Page 3 of Serenity Harbor

The boy continued to chant “no” and began smacking his palm against his forehead in rhythm with each exclamation. A couple of older women she didn’t know—tourists, probably—looked askance at the boy, and one muttered something to the other about how some children needed a swat on the behind.

She wanted to tell the old biddies to mind their own business but held her tongue, since she was about to ignore her own advice.

After another minute passed, when Bowie Callahan did nothing but gaze down at the boy with helpless frustration, Katrina knew she had to act. What other choice did she have? She pushed her cart closer. The man briefly met her gaze with a wariness that she chose to ignore. Instead, she plopped onto the ground next to the distressed boy.

In her experience with children of all ages and abilities, they reacted better to someone willing to lower to their level. She wasn’t sure if he even noticed she was there, since he didn’t stop chanting or smacking his palm against his head.

“Hi there.” She spoke in a calm, conversational tone, as if she were chatting with one of her friends at Wynona’s shower later in the evening. “What’s your name?”

Milo—whose name she knew perfectly well from hearing Bowie use it—barely took a breath. “No! No! No! No!”

“Mine is Katrina,” she went on. “Some people call me Kat. You know, kitty-cat. Meow. Meow.”

His voice hitched a little, and he lowered his hand but continued chanting, though he didn’t sound quite as distressed. “No. No. No.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “Is your name Batman?”

He frowned. “No. No. No.”

“Is it...Anakin Skywalker?”

She picked the name assuming by his Star Wars T-shirt that it would be familiar to him. He shook his head. “No.”

“What about Harry Potter?

This time, he looked intrigued at the question or perhaps at her stupidity. He shook his head.

“How about Milo?”

Big blue eyes widened with shock. “No,” he said, though his tone gave the word the opposite meaning.

“Milo. Hi there. I like your name. I’ve never met anybody named Milo. Do you know anybody else named Kat?”

He shook his head.

“Neither do I,” she admitted “But I have a cat. Her name is Marshmallow, because she’s all white. Do you like marshmallows? The kind you eat, I mean.”

He nodded and she smiled. “I do, too. Especially in hot cocoa.”

He pantomimed petting a cat and pointed at her.

“You’d like to pet her? She would like that. She lives with my mom now and loves to have anyone pay attention to her. Do you have a cat or a dog, Milo?”

The boy’s forehead furrowed, and he shook his head, glaring up at the man beside him, who looked stonily down at both of them.

Apparently that was a touchy subject.

Did the boy talk? She had heard him say only “no” so far. It wasn’t uncommon for children on the autism spectrum and with other developmental delays to have much better receptive language skills than expressive skills, and he obviously understood and could get his response across fairly well without words.

“I see lots of delicious things in your cart—including cherries. Those are my favorite. Yum. I must have missed those. Where did you find them?”

He pointed to another area of the produce section, where a gorgeous display of cherries gleamed under the fluorescent lights.

She pretended she didn’t see them. Though the boy’s tantrum had been averted for now, she didn’t think it would hurt anything if she distracted him a little longer. “Do you think you could show me?”

It was a technique she frequently employed with her students who might be struggling, whether that was socially, emotionally or academically. She found that if she enlisted their help—either to assist her or to help out another student—they could often be distracted enough that they forgot whatever had upset them.

Milo craned his neck to look up at Bowie for permission. The man looked down at both of them, a baffled look on his features, but after a moment he shrugged and reached a hand down to help her off the floor.

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