What Once We Loved Read Online Free PDF Page A

you—”
    “Come, Clayton. Take Esty's hand now. And you have Sason, too?” Esty tapped her hand and placed it over Suzanne's cane as they rose to leave.
    Suzanne stepped out into the Sacramento air, breathing a sigh of relief as she heard the door latch behind them. Her dog, Pig, stood up, and she reached for his stiff leather harness and followed him down the steps.
    In the carriage, Suzanne listened to the clop-clop of the horses and let it soothe her. The stage trip south had been a backbreaking journey, and Suzanne had arrived tired and the children cranky and the dog barking, barking at this fabulous city still recovering from floods and fires of the year before. But she'd been determined to seek help here for her son. To accept help.
    Suzanne sighed as she listened to carriage sounds, tried to identify the scents of trees, cooking fires, even the hog pens they passed. Esther had been a dear to find the doctor with whom they'd spent the morning discussing Clayton. The specialist was said to work well with children who were slow. How would she explain to Sister Esther that the man was a finger-talking quack!
    “Mommy!” Clayton said. He struck his mother in the arm, forcing Suzanne to the present.
    “Clayton. Stop that!” He could startle her so, coming at her that way. And he was strong for someone so small. “Mommy. Mommy,” he chanted, punching her with his tiny fists. She grabbed at his hands and held them in her own. He started to wail, bounced against her and kicked.
    “Clayton! Cease!” Suzanne said.
    Esty must have found something to distract him for he quieted, even the bells on his shoes stopped tinkling for a moment. He still let Suzanne hold his hands. “Do you really think the signs the doctor suggested make sense?” Suzanne asked Esty as they jostled about in the buggy.
    “What can it hurt? Oltipa can show us a few.”
    “I'm afraid…well, that people will think he isn't…all there,” Suzanne said, finally naming the fear riding the doctor's suggestion. “I remember a man back in Michigan who couldn't speak or hear, and people were wretched to him. But his eyes had such light in them I always thought he could understand. Do Clayton's eyes have that light?” Suzanne asked.
    “They do,” her friend told her, patting her hand.
    Suzanne sighed. “Sister Esther will have to know too. And anyone he's with. Oh, if we could just find out why he's this way and fix it. I just want to get things tended.” Suzanne kissed the knuckles of her sons hands. “And everyone will know now that I haven't.”
    “They already know,” Esty told her.
    “That I'm a failure? Why did they tell me to stop worrying then?”
    “They know that he has something wrong, not that there's anything wrong with you. They just don't know what they can do to help. At least the signs are something. And it will show us if Clayton can locate sighted people to ask for help. It takes intelligence to do that.”
    “Sighted people. Yes,” Suzanne said. “Sighted people. Not his mother.”
    She turned her face away. She couldn't see through them, but her eyes could betray her with unexpected tears. She knew this had to be, this having to rely on others at so many levels of being a mother, a widow, a woman. It pained her. The boy beside her must have sensed something as he jerked his hands free, stood up, and touched her face. “Mommy,” he told her, the only word she'd heard him say in months.
    “Yes. Mommy.” She pulled the boy to her, then kissed the top of his head. She patted his little arm. And then he did the strangest thing. First, he hit her shoulder as he had before, then he lifted her hands from the cane across her lap. He placed them like two cups, pushing the fingertips together.
    “He's showing you the sign,” Esty said. “For more!”
    “Is he?”
    “What had you done? Do it again,” Esty said.
    Suzanne thought. Stopping him from hitting her? The kiss? The hug? She reached out for him. “Let me hold