The nurses, thirteen years ago, said she came out reaching for him.
She reached for him again that afternoon.
And this time, he was there to reach back.
Jeremy’s voice came back slowly, not all at once.
Some days he still prefers his nods and his hands, and we let him, because we learned the hard way what it costs a child to be made to speak before he’s ready, and what it costs him more to be silenced.
But he talks to Janice.
Through the wall between their rooms, late, when they think I’m asleep — two voices murmuring in the dark, finishing each other’s sentences, catching up on eight stolen years.
We left the house by the lake.
I couldn’t keep the mantel and the empty grave and the flowers for a girl who was upstairs doing her homework.
We moved to a town with no water I had to drive past, a smaller house, a louder one, and we are building something there that doesn’t have a hole in the middle of it.
