It was a shock to realize she actually wanted to tell him everything. But she couldn’t exactly find the right words.
Deliberately, she pictured Isobel’s face, and took a deep breath.
“I was born hearing-impaired.” She touched one of her ears. “I wasn’t completely deaf, but I couldn’t hear much more than low sounds. Speech was difficult for me, and that was why communicating with other people was so hard. I learned sign language back in the sixties, and I’m still very good at reading lips, but you know . . . things were different back then. Physical problems in young were not as well accepted. So it was hard for me. Hard for my whole family.”
She glanced up at him and was relieved to find that he hadn’t recoiled with disgust—which was not only something that people had done to her in the past, but the kind of thing the aristocracy was known for.
Boone, contrary to his station, was leaning in even closer, his expression open . . . accepting.
Taking another long inhale, she said, “Other young were downright cruel, but Isobel was there for me. I can remember the first fistfight she got into over my disability.” Helania had to smile. “She pounded the crap out of this little boy who had been making fun of me. I was too busy trying to get along in the world to worry about what people thought of my deafness, but she cared and she was fierce about it.”
“Is that why you think you can’t get along with people?”
“It’s a hangover from all those years, you know?” She touched her ear again. “Anyway, I had been told that there was a possibility that my transition would fix the problem with my ear canals, but I never believed it. When I came through the change, I was shocked to hear everything so clearly. I hated it at first. Everything was so loud, especially the high notes of things like hinges on doors, phones ringing, whistling. It was a difficult adjustment.”
“It must have been a different world to you,” he said.
“Totally different. I mean, I had kept to myself before then. After my hearing worked? I shut down for about a year. That was when Isobel insisted that we move out and start living on our own. She seemed to understand that I needed space to myself, and my parents were—they were very concerned and very well intended. But they were relentless in trying to draw me out, and all that pushing was having the opposite effect. Things got better after Isobel and I began living together. Movies were what saved me. While Isobel was out with her friends, I played them on the TV. First with those record-like discs, remember the ones that came like big albums in those plastic sleeves?”
Boone laughed. “Yes, God . . . I haven’t thought of them in years.”
“Right? Then Beta and VHS. Then DVDs. Now we have Netflix and Hulu.” She took a sip of her wine. “So when Isobel was out in the world, I would sit alone and watch movies, first with the sound turned way down and then gradually . . .” She shrugged. “I got used to it. Now, I can even be in crowds and not get overwhelmed by the all the layers of sound. But it took years. I read an article once that said the adjustment to a sense was all about neuropathways being developed. My brain has had to rewire itself, in other words.”
“But you’re still not completely at ease with people.”
“No, I’m not. Is it nature in the form of innate introversion? Or nurture from those two and a half decades of being deaf and getting ridiculed by kids my own age as well as some of their parents? I’m not sure. And I suppose it doesn’t matter. I am what I am.”
There was a note of apology in her tone, but then she had long felt that she had things to make up for, damages to explain, limitations to excuse—
Boone reached across the table and took her hand, the one with the scars on the palm. “I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”
“Well, that’s lucky for me,” she whispered, “as I’ve not had a lot of luck being anything different.”
As the jazz trio’s tempo changed, his thumb stroked over her flesh. “Dance with me?”
A spike of warmth flared in the center of her chest, right where her heart was. The glow was a surprise,