Page 4 of My Song for You
“It is?” Logan also signed the words as he spoke.
Jared glanced up at me, eyebrows raised in confusion.
“Logan is deaf,” I explained, “but he has a cochlear implant.”
“So he can hear?”
“Not perfectly. And there are sounds he can’t handle. Like music.” Which was heartbreaking when you considered that his father was a talented guitarist.
“Then why the sign language?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you judging my decisions on how my son should be educated?” I might have stressed “my son” more forcefully than I’d meant to. Legally he wasn’t my son. I was only his guardian.
Jared slowly shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound that way.”
I let out a long breath. “I’m sorry too. Let’s just say it’s a sensitive topic. He goes to a preschool that encourages total communication. So American Sign Language, lip reading, and speech.”
“Mommy, I have a dog?” Logan asked, already bored by the current subject. He was lucky. He wasn’t the one who had spent weeks studying the pros and cons of the implant and the different types of education for him, listening to arguments from both sides of the fence, spending many sleepless nights wondering which was the right choice.
He was just the one who had to deal with the repercussions of my decisions.
“May I have a dog?” I corrected.
A huge grin broke out on Logan’s face. “Yes! We getting a dog.”
Ugh! Head, meet brick wall.
“No, Logan. The correct phrase is ‘Mommy, can I have a dog?’ And no, we can’t have a dog. Our apartment won’t allow animals.” I didn’t bother to correct his other sentence.
His responding pout was enough to break hearts within a hundred-mile radius.
“I’m sorry.” And I was. I would do anything for him, if I could.
“Do you like dogs?” Jared asked, still crouching in front of his son. And I tried not to freak out more than I already was. In a city of more than three million people, the last thing I’d expected was to bump into Jared. Ever.
Logan nodded.
“My friends are adopting a puppy. I’m sure they won’t mind if you want to meet it. Would you like that?”
The dimples came out full force. “Can I, Mommy?”
“Um…I’m not sure. We’ll see.”Brilliant move, Callie. How many times today are you planning to break his heart?
Jared held out his hand to Logan. “By the way, I’m Jared. Your mom and I grew up together. We used to be neighbors.” Well, technically, there had been a house between us, but close enough.
“My name is Logan.” He shook his father’s hand while alarms screeched in my head.
“Nice to meet you, Logan.”
“Nice to meet you,” the four-year-old intoned back. “I like you.”
“I like you too.”
Logan grinned again. “I love soccer.”
The corners of my mouth twitched up. Following a four-year-old’s train of thought could be an adventure in itself. “He saw your band perform last year at the soccer charity event.” The event had been a fundraiser for a soccer program for disabled kids. Logan played soccer with hearing kids his age, but when we heard about the event and how there would be soccer-related activities, he had begged me to take him.
“I thought he couldn’t hear music,” Jared said.
