Second Time's the Charm

“Abe had another tantrum today,” he started right in. “A bad one.”

“I know. Bonnie called. He had one yesterday, too.”

He nodded. Played with his straw wrapper. “Bonnie said you nipped that one in the bud almost as soon as it started.”

Sitting directly across from him in the booth, Lillie looked over at him with those compelling blue eyes, and Jon had to take a deep breath and remind himself that they were working.

Only working.

What was it with him? Would he be forever looking for that special woman who’d magically sashay into his life and make it all better?

He’d given up the dream of having a woman in his life before he’d started kindergarten. And he gave it up again at twelve when Barbara gave him the boot. Then a third time when he found out that Abraham’s mother had only been using her relationship with him, an ex-con, to get her parents to agree to let her move to New York.

“I’m fairly certain that at least a part of his problem is his lack of language skills,” Lillie was saying. “Like most two-year-olds, Abraham understands most of what’s said to him. But while it’s developmentally normal for him to be much less skilled at verbalizing his own thoughts, he’s still behind his age when it comes to speech.”

Jon stiffened. Abraham was fine. He was not suffering because Jon was his father. And if he was, Jon would try harder.

That was why he was meeting with Lillie.

It wasn’t the only reason he was with her, a voice inside of him said. But it was the only reason that mattered.

“...verbalize needs.”

He had no idea what she’d just said, but Jon nodded, anyway.

“At two, he should have a minimum of fifty words, though you should expect only sixty-five percent or so of those to be intelligible.”

Abe had fifty different sounds. Jon knew what they all meant.

“Do you read to him?”

“Of course.” He had to relax. Lillie wasn’t out to get him. This wasn’t even about him. Jon leaned back as the waitress set his plate of food in front of him.

“Does he participate?”

A picture sprang immediately to mind. Abe in bed with him, sitting on the pillow, his little diaper-padded butt up against his ear, banging a book on Jon’s forehead trying to get his father to read to him.

From now on, Abe would get a story every single night before bed. He just didn’t think they could fit one in in the morning. But he’d try.

“I ask him questions. He points,” he said. If he was getting it wrong, he’d get it right.

“He does with me, too,” Lillie said. “It’s clear that he’s aware of what’s going on in the stories, and that he’s interested—at more than a two-year-old level, in my opinion.”

He sat back. There you go, then. Jon took a bite of his burger.

They had the place virtually to themselves.

“I wonder if his problem is that he can’t make himself understood, except when he’s with you.” She stabbed at the lettuce lined with chicken strips and Asian noodles, her fingers slender and feminine around the fork.

He and Abe didn’t get much of that at their table. The salad or the femininity.

“You said he doesn’t have problems when he’s at your friends’ house.”

“That’s right.” He popped a French fry into his mouth. She was going to think that was all he ever ate.

“And not at home, either.”

“Not much. Nothing like the books say he should be having at this age.”