Mistletoe and Miracles. Marie Ferrarella

something like that,” he continued conversationally. “It also makes you afraid. Afraid that everyone’s going to leave you, even though they say they won’t.”

      Knowing Laurel, he was certain she had tried to do everything she could to reassure her son that he was loved and that she would always be there for him. She’d mentioned her mother, so there was more family than just Laurel. Her late husband could have come from a large, close-knit family and there might be a lot of people in Cody’s world, but that didn’t change the fact that he might still feel alone, still feel isolated. Fear didn’t take things like logic into account.

      Trent considered the most likely causes behind Cody’s silence. It could be as simple as what had plagued him all those years ago when he’d lost his mother, except that Cody had taken it to the nth degree, locking down rather than dealing with the fear on a daily, lucid basis.

      Not that he had, either, at first.

      “And sometimes,” Trent went on as if this were a twoway conversation instead of only the sound of his own voice echoing within the room, “you wind up being afraid of being afraid. You know, the big wave of fear is gone and you think maybe everything’ll be okay, but you’re afraid that maybe those feelings will come back. I know that’s how I felt for a really long time.”

      Trent shifted on the floor, trying to get comfortable. He envied the flexibility of the very young.

      “The funny thing was, my brothers felt the exact same way I did. Except that I didn’t know because we didn’t talk about it. I thought there was something wrong with me because I felt like that.”

      Trent crossed his fingers and hoped that the boy was listening.

      “That’s the real scary part, not realizing that there are other people who feel just the way you do. That you’re not alone,” he emphasized, and then he sighed. “I guess if I’d talked about my feelings to my brothers, I would have found that out and I wouldn’t have been so unhappy. It took my stepmom to make me realize that I wasn’t alone and that what I was feeling—lost, scared—was okay.” He ventured out a little further. “I felt angry, too.”

      As he spoke, Trent continued to watch Cody’s back for some infinitesimal indication that he’d heard him, some change in posture to signify that his words had struck a chord with the boy. That he was getting through, however distantly, to Cody.

      When he mentioned anger as another reaction he’d experienced, Trent noted that Cody’s shoulders stiffened just the tiniest bit.

      Anger. Of course.

      Why hadn’t he assumed that to begin with? he upbraided himself. Laurel said that Cody engaged in video games that exclusively involved cars. If he focused on crashing them, that was an act of hostility.

      Trent wondered how much anger smoldered beneath Cody’s subdued surface. A measure of anger was a healthy response. Too much indicated a problem up ahead.

      Something they needed to prepare for.

      He continued talking in an easy, conversational cadence, trying to ever so lightly touch the nerve, to elicit more of a response, however veiled it might be. These things couldn’t be pushed, but children were resilient. The sooner they could peel away the layers, the better Cody’s chances were of going back to lead a normal life, free of whatever angst held him prisoner.

      “I was angry at my mother for being gone, angry at the plane for crashing. Angry at my father for letting her go by herself, although there wasn’t anything he could have done if he’d gone with her. He certainly couldn’t have stopped the plane crash, even though I thought of him as kind of a superhero. I probably would have wound up being an orphan,” he confessed. “But that’s the problem with hurting, Cody. You don’t always think logically. You just want the hurt to stop.

      “You just want your dad to come back even though you know he can’t.” He’d deliberately switched the focus from himself to the boy, watching to see if it had any effect.

      He stopped talking and held his breath as silence slipped in.

      Surprised by the silence, or perhaps by the fact that the hot feelings inside of him had a name, Cody turned from the window and actually looked at Trent for a moment before dropping his gaze to the floor again.

      Yes! Score one for the home team, Trent thought, elated.

      Given Cody’s demeanor, he’d estimated that it might take at least several sessions before the boy had this kind of reaction. In this branch of treatment, at times it was two steps forward, one step back, but for the moment, Trent savored what he had.

      The boy was reachable, that was all that counted. It was just going to take a huge amount of patience.

      Laurel glanced uneasily toward the closed door.

      What were they doing in there? Had Trent managed to crack the wall around Cody? Even a little? Had her son said a word, made a sound? Something? Anything at all. Oh God, she hoped so.

      The waiting was killing her.

      Cody had been talking since he was ten months old. Sentences had begun coming not all that long after that. His pediatrician had told her that Cody was “gifted.” Matt had called him a little chatterbox. Cody could fill the hours with nonstop talk. So much so there had been times she longed for silence just to be able to hear herself think.

      Remembering, she flushed with guilt. She would give anything to hear him talk again. These days, she tried to fill the void by keeping on a television set. And when that was off, radio chased away the quiet. Anything to keep the oppressive silence at bay.

      Laurel looked away from the door. Staring at it wouldn’t make it open. There was a magazine on her lap. It had been open to the same page now for the last thirty minutes, ever since she’d reached for it and pretended to thumb through the pages for the first two minutes. The articles hadn’t kept her attention and although her eyes had skimmed the page, not a single word had managed to penetrate.

      Just as her words didn’t seem to penetrate Cody, she thought ruefully.

      Trent had to fix him, he had to.

      She had her strengths and she had learned to endure a great many things, but seeing Cody like this wasn’t one of them. The idea of her baby being trapped in this silent world for the rest of his life simply devastated her. It was all she could do not to fall to pieces at the mere suggestion that Cody would never get better.

      Fidgeting, Laurel caught herself looking at the closed door to Trent’s office for what had to be the tenth time. It was a struggle not to let another sigh escape her lips.

      She could feel the receptionist—Rita, was it?—looking at her.

      Clearing her throat, her fingers absently moving the magazine pages back and forth between them, Laurel asked, “Has he been in practice long? Trent, um, Dr. Marlowe, I mean.”

      Rita took her time in responding. “Depends on your definition of long.”

      Laurel shrugged helplessly. She had no definition for long. She was only trying to make conversation to pass the time.

      “Five years?” she finally said.

      Rita moved her head from side to side. The short, black bob moved with her. Her eyes remained on the woman sitting so stiffly in the chair.

      “Not that long. The other Dr. Marlowe has been in practice fifteen years,” Rita told her. “Ever since she took it over from Dr. Riemann.”

      “Oh,” was all Laurel said. The single word throbbed with preoccupation. Her mind raced with thoughts she was afraid to examine.

      Rita began to rise from her desk, as if to see to a task. But then she shrugged and sat down again. “Five minutes,” she said to the boy’s mother.

      Laurel’s head jerked up. The receptionist had said something to her but she hadn’t heard the words. “Excuse me?”

      “You’ve