Child of Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

aren't deaf. You'll have to be quiet.”

    The wary, nervous look on Sailboat was one Bo had seen before.

    “Besides, what makes you think he's deaf?”

    Bo made a massive effort to control her emotional level.

    “My sister was born deaf,” she pronounced softly. She never talked about Laurie. “I know .”

     

6 - Dr. Hound, the Pig
    “What's going on in here?” a quiet baritone voice with the barest French accent inquired from the doorway. Andrew LaMarche's gray eyes registered controlled contempt at Bo in the tiny surgical gown. “You must be the worker from CPS.”

    “Dr. LaMarche,” Bo said with a sigh as she tried to pull the gown off and succeeded in stretching the neck of her sweater over her shoulder. Her bra strap had tiny strings fraying from it.

    Great . Now on top of everything else he'll think all CPS workers throw bras in the dryer .

    “I know you're upset about the Martinelli case; we all are. And I know you hate CPS; we all do. But this kid's deaf !”

    Andrew LaMarche was taken aback. There was a frenzied logic in whatever the woman was saying. And a certain feu de joie that was rather interesting.

    “Over coffee?” he suggested. “I was here when the boy was brought in. I'll be supervising his case.”

    Bo regarded the dapper physician she had hoped to avoid. It was hard to get a sense of the man, who might be modeling for GQ or only posing as a doctor to avoid discovery as a retired cold war double agent with unwholesome interests in Argentine coups. Well-cut seal-brown hair, graying at the temples. Equally tidy mustache over courteous smile. Hand-tailored jacket in an exceptional Donegal tweed that would have cost, Bo assessed approvingly, more per yard than she made in a day. If Dr. Andrew LaMarche harbored a secret interest in medieval saddlery or spent his weekends making grape jelly under a rule of silence in some mountain monastery, Bo would not have been surprised. An unusual, courtly man. A gentleman.
     
    “Lean as a hound and shirted in silk,” her grandmother would have said.

    “Sure,” she replied, suppressing a grin at the phrase Bridget O'Reilly invariably used to describe an attractive suitor. “Coffee sounds great.” Her grandmother's phrase fit Andrew LaMarche like a kid glove.
     
    The cafeteria at St. Mary's was huge and lit by banks of fluorescent lights concealed above Plexiglas panels. The few off-duty personnel enjoying coffee in small, muted groups had all chosen to face the bank of doors opening onto a cement courtyard. Bo had been there before.

    “Do you mind if we sit outside? I could use a cigarette.”

    Mercifully LaMarche elected to forgo the lecture on lung cancer and merely answered, “Of course.”

    Bo allowed a spasm of gratitude as she opened Weppo's case file on a cement table.
     
    “What will you do with the boy?” LaMarche asked.

    A weak autumn sun was trying to burn off the remaining fog, but a damp chill still hung in the morning air. Bo exhaled the pungent smoke of the French cigarettes she loved and watched it hover in the damp. She wished she knew what she'd do with the boy. She also wished she'd stayed in bed. A deaf child. And a bright one. It would be hard to walk away, like she'd walked away from Laurie.
     
    The memory was painful. She'd been happy to leave her gawky ten-year-old sister behind to go off to college unencumbered by the odious need for sign language. In the little college town of Amherst Bo reveled in the freedom to be normal, to do ordinary things without attracting the attention of strangers. She didn't miss the adoring kid sister with stringy brown hair who wrote strange poetry and signed it with such intensity that perishable objects had to be placed out of reach of her flying hands.

    It was Laurie's intensity, Bo realized later in therapy, that was scary. Not Laurie's deafness. The same intensity that Bo fought within herself as if it were one of the Cwn Annwn , a hound of hell deep inside her. Years