The Gravewood

When Shea was young, she and her parents spoke with their hands.

In the mornings, she’d grudgingly don her hearing aids and trundle the two-mile walk to Hornbeam.

She’d spend the next eight hours wading through the stream of inscrutable schoolyard noises and indecipherable classroom cross talk—speaking out of turn, or else not speaking enough.

She’d race back home with her head ringing, her molars ground to dust, and find immediate reprieve waiting there to greet her. She’d cross the threshold and drop her hearing aids onto the hall tree, let the tension rush out of her as the quiet rushed in.