But then, she’d at least have that purpose, wouldn’t she?
Someone—a gangly boy with glasses, maybe fifteen or so—yelled out to one of Elizabeth’s boys, blindly headed toward a little girl with white-blond hair, a doll of a child in a rust-colored jumper and white tights. Del’s daughter, Galen realized, only a second before she also realized the child, who’d bent down to scratch the huge dog, now lying in the leaves, couldn’t see that Elizabeth’s boy had lost his balance and was about to land right on top of her.
“Hey!” Galen shouted, wishing she could remember the child’s name. Leaves flew in all directions as she took off toward her, yelling “Watch out!” at the top of her lungs. She dove for the child, snatching her out of the way a split second before the boy tripped over the dog. Both of them tumbled into a pile of leaves, the little girl landing, her mouth open in shock, on top of Galen.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said, more winded than anything else. “You almost got creamed. Didn’t you hear us calling you?”
She noticed the child’s gaze, riveted to her lips. Gently, Galen brushed back the little girl’s wispy hair, revealing a large two-piece hearing aid wrapped around the tiny, delicate ear.
Del had seen what was about to happen from the side living room window, nearly going straight through the glass in his panic. How many times had he told her not to get so close to large groups of children when they were playing rough like that? She was so impossibly little, built like her mother…it wouldn’t take much for a heavier kid to flatten her like a bug. He hit the side yard just in time to see Galen take that flying tackle, sweeping his daughter out of harm’s way.
Seconds later, the child was in his arms. “You okay?” he signed, one-handed.
She nodded, that wicked grin pushing up her cheeks. “The lady caught me,” she signed. She brushed the first two fingers of her right hand against the tip of her nose, twice. “Funny.”
“Yeah.” Del let his butt drop to the ground. “Hilarious.” Wendy angled her head, not understanding. He echoed her “funny” sign, then scowled at her. “I thought I told to you to be careful playing around the other kids?”
She scowled back, pointing toward the far side of the yard. “They were over there,” she signed. “I was being careful—”
“Really,” Galen said, apparently picking up on the gist of Wendy’s protest, “she wasn’t in the thick of things.” Del glanced over, his breath catching at the earnest expression in those clear blue-green eyes. Then she smiled, pushing a floating strand of hair from her face. “The thick of things found her.”
“Yeah. They usually do,” he muttered, then pivoted Wendy around to face Galen, hands on her slender waist. She looked back. “This is Galen,” he said, finger spelling Galen’s name. “Say ‘thank you’.”
Wendy turned around, touched her lips with the fingertips of her right hand, then extended her hand outward. “Thang you,” she said slowly.
“You’re welcome,” Galen said, her eyes darting from Del to Wendy, then back again. She’d gotten to her knees, her sweater and hair—which had come loose from its clasp, twin sheets of copper against fair cheeks—embellished with bits of leaves. “What’s your name?” she asked, pointing to Wendy, an instinctive sign that got the desired response.
“Wen-dy Fah-wan-dino,” she said with a huge smile. She’d just learned to say her last name a couple of weeks ago, in fact, and the glow of accomplishment hadn’t yet faded. Then she turned back to Del, whacking leaves off her bottom. “Can I go back and play?” she signed.
Del looked out at the raucous gang of kids hurtling themselves at each other with great abandon, then felt Wendy tug at his loose shirt. He looked down, wincing at the devilment in her dark brown eyes.
“I’ll be careful,” she signed, then touched her right index finger to her lips, opening the hand to bump her wrist against the top of her other hand. “Promise.”
He let out a resigned sigh. “Hold on…” He reached up to check that both aids were securely seated, then sent her off with a pat on the behind.
“She’s absolutely adorable,” Galen said at his elbow. “And I bet Daddy’s already plotting on how to keep the boys at bay.”
For several seconds, all he could do was stare at Galen, unable to breathe, let alone move. His daughter’s handicap was perfectly obvious—the hearing aids, the signing, the denasalized, almost mechanical speech. Yet, the first words out of this woman’s mouth were to remark on how adorable his daughter was. But what had him momentarily unable to function was not so much the words—politeness, an unwillingness to hurt his feelings, could just as well have produced the comment—but the ingenuousness of her statement. The sincerity. Heaven knows, he and Wendy had met enough well-meaning people since her birth, people who’d say “What a pretty little girl” with that catch in their voice, smiling at Wendy with eyes full of pity. Or fear. Or embarrassed gratitude that their child wasn’t “like that.”
Not this time. He knew, as well as he knew his name, that Galen Granata had looked at his child and seen…a child. The child he loved. Not the child that made so many people uncomfortable or nervous.
“I had a deaf friend, growing up,” Galen said quietly, looking back over the yard. “And the one thing she most hated was the way everyone always saw her as deaf first, a person second.” She turned those impossibly turquoise eyes to him. “That stayed with me.”
Del got to his feet, held out a hand to help Galen up, which, not surprisingly, she refused. “Did you learn to sign, then?”
Hugging herself, Galen shook her head. “Her parents wouldn’t let her. She was being taught by the…Oral method, I think it was called. Actually, I think she picked up signing later, after she got out of school. But we lost touch soon after that. After I got married.”
For a long minute, they both stood with their arms crossed, watching the racing, shrieking children. And he saw the longing in her face. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t ask. Since he didn’t, he did.
“You…don’t have kids of your own?”
She flicked a glance in his direction, shook her head. “I can’t have them,” she said quietly. “Damaged goods and all that. Oh! Look—I think they’re telling us the food’s ready!”
She started toward the house; he grabbed her hand, twisting her back to him. “There’s nothing damaged about you, Galen Granata. You got that?” There went that scared-doe look again, intensified by the plain brownness of her outfit. Her hand was smooth, but strong. A hand that rolled out pasta, chopped ham. Brushed the hair from a little girl’s eyes.
He longed to do the same for her, to touch that soft, shimmering mass floating around her shoulders, firestruck in the shaft of late afternoon sunlight angling through the bare trees. “You got that?” he repeated.
He saw the tears gather in the corners of her eyes, but she nodded.
“Good.” He gave her hand a brief, gentle squeeze. “Thank you for coming to the rescue.”
She slipped her hand from his, tucking it, with the other one, against her waist. “It was nothing,” she murmured, then turned and walked quickly away.
Odd how, not a half-hour before, she’d been leery of being with so many people she didn’t know. Now she was grateful for the crowd, for being one of a herd, swarming around the feeding trough. Shyly, she