Playing the Game by Lisa B Kamps

Author:Lisa B Kamps [Kamps, Lisa B]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781543072198
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 33550939
Publisher: BimHaven Press
Published: 2017-02-14T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Harland glanced at the board book to his left then over at the computer screen. His tapped the mouse over the painfully short and quick video, watched it play, paused it and hit replay.

Glanced at the picture book once more then back at the screen, studying the finger positions of the oversized hand in the illustrations above the video before copying them.

Dog.

Okay, he was pretty sure he had that one right. He hoped.

He flipped the cardboard pages of the book back to the beginning and started over.

Cat. Dog. Fish. Rabbit.

He made the signs for each, stopped to make sure he was doing them right, then went through it one more time. The book was similar to one he'd seen Courtney read to Noah. She'd flip through the pages, point to an animal, and would Noah make the sign. A huge grin would spread across his face and his eyes would light up with each answer. Then he'd pick out a picture and wait for Courtney to make the sign, almost like he was testing her.

And then Noah had brought the book over to Harland and climbed on his lap. He opened it up with great care and pointed to a picture of a big brown horse, then looked at Harland. Waiting. Expecting him to play the game, to make the correct sign.

Harland shook his head, shot a look of desperation in Courtney's direction. He didn't miss the disappointment on his son's face, like he had somehow let him down by not being able to play the game.

Harland had stopped by a chain store on the way home that night and purchased several children's board books: animals, objects, shapes, colors. He loaded his arms with them, one after the other. And when he got home, he'd ordered a basic book on sign language and started searching for ASL sites on the internet.

He didn't want to disappoint Noah again, couldn't bear to see that expression on his son's face again. So he locked himself up in the spare bedroom that passed for an office for an hour before he crashed each night and studied the most basic of signs.

He extended the index and middle fingers of his right hand, holding them tight together. The letter 'H'. Then he raised his hand, placed his thumb against his temple, and bent and unbent the two fingers making the 'H' twice. Horse.

"Yeah. Take that, you stupid fucking horse." Okay, maybe it wasn't the most grown-up thing to say. He didn't care, there was nobody here to see him, not back here. And it meant he could talk to Noah in his own language, at least a little bit.

He closed the picture book and grabbed another one, this one filled with vehicles. He went through each picture, looked for the word on the website he was using. Study the video, learn the sign. Repeat it until he was somewhat comfortable with it and hope he'd remember it when the time came.

Plane. Or airplane. Did it matter? He scrolled up and clicked on 'airplane', watched the oversized hand make the sign.

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