The Rescue - Nicholas Sparks [58]
Taylor was perusing the titles when she picked up her glass and made her way toward him.
“Interesting reading,” he said.
“Sometimes.” Her voice sounded different to her ears, though Taylor didn’t seem to notice.
“Kyle?”
She nodded, and Taylor motioned toward the binders. “What are those?”
“Those are his journals. Whenever I work with Kyle, I record what he’s able to say, how he says it, what he’s having trouble with, things like that. That way I can follow his progress.”
“It sounds like a lot of work.”
“It is.” She paused. “Would you like to sit?”
Taylor and Denise sat at the kitchen table, and though he didn’t ask, she explained what—as far as she could tell—Kyle’s problem was, just as she’d done with Judy. Taylor listened without interruption until she was finished.
“So you work with him every day?” he asked.
“No, not every day. We take Sundays off.”
“Why is language so hard for him?”
“That’s the magic question,” she answered. “Nobody really knows the answer to that.”
He nodded toward the shelf. “What do the books say?”
“For the most part, they don’t say much. They talk a lot about language delays in children, but when they do, it’s usually just one aspect of a bigger problem—like autism, for instance. They recommend therapy, but they’re not specific in what kind of therapy is best. They simply recommend a program of some sort, and there are different theories as to which is most useful.”
“And the doctors?”
“They’re the ones who write the books.”
Taylor stared into his glass, thinking back on his exchanges with Kyle, then looked up again. “You know, he doesn’t talk all that bad,” he said sincerely. “I understood what he was saying, and I think he understands me, too.”
Denise ran her fingernail through one of the cracks in the table, thinking it was a kind—if not completely true—thing to say. “He’s come a long way in the last year.”
Taylor leaned forward in his seat. “I’m not just saying it,” he said earnestly. “I mean it. When we were throwing the ball back and forth? He was telling me to throw the ball, and whenever he caught it, he would say, ‘Good job.’ ”
Four words, essentially. Throw it. Good job. Denise could have said, That’s not much if you think about it, is it? and she would have been right. But Taylor was being kind, and right now she didn’t really want to get into a discussion about the limitations of Kyle’s language abilities. Instead she was more interested in the man sitting across from her. She nodded, collecting her thoughts.
“I think that has a lot to do with you, not just Kyle. You’re very patient with him, which most people aren’t. You remind me of some of the teachers I used to work with.”
“You were a teacher?”
“I taught for three years, right up until Kyle was born.”
“Did you like it?”
“I loved it. I worked with second-graders, and that’s just such a great age. Kids like their teachers and are still eager to learn. It makes you feel like you can really make a difference in their lives.”
Taylor took another sip, watching her closely over the rim of his glass. Sitting in the kitchen surrounded by her things, observing her expressions as she talked about the past—it all made her seem almost softer, somehow less guarded than she had been before. He also sensed that talking about herself wasn’t something she was used to.
“Are you going to go back to it?”
“Someday,” she answered. “Maybe in a few years. We’ll have to see what happens in the future.” She sat a little straighter in her seat. “But what about you? You said you were a contractor?”
Taylor nodded. “Twelve years now.”
“And you build homes?”
“I have in the past, but generally I focus on remodeling. When I first started, those were the only types of jobs I could get because no one else wanted them. I like it, too—to me, it’s a little more challenging than building something new. You have to work with what’s already there, and nothing is ever as easy as you suspected it would be. Plus, most people have a budget, and it’s fun to try to figure out how