by Susan Stoker
Emily looked confused. “But you guys can’t talk to each other,” she informed her daughter.
Annie sat up and scooted over to Frankie and threw her arm over his shoulders before saying, “We can so. He just told me a joke.”
“He did?” Emily asked, tilting her head in confusion.
“Yeah,” Annie confirmed. “He said, ‘Why did the Army man cross the road?’”
When the little girl didn’t continue, Emily asked, “Why?”
“He was protecting the chicken,” Annie said, then burst into giggles all over again.
The adults looked at each other for a long moment before grinning. It wasn’t that funny, but they’d both learned a long time ago that what was funny to a seven-year-old wasn’t necessarily a laugh-riot to everyone else.
Annie and Frankie went back to their playing, occasional bouts of laughter from Annie ringing out over the lawn. An hour later, Cooper and Fletch came back outside and Kiera signed to Frankie that it was time for bed.
“Please, can Frankie have a sleepover?” Annie asked before they left.
“Not tonight,” Emily told her. “He’s most likely tired from traveling and the last thing he needs is to be kept awake by an excited little girl.”
“But, Mommmmm,” Annie pouted.
“Your mom said no,” Fletch said sternly. “If you’re good, and if he wants to, we’ll discuss it with Cooper and Kiera for tomorrow night.”
As if her dad had already said yes, Annie’s face brightened and she waved at Frankie.
He signed something to her and before anyone could translate, Annie had copied the sign.
Frankie smiled and repeated it one more time, then waved.
After the trio had left to walk across the yard to the garage apartment where they’d be staying, Emily asked her daughter, “How did you know what Frankie was saying to you?”
Annie shrugged. “I figured it out.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know, Mom, it just made sense. I waved at him, and I remember him telling Miss Kiera his dinner was good, and she translated what he was saying at dinner, remember? Anyway, so the first thing he said was good, and I figured the other was night.”
Emily stared at her daughter. She was right. She hadn’t remembered the conversation at dinner, but Annie never missed much, never had.
“I love you,” Emily said.
“I love you too,” Annie replied, then spun and ran for the dining room table, where she’d laid out her precious Army men after coming inside. She gathered them into her arms and raced past her parents and toward her room.
“Fifteen minutes, squirt,” Fletch called after her.
“Okay, Daddy!” Annie yelled back, but didn’t slow down.
Emily shook her head and turned into her husband. “Are we sure we want another Annie around here?”
Fletch put his hands on his wife’s ass and pulled her into him. “Absolutely. There’s nothing I can think of that would please me more than to have more little yous running around.”
Emily grinned, feeling her husband’s erection against her belly. “Maybe I’ll go take a bath while you put our daughter to bed.”
Fletch groaned. “The image of you naked in our tub isn’t going to make this erection I have go down anytime soon.”
“After you put Annie to bed, I’ll take care of that for you,” Emily told him, her lips twitching. “You know this is my fertile time of the month.”
“You are evil,” Fletch said, squinting at her. “You know when she’s worked up it takes twice as long to get her settled.”
“I’ll just have to get started without you then,” Emily said.
With that, Fletch pulled her into him and kissed her with all the pent-up passion her teasing had generated. Pulling away several minutes later, he turned Emily and pushed her toward the hall. “Go. I need a couple minutes to control myself before I go to Annie.”
Emily stepped away, swaying her hips in an exaggerated movement as she went. Looking over her shoulder, she smiled at Fletch. “See you in bed, honey.”
One of Fletch’s favorite times of the day was his bedtime routine with Annie. He wasn’t always home in the evenings to share the time with her, but when he was, he treasured their conversations. Sometimes they talked about nothing important, other times Annie shared her fears with him, but tonight she was, not surprisingly, interested in talking about Frankie.
“How did he lose his hearing?”
“He was sick as a baby and the infection broke his ears.”
“How did he learn to sign?”
“I suppose the same way you learned to talk.”
“Can I learn to sign?”
“Yeah, squirt, I’m sure you can. You were already signing with him today.”
“I want to talk more with him. I like him.”
“I think he likes you too. I’m sure he’d like to be able to talk to you.”
“But how can I talk to him if he can’t hear me on the phone?”
“You can talk to him on the phone, Annie. It’s a special phone; when you talk, it types out what you’re saying to him.”
“But how does he talk back to me if he doesn’t use words?”
Fletch paused at that. “I’m not sure.” He tried to always be honest with Annie.
His daughter looked distressed, then her bottom lip wobbled. “But he’s going to go home in a couple of days and I won’t be able to talk to himmmm.”
The last word was wailed as she began to cry.
“Shhhh, baby. We’ll talk to Cooper and Kiera and see if they can help us. I’m sure they know more about it than I do.”
Annie continued to sniff, and her tears continued to fall down her little cheeks.
“Come here, baby,” Fletch said, and got her settled under her covers. He lay down and rested his head on the pillow next to her. She was on her back and he was on his side. “I was proud of you today.”
“W-w-why?”
“Because I’m sure some kids aren’t nice to Frankie because he can’t hear them.”
“That’s dumb. He’s funny.”
