Twilight Children by Torey Hayden

Author:Torey Hayden
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter

21

The breakfast tray had already been cleared from Gerda’s room by the time I arrived, and she had lain down again, her back to the door. She didn’t respond immediately to my presence. My sense was that she had expected it to be one of the rehabilitation center staff and so just ignored the noise, but when I said her name, she then turned her head quite quickly. More laboriously, her body followed.

“Would you like help to sit up?” I asked.

She reached a hand out in a gesture I didn’t immediately understand. It looked as if she were patting a nonexistent dog beside the bed. Then she made eye contact with me and patted the air again.

“Ah. The little boy? Are you wondering about the little boy I had with me the other day?”

She nodded.

“He’s a patient at the hospital where I work. That was just a treat, taking him out while I ran some errands.”

Her brow wrinkled in an expression that said to me, “Tell me more.” Or possibly, “Why is he there?”

“He’s at the hospital because he doesn’t speak. He talks at home but only to his mother. No one else. Not even his father. And, of course, this is causing him problems. So I’m trying to help him.”

A pause.

“Unfortunately, I’m not doing such a good job, I’m afraid. He still isn’t talking.”

Gerda made a sad, sympathetic face.

I was touched to see her so concerned, especially as she had registered almost no emotion during previous visits. I settled into the chair beside the bed.

“I think I told you, his name is Drake. And I feel so sorry for him. He’s only four. There are a lot of expectations in his family. They’re very prominent in their community. The grandfather is a real patriarch—demanding, domineering, bossing everyone. He gets so distressed thinking something is ‘wrong’ with Drake. Whereas, if the boy just had a chance to be himself …”

Gerda nodded faintly.

A small silence came then. I knew I shouldn’t be talking about one client with another client, even if it was very unlikely Gerda would ever pass any of the information on. But it was unethical, so I searched for another direction to take the conversation.

“Twilight child,” she said, her voice soft. “Twilight child, twilight child.”

Surprised, I looked at her, because here was the elusive spontaneous speech I had been brought in to find.

Unfortunately, poetic as they were, the words didn’t make much sense to me. She regarded me intently with her blue, blue eyes, but her expression remained quite unreadable.

I nodded slowly, hoping that was an adequate response.

Gerda looked away. She seemed to study a blank part of the wall beside the bed and then looked back, saying in a very quiet voice, “Tim come west in the boxcar, so he had part thoroughbred in him. Should have been a saddler, but Papa hitched him to the wagon.”

I scrambled madly to figure out what we were talking about, how we had gotten from Drake to the topic of boxcars and Tim, whom I took to be a horse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.