be slapped, to be told to go to hell. She should have done just that.
Instead, she hoarsely rasped out, “How do you know all that?”
“Because I was once like her.” His chocolate brown eyes softened. “Because I also stopped talking when I was a boy, and all the specialists in the world couldn’t help me either. Because it wasn’t a physical problem for me.” Pain and embarrassment colored his voice as he reassured her, “And I don’t think it is with Emmeline either.”
She searched his face for any hint that he was bamming her but found only sincerity.
A motion near the door captured her attention. Emmeline. She’d come running through the house, only to halt in the open doorway when she saw them. Then her eyes and mouth formed big, round O’s.
With a loud gasp, she rushed toward the dog. The shaggy hound didn’t move a muscle as she flopped onto the rug in front of him, threw her arms around his neck, and called out, “Fluppy!”
Nora’s heart stopped.
*****
Mason glanced from Emmeline to her mother, who stood stunned at hearing her daughter speak. Fluppy. A child’s mash-up of puppy and fluffy, but he would gladly take it. Because he knew exactly how important that single word was.
“Did you hear that?” he murmured, moving to stand at Nora’s side. Her eyes glistened as Emmeline hugged and petted Brutus who accepted all of the little one’s attentions as if it were his birthright to be so adored.
“Yes,” she choked out and swallowed back her tears.
“Then you also heard that her voice wasn’t rusty, the way it should be if she hadn’t used it at all for the past eighteen months.”
Her watery gaze darted to his as his meaning settled over her. “She’s…been talking.”
“Probably to herself and her dolls.” He reached out to take her elbow to soften the revelation with a reassuring touch. “Just not to you or anyone else.”
“But I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Why would she do that? Why not speak to me? I’m her mother.”
“Because her silence has nothing to do with her voice. She just proved that.” And without any noxious physician’s potions or torturous pinpricks. From the way Emmeline continued to fawn over Brutus, the girl had been so caught up in meeting the dog that she hadn’t even realized she’d spoken in front of them.
“How did you know?” She gaped at him as if he’d just sprung a second head. “All the doctors who’ve seen her, not one ever suggested…”
He fixed his eyes on Emmeline and Brutus. “When I was her age, I stopped speaking, too. My tongue wouldn’t work the way it was supposed to. The sounds didn’t come out right, and I—” He paused as the memories poured through him. “I stammered and slurred my words. Badly. It most likely would have gone away in time as I grew, but the other children made fun and bullied me. My tutor said it was my fault, that I was too lazy to speak properly.” He confessed quietly, “And my father tried to beat it out of me.”
He heard the sharp intake of her breath, but he didn’t dare look at her. He couldn’t have borne the pity he would have seen on her face.
“So I just stopped talking completely,” he said quietly. “But I could talk—that’s the point—and just fine, too, when I was alone or when I was in the right place with the right people. When I felt safe and could take my time to form the words. But every time I was around the other children or my father or tutor, I couldn’t force out the words. The more I tried, the worse the result.”
“What happened? What made you speak again?”
“Exile.”
He felt her puzzled stare at that unexpected answer, yet that’s exactly what had happened to him.
“My father sent me away to school because he didn’t want me around. I was a constant reminder that he’d sired a son who was…flawed.” He couldn’t hide the disgust in his voice at that word, the one his father had so cruelly, so wrongly used to describe him. “At school, no one cared that I didn’t speak. The headmaster only cared that I worked hard enough at my studies to earn a first in mathematics, the other students only that I was good at sports. Eventually I felt comfortable enough to start talking again. By the time I left school, there was no more stammer, no more lisps or mispronunciations.” Finally, he looked at Nora, struck by the concern on her face. “I see the same signs in Emmeline, and I think…I think it was because the last thing her father told her was to be quiet. That she blames his death on her talking.”
Anguish pierced her visibly, and she inhaled a long, jerking breath. She followed his gaze back to her daughter, and he knew she was praying that the girl would speak again, to say anything to give Nora solace, even if only to the dog. But Emmeline was aware of them now, and she wouldn’t say anything more.
Not today anyway.
“Let me take both of you out tomorrow for a picnic in the countryside,” he offered quickly before she could ask him anything more about his childhood, changing the topic and easing whatever blame she was putting on herself. “We’ll escape the city, find a nice field near a woods, and have some peace and quiet for a few hours.”
“We can’t.”
He clenched his jaw. “Because Dr. Parks is visiting?”