Fletch smiled. “He is. But some people don’t take the time to try to get know people who are different from them.”
“He likes my Army men,” Annie told him.
The smile on Fletch’s face didn’t dim. Liking Annie’s precious Army men was one way she decided if someone was worth her effort. And apparently, Frankie had passed her test. “I saw that.”
“If I could, I’d sell my Army men to buy us a way to talk to each other when he’s a million miles away.”
Fletch blinked. He could only recall one other time Annie had offered to sell her precious toys—that was when her mom was in desperate need of money and hadn’t been eating. She took the plastic dolls everywhere with her. She refused to open the boxes, saying it would make them “old.” The fact that she’d voiced out loud the desire to sell them for a little boy she’d been around for only a few hours, who she wanted to keep in touch with, was surprising. And all Annie.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, squirt. I’ll talk to Miss Kiera and Cooper and see what they think, okay?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, tomorrow.”
“Okay. Can we go online to Mazon and order a book to help teach me to talk with my hands?”
“Amazon?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Fletch nodded his head. “Yeah, I think we can do that.”
Annie turned on her side and mirrored her dad’s position with one hand under her head. Her little cheeks were still flushed and she sniffed once before saying, “I’m gonna marry him, daddy.”
“You are, huh?”
“Yeah. And I need to learn how to talk to him as soon as possible. It wouldn’t be good if I couldn’t talk to or understand my husband, would it?”
Fletch wanted to protest, but he’d learned from Emily, and from being around Annie, that the more he argued against somethin
g, the more Annie seemed to want it. She’d grow out of it, she was only seven. “No, you’re right. It’d be good if you could talk to your husband.”
Annie nodded. “Okay. You won’t forget to talk to Miss Kiera about it?”
“No, I won’t forget.”
“Good. Now go, Daddy.”
“Go? You don’t want me to read to you tonight?”
Annie shook her head. “Nope. I’m tired and I want my brain to rest so I can learn as much as I can tomorrow about how to talk with my hands. I want to learn the alphabet tomorrow.”
“Okay, squirt. You sleep well.” He stood up, then leaned over and kissed Annie on her forehead.
Annie looked up at him and signed “good night,” as she’d learned from Frankie earlier.
Fletch smiled and returned the sign.
Smiling happily, Annie closed her eyes and snuggled down into her pillow.
Later that night, much later, after Fletch had made love to his wife, thoroughly and with quite a lot of vigor, he informed her of their daughter’s upcoming nuptials.
“You didn’t disagree with her or tell her she’d change her mind later, did you?” Emily asked sleepily, not in the least concerned about her daughter’s pronouncement.
“Hell no. I’ve learned that lesson.”
“She’ll probably tire of him by the end of the weekend,” Emily predicted. “You know how she is.”
Fletch did know how his daughter was. He didn’t voice his opinion, but he had a feeling a weekend with the little boy wasn’t going to dampen Annie’s enthusiasm one bit.
“I’m sure. Sleep, sweetheart,” he ordered Emily.
“You’re so bossy,” she mumbled, but she pulled Fletch’s hand, which was wrapped around her chest, up to her lips and kissed the palm. “I kinda like this trying-to-get-pregnant thing,” she told him.
He smiled. “Me too. But even if it never happens, or it takes five years, I’ll never stop loving you. In fact, with every day that goes by, I love you more.”
“The feeling is definitely mutual. But I have a hunch it’s not going to take years. If your sperm is half as bossy as you are, it’s only a matter of time.”
Fletch smiled. Giving his sperm anthropomorphic qualities was such an Emily thing to do.
“Good night.”
“Night,” Emily replied.
“Did you have a good time with Annie today?” Kiera signed to Frankie.
“Yes!” the little boy enthusiastically signed back. “She’s nice.”
“You seemed to get along with her just as good or better than Jenny and the other girls in our class,” she told him.
Frankie shrugged. “She’s different.”
“Different how? Because she doesn’t know sign language?” Kiera asked.
“No. Because I love her.”
Kiera looked down at Frankie in shock. Cooper had already said good night to the little boy and was currently in the bedroom, getting ready for bed. She’d wanted to reassure herself that Frankie was doing okay. He didn’t travel much, and being around people who could hear could be exhausting and confusing for him. The last thing Kiera expected was for him to declare his love for the little girl in the house across the yard.
“You do, huh?”
Frankie nodded. “She thinks I’m funny and she shared her special toys with me. She doesn’t care that I sound funny when I laugh or try to talk, and she tried really hard to learn some signs today. I love her.”
Kiera smiled and did her best not to look skeptical or to laugh. The mind of a child was a wonderful and strange thing. “Well, tomorrow you can get to know her more. Does that sound good? You want to spend the day with her and her mom while Cooper and her dad do business on the Army post?”
Frankie’s head bobbed up and down enthusiastically. “I want to get her a present,” he told Kiera.
“A present?”
“Yes. Something she can remember me by so she doesn’t decide she loves someone else and forget about me before I can grow up and come back for her.”
Kiera felt her heart melting. “What kind of present?” She knew he didn’t have any money with him, but it didn’t matter, she’d pay for whatever trinket he wanted to get for his crush.
