Cheryl Tardif - Children of the Fog

“Hey, little man,” she said, crouching down to gather him in her arms. “Mommy missed you today. But I’m glad you have a new friend. What’s his name?”

When Sam didn’t answer, Sadie glanced at Jean.

“Victoria,” the woman said with a wink.

Grinning, Sadie ruffled Sam’s hair. “Okay, charmer. Let’s go.”

With a quick wave to Jean, she reached for Sam’s hand. She was always amazed by how perfectly it fit into hers, how warm and soft his skin was.

Outside in the parking lot, she unlocked the car and Sam scampered into the booster seat in the back. She leaned forward, fastened his seatbelt, then kissed his cheek. “Snug as a bug?”

He gave her the thumbs up.

Pulling away from the school, she flicked a look in her rearview mirror. Sam stared straight ahead, uninterested in the laughing children who waited for their parents to arrive. Her son was a shy boy, a loner who unintentionally scared kids away because of his inability to speak.

His lack of desire to speak , she corrected.

Sam hadn’t always been mute.

Sadie had taught him the alphabet at two. By the age of three, he was reading short sentences. Then one day, for no apparent reason, Sam stopped talking.

Sadie was devastated.

And Philip? There were no words to describe his erratic behavior. At first, he seemed mortified, concerned. Then he shouted accusations at her, insinuating so many horrible things that after a while even she began to wonder. During one nasty exchange, he had grabbed her, his fingers digging into her arms.

“Did you drink while you were pregnant?” he demanded.

“No!” she wailed. “I haven’t had a drop.”

His eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Really?”

“I swear, Philip.”

He stared at her for a long time before shaking his head and walking away.

“We have to get him help,” she said, running after him.

Philip swiveled on one heel. “What exactly do you suggest?”

“There’s a specialist downtown. Dr. Wheaton recommended him.”

“Dr. Wheaton is an idiot. Sam will speak when he’s good and ready to. Unless you’ve screwed him up for good.”

His insensitive words cut her deeply, and after he’d gone back to work, she picked up the phone and booked Sam’s first appointment. She didn’t feel good about going behind Philip’s back, but he’d left her no choice.

By the time Sam was three and a half, he had undergone numerous hearing and intelligence tests, x-rays, ultrasounds and psychiatric counseling, yet no one could explain why he wouldn’t say a word. His vocal chords were perfectly healthy, according to one specialist. And he was right. Sam could scream, cry or shout. They had heard enough of that when he was younger.

Sadie finally managed to drag Philip to an appointment, but the psychologist—a small, timid man wearing a garish red-striped tie that screamed overcompensation —didn’t have good news for them. He sat behind a sterile metal desk, all the while watching Philip and twitching as if he had Tourette’s.

“Your son is suffering from some kind of trauma,” the man said, pointing out what seemed obvious to Sadie.

“But what could’ve caused it?” she asked in dismay.

The doctor fidgeted with his tie. “Symptoms such as these often result from some form of… of abuse.”

Philip jumped to his feet. “What the hell are you saying?”

The man’s entire body jerked. “I-I’m saying that perhaps someone or something scared your son. Like a fight between parents, or witnessing drug or alcohol abuse.”

Sadie cringed at his last words. The look Philip gave her was one of pure anger. And censure.

The doctor took a deep breath. “And of course, there is the possibility of physical or sexual—”

Without a word, Philip stormed out of the doctor’s office.

Sadie ran after him.

He had blamed her, of course. According to him, it was her drinking that had caused her miscarriages. And Sam’s delayed verbal development.

That night, after Sam had gone to bed, Philip had rummaged through every dresser drawer. Then he searched the closet.

She watched apprehensively. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for the bottles!” he barked.

She hissed in a breath. “I told you. I am not drinking.”

“Once a drunk…”

She cowered when he approached her, his face flushed with anger.

“It’s your fault!” he yelled.

Guilt did terrible things to people. It was such a destructive, invisible force that not even Sadie could fight it.

She looked in the rearview mirror and took in Sam’s heart-shaped face and serious expression. She wondered for the millionth time why he wouldn’t speak. She’d give anything to hear his voice, to hear one word. Any word. She’d been praying that the school environment would break through the language barrier.

No such luck.

Suddenly, she was desperate to hear his voice.

“Sam? Can you say Mommy?”

He signed Mom .

“Come on, honey,” she begged. “ Muhh-mmy. ”

In the mirror, he smiled and pointed at her.

Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. One day he would speak. He’d call her Mommy and tell her he loved her.

“One day,” she whispered.

For now, she’d just have to settle for the undeniably strong bond she felt. The connection between mother and child had been forged at conception and she always knew how Sam felt, even without words between them.

She turned down the road that led to the quiet subdivision on the southeast side of Edmonton. She pulled into the driveway and pushed the garage door remote, immediately noticing the sleek silver Mercedes parked in the spacious two-car garage.

Her breath caught in the back of her throat.

Philip was home.

“Okay, little man,” she murmured. “Daddy’s home.”

She scooped Sam out of the back seat and headed for the door. He wriggled until she put him down. Then he raced into the house, straight upstairs. She flinched when she heard his bedroom door slam.

“I guess neither of us is too excited to see Daddy,” she said.

Tossing her keys into a crystal dish on the table by the door, she dropped her purse under the desk, kicked off her shoes, puffed her chest and headed into the war zone.

But the door to Philip’s office was closed.

She turned toward the kitchen instead.

The war can wait. It always does.

Passing by his office door an hour later, she heard Philip bellowing at someone on the phone. Whoever it was, they were getting quite an earful. A minute later, something hit the door.

She backed away. “Don’t stir the pot, Sadie.”

Philip remained locked away in his office and refused to come out for supper, so she made a quick meal of hotdogs for Sam and a salad for herself. She left a plate of the past night’s leftovers—ham, potatoes and vegetables—on the counter for Philip.

Later, she gave Sam a bath and dressed him for bed.

“Auntie Leah came over today,” she said, buttoning his pajama top. “She told me to say hi to her favorite boy.”

There wasn’t much else to say, other than she had finished writing the bat story. She wasn’t about to tell him that she had ordered his birthday cake and bought him a bicycle, which she had wrestled into the house by herself and hidden in the basement.

“Want me to read you a story?” she asked.

Sam grinned.

She sat on the edge of the bed and nudged her head in the direction of the bookshelf. “You pick.”

He wandered over to the rows of books, staring at them thoughtfully. Then he zeroed in on a book with a white spine. It was the same story he chose every night.