Page 56 of Quiet Beautiful Things

I nod.

Ellie: When I was young, I thought hearing people spoke in letters. As in they would spell out each word in letter form. I thought they would say C – A – T instead of CAT. It wasn’t until I started intense lip-reading training that I learned how a word is made up of many sounds connected together. Learning about syllables made it a bit easier.

Me: How hard is it to learn to read lips?

Ellie: Hard. If you’re asking if Maisy will be able to do it, I can’t answer that. Especially considering the delay in her core communication learning. Imagine this… find an uncaptioned video of someone speaking Japanese, turn off the sound, and try to teach yourself Japanese that way. It’s difficult. But not impossible.

Me: Wow. I honestly never thought of it that way. You’re a great teacher, Dr. Stone.

She does a sign, then texts me the wordteacher. I do it back, but based on her expression, I must have butchered it. But I’m no idiot. I know that every time I mess up a sign, she’s going to touch me. She takes my hands in hers and positions them properly. Damn, we just had sex and I still relish every second of her hands on me. She releases me, I do the sign, and she does jazz hands.

Ellie: Something else you might find interesting is how deaf people are surprised to find out almost everything makes noise: lights and refrigerators hum, air conditioning whirs, even wind makes noise. This is why it’s important for you to tell Maisy these things. Everything makes noise. What you think of as silence is actually far from it. I had a hearing professor once who said part of his training was to sit in a quiet room that was padded by so much noise absorption material that after a few minutes he could hear his heartbeat. He said it was the closest he’d ever come to being able to understand the profoundly deaf.

Me: I’ll never think of silence the same way again.

When she’s glued to her phone, but doesn’t type out an answer, I put a hand on her arm.

She angles her phone, showing me an incoming call.

I reach over and turn on the bedside lamp. “Is it the same number as before? The one that calls you every night?”

She nods, looking back at her phone. Her eyes narrow as she studies it. After a bit, she sends me a text.

Ellie: They left a voicemail this time, which makes it obvious they don’t know me, but what concerns me is that the transcription is worrying. VM transcription sucks, but it says something about my sister, and my dad, and trying to find me. Is it talking about Beth?Do you think something’s happened to my family?

She shoves her phone at me, and I read the super long, mostly incoherent transcription and shrug, handing it back to her. But she doesn’t take it. She taps it to play the voicemail and she watches as I listen.

“I’ve been calling for a while but didn’t have the guts to leave a message until now. I don’t know what you know about me or evenifyou know about me. My name is Sierra Lucas. My father is Grant Lucas. I’m your… I’m your sister. Well, half-sister. I’m twenty-six years old, same age as you, but I’m six months older. You might wonder why I’ve waited all this time to find you. The answer is that I didn’t know about you until a few months ago when I was helping my parents move and found a box containing papers about a divorce from Alexa Lucas and others about forfeiting paternal rights of his child, Ellie Kessler. It took me a while to track you down with the adoption and the name changes. I didn’t even know my dad was married before. He’s… well, he’s difficult, and not your typical father. Anyway, if you didn’t know about me, I’m sure this comes as a shock. If you did know about me, I’m wondering why you never tried to find me. Maybe you don’t want anything to do with someone related to a man who would give up his rights to you. I don’t know, and I surely can’t ask him about it. And my mom, she’s… well that’s a story for another day. I’m terrified over making this call. I hope you get this and decide to call back. Don’t hold what our dad did against me. I don’t have any other siblings. I… I’d really like to…” She sighs. “Please, just call back. All we have to do is talk. You have my number.”

Jesus. She has a sister she didn’t know about? I get why the transcription was so butchered. The girl seemed very anxious. She was stuttering at times and speaking very quickly at others.

I look at Ellie, unsure of where to begin.

“What?” she signs. “Tell me.”

I tap her phone to play it again and text her the conversation. She doesn’t even wait for me to finish, she watches over my shoulder as I type into my phone, her hand gripping my leg harder and harder with each word.

Tears cloud her vision. One drops on my skin, rolling down my chest.

Once I send the text, she reads it over and over, head shaking. Finally she looks up. “I have an older sister?” she signs.

“Pretty intense.”

“I...” Her hands drop into her lap for a second. “I wonder if my mom knew.”

Me: Your birth father’s last name is Lucas? I kind of hate that.

“Your brother,” she signs, and I nod.

Ellie: I have to meet her.

Warning bells go off in my head. My protective instincts kick in and I quickly type out a text.

Me: Hold on there. What if Grant is using her to get to you?

Ellie: Why would he? He wants nothing to do with me. He made that perfectly clear when he gave up his parental rights, and then again when I sought him out after my 18thbirthday.

“You found him? You talked to him?”

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