Page 45 of Serenity Harbor

“I don’t hate shopping,” he protested. “I could spend hours in an electronics store and be perfectly happy. But a women’s clothing store would hold about as much interest and appeal to me as it probably does to a six-year-old boy.”

“Okay. I’ll give you that.” She smiled. “Milo actually did okay, until Sam’s mom got after him for playing around inside the dress racks. He was only exploring the different textures of fabric, but she didn’t want him to get greasy fingerprints all over the dresses. We were able to distract him by asking his help to untangle a box of hangers they had in the back. It worked pretty well.”

“Smart. How was the rest of your day?”

“Oh! I have news!” she exclaimed. What waswrongwith her? She couldn’t believe she hadn’t told him first thing!

“Is it about your adoption?”

The interest in his voice warmed her, but she didn’t let it distract her. “No. Nothing has changed there, unfortunately. Still waiting to hear from the attorney working with me there. This is about Milo.”

She paused for dramatic effect until he finally huffed out an exasperated breath. “What is it? Don’t tell me, he met another dog he loved.”

She laughed. “No. But I’ll just remind you that therapy dogs can do amazing things for children with autism.”

“Yeah, yeah. If not a dog, then what?”

Suddenly, she wasn’t sure how he would feel about their progress that day, since he hadn’t sanctioned their visit with Jane McMillan, the speech-language pathologist at the elementary school, who had agreed to take a look at Milo.

He hadn’tunsanctioned it either, she rationalized.

“This is bigger than a dog. It’s huge.”

“A horse? A giraffe? An elephant?”

“Okay, notliterallybigger. Conceptually bigger. Drumroll, please. He said your name!”

He jerked his head toward her abruptly, his eyes clearly reflecting shock. “Really?”

“Well, not completely. He said ba-oo forbookand then Bu-o forBo. I didn’t try to have him tackleBowie, but I’m sure that won’t take long.”

“That’s incredible! How did that happen? I haven’t been able to get anything butnoout of him.”

She beamed, thrilled all over again at Milo’s accomplishment. “I knew he could say certain sounds, and I knew he was capable of far more than anyone has expected from him. Today we made a visit to a friend of mine who is also the speech-language pathologist at the elementary school.”

“You did what?”

She was almost positive his tone was more confused than annoyed, but it was hard to read his expression accurately in the dim light.

“It was a casual visit only. She couldn’t do an official assessment of him, nor would I ask that of her, since you—as his legal guardian—weren’t present to give consent. But she did give me a few exercises I might hypothetically want to use if I knew of any hypothetical boys who had hypothetical speech delays.”

“Which you do. Hypothetically.”

“Exactly! TheBsound was the only one we worked on this afternoon. It wasn’t easy and I had to offer an incentive you might not like.”

“Dare I ask what kind of incentive?”

She hesitated again, again not sure how he would respond. She couldn’t help thinking about Charlene and all her rules. Her mother would have been livid if someone had promised her what she had promised Milo.

“I told him you would take him on a boat ride.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. When he did, he sounded bemused. “You told him I would take him on a boat ride.”

“He’s fascinated by the water but a little afraid of it. I thought it would be good for him to have the chance to go out and explore how much fun it can be.”

“Makes sense. One problem, though. I don’t happen to have a boat.”

“No. But we both have friends who do. I thought maybe we could even ask Ben to take us out in his Killy one evening next week, after the wedding. It’s a gorgeous wooden boat made by Kilpatrick Boatworks, back in the day. His family really knew how to craft beautiful boats.”

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