Signs of Love Read Free

what she’d taken, but her appetite had long since fled. A touch on her arm drew her attention from the food she was pushing around on her plate. She looked down at Caden, waiting for him to begin to sign something.
    Instead, he left his hand on her arm, his eyes asking all his questions. From very young, he’d learned how to decipher her expressions and body language. With it just being the two of them so much, he’d always been able to pick up on her moods. And right then, she knew he sensed her unease…her fear.
    He lifted his hand from her arm and signed to her. Why scared, Mama?
    Underlying the question in his eyes was a bit of anxiety as well. She hadn’t wanted that for him. She had to do a better job of keeping her emotions tamped down. Taking a deep breath, she smiled and then tried to ease his worries. Not scared, baby. Just thinking about something. But you don’t need to worry. Mama will take care of it.
    She could tell he still wasn’t totally convinced but eventually, after a quick glance at the man sitting on his other side, Caden turned his attention back to his food.
    “Everything okay, Alana?”
    “Everything’s great.” Alana gave her friend a quick smile. “You’re such a great cook, Beth.”
    A tense silence fell over the table, and Alana knew she wasn’t the only one responsible for it. She shot a glance at Justin and saw that as Beth had promised, he had polished off a whole lot of the roast. But now he set his knife and fork across the empty plate and turned his gaze to his sister.
    “What’s going on, Beth?” When she didn’t answer right away, Alana saw Justin shift his attention to his brother-in-law. “Dan?”
    The other man cleared his throat and took a drink of water before looking at Justin. Alana held her breath, knowing what was to come. She wanted to move Caden away from Justin, uncertain of how the large, muscular man was going to react.
    “Someone tell me what’s going on.” The firm tone of Justin’s voice brooked no further delays.
    He glanced at her as if she would be the one to tell him. At the sight of the barely contained frustration in his gaze, Alana felt a vice tighten around her throat. Would the frustration flash into anger and then into violence? Right then all those emotions seemed to be rolling off him in waves.
    “Uh, a few months ago Beth and I noticed something about Genevieve—”
    “Something’s wrong with Genevieve?”
    Since her gaze was already on him, Alana saw the momentary panic on Justin’s face.
    “Yes.” This time it was Beth who spoke. “She’s experiencing hearing loss.”
    “Hearing loss?” Alana saw Justin’s gaze shoot to Caden then back to Beth. “She’s deaf?”
    She slipped her arm around Caden’s shoulders. When she looked down at him, she could see the confusion on his face. She’d already explained to Caden about Genevieve’s diagnosis, so when she signed that they were telling Justin about it, he understood immediately what was going on.
    Both Beth and Daniel nodded in response to Justin’s question, but it was Daniel who gave him more information. “We’d been noticing over the last several months that she wasn’t responding as she should to noises…sounds. When we took her in for her two-year appointment, we mentioned it to the doctor. Since then, we’ve been taking her for a variety of different tests.”
    Justin crossed his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Alana could see emotion swirling in his eyes, but his face looked like it had been carved from granite. She noticed that he still hadn’t looked at Genevieve. Was he going to reject the little girl over this?
    Beth lifted her chin. “We wanted to have some answers before we told you. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing any of us can do at this point beyond accepting the diagnosis and adjusting to the new normal of our life.”
    Justin’s lips thinned as his brows drew together. “Why did she go deaf? She wasn’t born that