Chapter 20
Rachel
I was so angry at Dante, I could have easily continued slapping him. I don’t give a fuck what reasons he gave, there was absolutely no reason he couldn’t learn enough sign language to have a conversation with his daughter in over a year!
And yes, I know she can hear fine, but it’s not an excuse to not even try to learn her new language.
It’s one thing to be able to talk to her, but how the fuck was she supposed to communicate back?
That LCD tablet was a useful tool, but it simply wasn’t good enough.
That tablet should be used for more complicated conversations.
She should be able to communicate with her family in her language just as much as anyone with a verbal language, and I was so fucking pissed that it was glossed over.
He never said he didn’t know it…
Oh, fuck off. He clearly didn’t know enough—none of them did.
I took a deep breath at the bottom of the stairs and mentally counted to ten before I plastered a big smile on my face and walked into the front room.
One thing I swore was that my children would never have to walk around on eggshells because I had an attitude.
They would never live in a hostile environment due to me and their dad arguing.
Obviously, children were not stupid, and they could sense a lot, but right now, I was going to smile until my fucking cheeks hurt, and they would never know any different.
As I walked into the room, I saw Shark was lying on the floor, and Axel was running a toy motorbike over his body, laughing hysterically when he got to Shark’s face and “crashed” into his nose.
Shark made an exaggerated noise of pain and Axel rammed the motorbike against his nose even harder, causing Shark to flinch for real this time.
“Having fun?” I murmured with a small laugh. Shark was a good man, and I was glad Axel was getting the opportunity to get to know him. It would be lovely to see him and Trex grow up together.
“I can’t wait for this with Trex,” Shark grinned and handed Axel another toy, this time a train.
Bee was sitting on the sofa, watching the scene in front of her. I sat down on the opposite end and got her attention. “Don’t you want to play as well?” I signed and asked, handing her the LCD writing board.
She shook her head and scooted further away from me. I wasn’t going to push her, but I also didn’t want her to think I was abandoning her—again—so I stayed sitting with her and watched her brother playing with careless abandon.
It broke my heart to remember that Bee had once been this way. She seemed so much more grown up now, even though she was only seven. She had always been advanced for her age, but there was a look in her eyes that said she had lived a hundred lives already, and the poor girl was tired.
I left not long before her sixth birthday, and I had been so excited about the plans we had. I could barely think about the fact that she had spent her sixth and seventh birthday in silence.
Although Axel had spent his birthday being kidnapped, so his wasn’t much better.
Fucking hell, we need to do better by these kids!
“Hey, Bee,” Dante called from the doorway as he walked in, having finally shed his leather jacket. He sat down in the chair opposite the boys on the floor, wearing just his white T-shirt. I had to grit my teeth and force my eyes to look anywhere else.
How was it possible that he had become even more muscular in the past eighteen months? He had always been a big man, but now he was fucking ripped.
“Oh, here, I got this for you,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and retrieved my phone. I had forgotten the damned thing existed. Things moved so fast around here that it was easy to let weeks pass without picking it up.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, catching it as he threw it at me.
“Your car.”
“Why were you in my car?” I switched it on, already cringing at the thought of some of the messages that would be on here.
“Sunshine got it. Tools wanted to take a look at the ‘goddamn cage messing up the lot’—his words, not mine,” he grinned at me.
“Why?”
“Is it so hard to believe that someone cares about the safety of your car? Just say thank you for the phone and be quiet.”
“Tell Sunshine I said, ‘thank you’.”
“I wasn’t on about thanking Sunshine.”
“And yet I said what I said,” I murmured back as I scrolled the endless messages that were coming through.
Karen: Rachel, where are you??
Karen: My dad said you ran away!! Are you okay? When are you coming back?
Karen: Rachel I’m really panicking.
Karen: I’m going to ring the police if I don’t hear from you soon.
Karen: Is Axel okay?
Karen: If you can’t talk, ring the other phone. It will never be turned off.
Karen: We’ll always be here when you’re ready. Even if you can’t talk, please just let me know you’re okay. Just one text.
Karen. Please.
John: Are you coming into work today?
John: It’s not like you to miss a day of work. Tried ringing you, but it went to voicemail.
