she hears me. My eyes meet Jess’s. “Can I lay her down in the house? Maybe on the living room couch? Or do you want to take her home?”
Jess struggles for a moment. The war within is etched in his cheeks, but he finally acquiesces to my request. As his shoulders stiffen, he says, “Maybe the couch will do for now.”
I nod and take a step for the stairs, still struggling with Katie’s weight. Jess wraps an arm around my back to steady me, and together we climb the treads. He holds the screen door open, and we enter the living room. Sue’s sitting in the front room reading, and she smiles in sympathy when she sees me.
“Elizabeth already went up,” she whispers, and I mouth my gratitude. Sue stands and gathers her bag by the side of the couch. “I’ll see myself out.”
The moment I set Katie on the couch, she curls into the back cushions, and her knees draw upward to her chest. I reach for a blanket in the basket near the fireplace and cover her.
“We need to talk,” I say as I turn to Jess who stands behind me, peering down at his child. He nods and then tips his head toward the front porch. With the side table lamp on low, we can still see Katie from outside.
As we sit on the porch swing, Jess leans forward, his elbows on his thighs and his hands clasped. I sit back, tucking a foot under one knee. Silence weighs heavy between us, and once again I wonder how Jess handles the quiet of his daughter.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” Grace had said. Perhaps Jess suffers from it as well. He’s certainly stressed about his daughter and her reaction to me.
“My wife and I were high school sweethearts,” he begins, letting out a long breath. “Deb wanted out of here, but she was three years younger than me. I went off to college, and we did that awkward long-distance thing, giving each other permission to do our own thing. She was more wayward than me, as I was dedicated to my studies. Eventually, I thought we’d just fizzle out. Instead, she came to me after her high school graduation. She couldn’t get into the University of Michigan where I intended to be a grad student, so she went to Eastern.”
He sighs, falling back against the swing, causing it to rock and peers around me into the living room to check on his daughter. I turn as well, looking over my shoulder, and note she’s still fast asleep.
“I married her.” My head quickly turns back to Jess, and he shrugs. “She wanted to hold off on children. It was fine with me. We weren’t . . . stable, and I was busy. Grad school. Internship with General Motors and then a job in R&D. I was working on the electric vehicle. Life was good, but my marriage wasn’t.”
He exhales again and looks down at his fingers splayed over his thighs. “Then she got pregnant. She didn’t want the baby and told me she might not be mine.”
Oh my God.
“I wasn’t certain she was mine either, but I couldn’t turn away a pregnant woman who happened to be my wife. Thankfully, a simple blood test proved Katie belonged to me, but I hated Deb for what she’d done. She’d cheated on me, but I kept her close because she was my child’s mother.”
He shakes his head and gives a bitter laugh.
“Then one day when Katie was almost four, I came home and found my baby girl alone. No mother. No note. No clothes remaining in the closet. Gone.” His eyes drift back to his sleeping child, and I sit still, horrified at the thought of abandoning that sweet baby resting on my grandmother’s couch. “She wouldn’t talk. She could before, but she no longer did, and we’ve never known why. A psychologist, social workers, child neurologists, they all said the same thing. She was choosing not to speak. Selective mutism, they call it. The pieces are all there for her to vocalize. The only thing we don’t know is the reason she’s not.”
His eyes meet mine, sad, somber and full of questions I can’t answer. The loss he’s experienced is on a level I’ll never comprehend.
“The doctors told me she’ll talk again on her own timeline. We had a rough go of it at first, and eventually, I decided to come home to be near family.” He stops, and I can sense