Everything but a Husband

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 introduced herself to various smiling middle-aged men in cabled pullovers and flannel shirts and the occasional sport jacket and turtleneck, as well as to their wool-skirted or denim-jumpered or designer-jeaned wives. Most of them were Sanfords, she realized, as were the vast majority of children. And other than Cora—and Del—she was the only unattached person over eighteen there.

This person or that tried to draw her into conversation, but since they all knew each other, talk quickly centered on what this or that kid was doing, who got a new car or house, who was expecting a new baby. They didn’t mean to leave her out, she knew. They just had a lot to catch up on. At one point, she searched out Cora, who looked up, waving her over to the handsome older couple at her side. The man’s sharply-honed features looked vaguely familiar, his hair that dark pewter when black hair goes gray; he stood possessively close to a small, fine-boned blonde who looked familiar, too. Galen shook her head “no,” however, indicating she’d meet up with her friend later. Actually, after twenty minutes of being buried in a dozen overlapping conversations, she’d had enough. Besides, cutting turkey with the side of a plastic fork, standing up, was the pits.

She slithered through a knot of laughing Sanfords, filched a plastic knife from the table, then slithered back out to the far less populated entryway, settling with her plate on the next-to-bottom tread of the wide, carpeted stairway hugging one wall. She carefully set her cider-filled plastic “glass” between her and the wall, letting out a long, heartfelt sigh.

“Yeah, that’s about my reaction, too.”

Her head snapped up at the low voice, as her heart simultaneously did an erratic pool-shot number in her chest. She jabbed at a small pile of green beans, trying for nonchalant. “Amazing, the way we keep running into each other.”

Balancing his own plate in one hand, Del awkwardly slid down onto the step beside her. But not too close, she noticed. Next to the banister. Leaving a good four feet between them. “And why do I get the feeling the phrase like a bad penny is in there somewhere?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Joke, honey. Just a joke,” Del said, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Oh. Yes.” She glanced around. “Where’s Wendy?”

“Couldn’t pry her away from the other kids.” He took a sip of the cider. Grimaced.

Galen couldn’t help but smile. “There’s beer out in the garage, I hear.”

“Ah. I wondered.”

He was watching her. She wished he wouldn’t. Was flattered that he was. Well, unless she had marshmallow on her nose or something. She casually lifted her hand to her face to check.

Nope.

On a soft sigh—of relief? terror?—she poked at a chunk of sweet potato, then looked out toward the still-swarming dining room. “So,” she managed over a suddenly trembling everything, “I’m here because of Cora. Obviously. From what I can tell, though, nearly everybody else is family. So how’d you wrangle an invitation?”

“Because I’m part of the everybody else.”

Puzzled, she shook her head, a sweet potato hovering six inches from her mouth.

“I’m family, too. Elizabeth’s mother married my father.”

The couple with Cora! No wonder they both looked familiar. Then, on a soft gasp: “You’re Elizabeth’s step-brother?”