John: I hope this isn’t because of me. I thought we agreed things wouldn’t be awkward.
John: Stopped by your house and you weren’t there, and neither was the babysitter. Have you gone on holiday and I’ve forgotten?
John: I checked the rota, and you’re due in tomorrow. Are you coming in?
John: Lisa, what’s happening?
Messages from Karen and John flooded in—panicked, suspicious, relentless. Karen’s were filled with worry. John’s crossed a line.
I sent him a quick text letting him know I was okay, and that I didn’t find his behaviour appropriate to be doing home visits.
I also told him I would be taking advantage of the accumulated holidays I had earned and taking paid time off.
He wouldn’t say no. I then replied to Karen, telling her I was okay, and I would ring her soon.
“Did you tell Rachel about your therapy snake, Bee?” Dante asked, a strange look on his face. He had been watching me check my phone the entire time, and I didn’t like the glint in his eyes.
Bee shook her head, letting her hair fall over her face as she did so, hiding away.
“What’s your snake called?” I signed anyway. She wasn’t looking, but it wasn’t about her seeing—it was about making it normal, about making the language visible, constant.
I was also enjoying rediscovering an old and forgotten skill.
I had done a fair few courses when I was in America—especially when I worked for the Gellers.
They loved to brag about all the different languages their son knew.
Their son was barely fluent in English, never mind the dozen other languages they had him signed up for, but that was neither here nor there.
They were paying for the tutors, and that was all that mattered. Money talks.
“Depends who you ask,” Shark said from the floor, bringing me back out of my thoughts and into the snake discussion.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I frowned.
“Officially, the snake is called Snake.”
“Snake?”
“That’s the name Bee wrote on her board,” he said, laughing as he picked Axel up and swung him up over his head. I cringed, knowing that Shark was one second away from getting a big glob of drool landing on him, but that was his own lesson to learn.
“So what else is it called?” I asked.
“ Rachel ,” Bee signed.
“What is it, honey?”
“ No, that’s the snake, ” she signed back.
She didn’t know all the official signs for some of the words, but I could understand her well enough.
For example, for “snake” she just made a snake movement with her arm.
I really needed to schedule her some official lessons so we could improve her speech.
How the club had just ignored this for so long was just…
I wasn’t even sure if I was angry or just… tired. Tired of being the only one who noticed what she needed.
“Your snake is called Rachel?” I swallowed. I was reluctant to criticise when she was finally talking to me, but come on… fucking Rachel?!
“ It was dad’s idea ,” she signed by pointing to her dad and then pointing at her temples. My head snapped to Dante, who was grinning at me.
Cunt.
“Well, I’m flattered,” I said. “I think that sounds lovely,” I said, repeating the gesture for “lovely” when I saw Bee frown, and then smiled when I saw her bring her hand to her face to copy it.
“Lovely,” I repeated, doing the movement once more. She gave it one more attempt and then dropped her hands, shuffling even further away.
I knew she wanted to talk to me. I just knew that it was paining her to withdraw herself like this. She was a sociable child, and she had always craved interaction. That same need was still in there, but we just had to find a way to push past this barrier of distrust.
The guilt gnawed at me, and before I could stop myself, my eyes flew to Dante, who was no longer smiling. He caught my gaze and twisted his lips in sympathy. “Give her time,” he mouthed at me, and gave me a discreet thumbs up.
I very maturely stuck my middle finger up at him in return.
He grabbed his chest as though I had pained him, and then shot me a wink that made me blush like a little girl. I quickly looked away from him.
Why did I seek him out all the fucking time?
After what he did to me on the boat, and what he had done to manipulate me into staying, I should hate him—I did hate him. But old habits were hard to break, and being back here, it was so easy to slip back into our old routine and forget what had happened.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t forget.
I couldn’t put myself in the position to be hurt by him again.
I had the golden ticket waiting for me at the end of these six months, and I had to hold on firm to my goals.
I couldn’t allow myself to be vulnerable.
I would play by the rules, but as soon as I could, I was getting out of here, and I was taking both kids with me.
Even if I wasn’t allowed to say that out loud, I was going to keep it on repeat in my mind.