“I don’t know yet. But I’m sure when I get to know her better tomorrow, I’ll figure it out. How many more days do we have here?”
“Two full days, then we fly back home on the third.”
His bottom lip stuck out in a pout as he signed, “That’s not long enough.”
“I’m sure you guys can keep in touch after you go home,” Kiera tried to reassure him.
He shrugged. “I’ll think of something to get her so she can’t forget me. Something that every time she looks at it, she remembers me.”
“I know you will. Now it’s time for sleep. Close your eyes, we’ll have more fun tomorrow.”
“Thanks for talking my dad into letting me come with you, Miss Kiera. This is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the top of the head before signing, “You’re welcome. Good night.”
“Good night. Did you see how fast Annie picked up on how to say good night? I only signed it once and she knew what it meant.”
“I saw. Now hush. Go to sleep,” Kiera ordered.
Frankie nodded and turned on his side on the couch.
She turned out the lights and headed into the small bedroom where Cooper was waiting for her. She climbed into the bed and snuggled into the large man, feeling at home with him no matter where they were bedded down.
“He tell you he’s in love with Annie?” Cooper asked.
Kiera lifted her head and stared at her boyfriend. “How’d you know?”
“Because that was the first thing he wanted to talk to me about when you left the room. When did I know you were the woman for me.”
“And what did you tell him?” Kiera asked.
“The second I laid eyes on you, I knew you would change my life.”
“And?” she inquired.
“And Frankie nodded, and said it was the same with him. That the second Annie hugged him in the airport, he knew he loved her.”
Kiera stared at Cooper for a long moment before asking, “You don’t really believe him, do you?”
“Weirder things have happened,” he responded.
Settling back into his side, Kiera said, “He’s only seven and lives on the other side of the country. He’ll forget about her as soon as he gets back and little Jenny bats her eyelashes at him again.”
“Hmmmmm.”
From the few months they’d been dating, Kiera knew that sound meant he neither agreed nor disagreed with her. She decided to blow it off. It didn’t really matter one way or the other. They would be leaving with Frankie in another two days. Annie would be out of his life and that would be that.
The next night, after dinner, Frankie pulled Kiera aside.
“Are you okay, Frankie?” she signed, looking over at the Fletchers. Emily and Fletch were sitting on the couch and Annie was on the floor. She had her Army men propped up against the legs of the coffee table and she and Frankie had been paying some sort of convoluted game Kiera hadn’t been able to make heads nor tails of. But it didn’t matter, as the two children seemed to be happy as clams.
The day had started out with breakfast in the big house. Afterward, Cooper and Fletch had gone off to the post for the training class Cooper was giving on the importance of a universal hand signal program for soldiers.
Emily and Kiera had taken the kids to Mayborn Museum. There were over a dozen rooms for children, and Annie and Frankie had spent several hours being entertained. There were a few awkward moments when other children were pointing and whispering about Frankie behind his back, but Annie had stood up for him and told the kids flat out they were being rude, and if they thought something was wrong with Frankie simply because he couldn’t hear, they were the stupid ones.
Emily had scolded her daughter for her
harsh words, but they’d seemed to work. After that, the ice had been broken and they’d all played together.
Then they’d gone to a mall in Temple, simply to kill some time. They’d stopped and talked to a woman named Kassie who worked in JCPenney, and who was the girlfriend of one of Fletch’s teammates. They’d grabbed a snack at the food court and had walked around.
At one point, Kiera had looked down at the kids and nudged Emily. Frankie and Annie were holding hands. Frankie was signing with his free right hand and Annie was attempting to spell out words with her left as they walked.
It was as cute as anything she’d ever seen. As they’d watched, a man bumped into Annie, who stumbled and would’ve fallen if it hadn’t been for Frankie holding on to her. He immediately dropped Annie’s hand and took a step in front of her. Kiera gasped as she watched Frankie’s lightning fast hand movements as he tore into the man for not watching where he was going and for almost hurting Annie.
The man had looked at Kiera and shrugged.
“He says that you could’ve hurt Annie,” Kiera told the man, taking the liberty of paraphrasing so as not to get into an altercation right there at the mall. Frankie was mad. It was clear to see.
“Sorry, little dude,” the man mumbled, then turned his back and walked away, even though Frankie was still “talking” to him.
It took a moment for Kiera to calm Frankie down enough for them to continue their stroll around the mall. It wasn’t until Annie herself took Frankie’s hand back in her own and smiled at him to let him know she was all right that he finally calmed down enough to continue.
Now they were home, fed, and relaxed…at least Kiera had thought they were all relaxed.
“I know what I want to get Annie,” the little boy signed.
“What?”
“Doll cases for her Army men,” Frankie told her. “The boxes hers are in are falling apart, and she told me she was worried that if they broke, her soldiers would be ruined,” he explained. “I saw some when we were walking around today.”
Kiera frowned for a moment, then signed, “They’re probably really expensive.” From what she could tell, Annie’s dolls probably cost at the most about ten bucks. Spending fifty dollars or more per case in order to keep cheap toys safe seemed silly to her.
