Mistletoe and Miracles. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ hadn’t he assumed that to begin with? he upbraided himself. Laurel said that Cody engaged in video games that exclusively involved cars. If he focused on crashing them, that was an act of hostility.

      Trent wondered how much anger smoldered beneath Cody’s subdued surface. A measure of anger was a healthy response. Too much indicated a problem up ahead.

      Something they needed to prepare for.

      He continued talking in an easy, conversational cadence, trying to ever so lightly touch the nerve, to elicit more of a response, however veiled it might be. These things couldn’t be pushed, but children were resilient. The sooner they could peel away the layers, the better Cody’s chances were of going back to lead a normal life, free of whatever angst held him prisoner.

      “I was angry at my mother for being gone, angry at the plane for crashing. Angry at my father for letting her go by herself, although there wasn’t anything he could have done if he’d gone with her. He certainly couldn’t have stopped the plane crash, even though I thought of him as kind of a superhero. I probably would have wound up being an orphan,” he confessed. “But that’s the problem with hurting, Cody. You don’t always think logically. You just want the hurt to stop.

      “You just want your dad to come back even though you know he can’t.” He’d deliberately switched the focus from himself to the boy, watching to see if it had any effect.

      He stopped talking and held his breath as silence slipped in.

      Surprised by the silence, or perhaps by the fact that the hot feelings inside of him had a name, Cody turned from the window and actually looked at Trent for a moment before dropping his gaze to the floor again.

      Yes! Score one for the home team, Trent thought, elated.

      Given Cody’s demeanor, he’d estimated that it might take at least several sessions before the boy had this kind of reaction. In this branch of treatment, at times it was two steps forward, one step back, but for the moment, Trent savored what he had.

      The boy was reachable, that was all that counted. It was just going to take a huge amount of patience.

      Laurel glanced uneasily toward the closed door.

      What were they doing in there? Had Trent managed to crack the wall around Cody? Even a little? Had her son said a word, made a sound? Something? Anything at all. Oh God, she hoped so.

      The waiting was killing her.

      Cody had been talking since he was ten months old. Sentences had begun coming not all that long after that. His pediatrician had told her that Cody was “gifted.” Matt had called him a little chatterbox. Cody could fill the hours with nonstop talk. So much so there had been times she longed for silence just to be able to hear herself think.

      Remembering, she flushed with guilt. She would give anything to hear him talk again. These days, she tried to fill the void by keeping on a television set. And when that was off, radio chased away the quiet. Anything to keep the oppressive silence at bay.

      Laurel looked away from the door. Staring at it wouldn’t make it open. There was a magazine on her lap. It had been open to the same page now for the last thirty minutes, ever since she’d reached for it and pretended to thumb through the pages for the first two minutes. The articles hadn’t kept her attention and although her eyes had skimmed the page, not a single word had managed to penetrate.

      Just as her words didn’t seem to penetrate Cody, she thought ruefully.

      Trent had to fix him, he had to.

      She had her strengths and she had learned to endure a great many things, but seeing Cody like this wasn’t one of them. The idea of her baby being trapped in this silent world for the rest of his life simply devastated her. It was all she could do not to fall to pieces at the mere suggestion that Cody would never get better.

      Fidgeting, Laurel caught herself looking at the closed door to Trent’s office for what had to be the tenth time. It was a struggle not to let another sigh escape her lips.

      She could feel the receptionist—Rita, was it?—looking at her.

      Clearing her throat, her fingers absently moving the magazine pages back and forth between them, Laurel asked, “Has he been in practice long? Trent, um, Dr. Marlowe, I mean.”

      Rita took her time in responding. “Depends on your definition of long.”

      Laurel shrugged helplessly. She had no definition for long. She was only trying to make conversation to pass the time.

      “Five years?” she finally said.

      Rita moved her head from side to side. The short, black bob moved with her. Her eyes remained on the woman sitting so stiffly in the chair.

      “Not that long. The other Dr. Marlowe has been in practice fifteen years,” Rita told her. “Ever since she took it over from Dr. Riemann.”

      “Oh,” was all Laurel said. The single word throbbed with preoccupation. Her mind raced with thoughts she was afraid to examine.

      Rita began to rise from her desk, as if to see to a task. But then she shrugged and sat down again. “Five minutes,” she said to the boy’s mother.

      Laurel’s head jerked up. The receptionist had said something to her but she hadn’t heard the words. “Excuse me?”

      “You’ve got five minutes,” Rita told her, enunciating each word as if she were talking to someone who had to read lips. “The session, it’s fifty minutes,” she explained. “You’ve got five more minutes to wait.”

      “Oh.” The light dawned on her. Laurel forced a smile to her lips and inclined her head. “Thank you.”

      Rita said crisply, “It’s customary to pay up front and then I’ll give you the paperwork so that you can mail it in to your insurance company.”

      She didn’t work. Matt hadn’t wanted her to. Hadn’t even wanted her to finish college, saying, at the time, she was “fine” the way she was. She realized later it was all meant to control her. Matt liked being in control of everything and everyone.

      Shaking her head, she informed Rita, “There is no insurance company.”

      Squaring her shoulders, Rita informed her with feeling, “Then payment is definitely up front.”

      “We can make arrangements later,” Trent told Rita as he walked out of his office, catching the tail end of the conversation.

      Laurel popped to her feet as if she’d been sitting on a spring that catapulted her into an upright position. Startled, she pressed her hand to her chest as she swung around. “I didn’t hear you.”

      “It’s the carpet,” he told her with a smile. “It muffles everything.”

      Laurel wasn’t listening. She was looking at her son, aware that she’d been holding her breath.

      “Leave Mrs. Greer’s account to me,” Trent told Rita.

      It was obvious that this wasn’t what the older woman wanted to hear. Accounts and the billing were her domain. She frowned. СКАЧАТЬ