Just Another Kid by Torey Hayden Read Free Book Online Page B

family’s still there, and I want my kids to know their roots.”
    “Did the girls seem okay to you when you last saw them in Belfast?” I asked.
    She nodded. “They were just kids, like any kids.”
    “Shemona was always the quieter,” Mr. Lonrho added. He spoke with a broad western drawl. His wife, I noticed, was incorporating his accent. She still had the burring lilt of Northern Ireland in her words, but the vowel sounds were growing broad and flat.
    Again Mrs. Lonhro nodded. “Yes, she was. She was always a self-possessed little thing. Independent, you know? She must have been about three or three and a half when we last saw her. She’d made herself a little house out of a blanket over a chair. Spent hours in there on her own. You never had to entertain Shemona. I remember thinking what a good quality that was for a child to have, because our four were a bunch of hooligans. Forever whining, wanting to do something, getting into trouble doing it.”
    “And Geraldine?” I asked.
    “She was at school during the day, so we didn’t see as much of her. But she enjoyed playing with our lot in the evenings.”
    “I don’t remember much about her, to be honest,” Mr. Lonrho said. “She was the sort of kid to blend in with the wallpaper.”
    “That was the thing,” his wife said, “they were just ordinary kids. When all this other happened and we found the girls were on their own, it seemed only natural to take them. We didn’t think two thoughts about it. You expect there to be some upset, but we assumed they’d adjust. Get them here, give them plenty of love, and they’d come out of it. We never expected it to be like this.”
    “Are they getting any outside help? Any psychological help?” I asked.
    Mrs. Lonrho frowned. “They were. We had Shemona to see a guy over at the clinic. But she wouldn’t talk. Eight weeks and she did nothing but sit there. And for their prices, well, I’m afraid she’s going to have to do her sitting at home.”
    “Has Shemona been mute all this time?”
    “Not a single word,” Mr. Lonrho replied.
    “I don’t know when she started this,” his wife added. “It’s been going on a while now. The girls were with my sister Cath before coming here and Shemona wasn’t talking there. And that was about a year ago. We didn’t think anything much about it when Cath mentioned it. We just thought it was a kid’s thing and she’d stop being so silly once she and Geraldine got settled.”
    “Does Shemona talk to Geraldine?”
    Mrs. Lonrho shrugged. “I think she has to, but I’ve never heard her.”
    “We’ve tried everything we can think of,” Mr. Lonrho said. “We’ve tried the psychologist. We’ve tried his ideas. We’ve tried the other school’s ideas. We’ve talked to our priest. We’ve talked with Bet’s sisters. I thought separating the girls would make a difference. Bet didn’t agree with me. She thinks they need each other. Anyway, one weekend I took Geraldine down to see my mother, and it was hell. She screamed the entire time. And Shemona still never talked.”
    “How is it you decided to take Geraldine and Shemona?” I asked. “Surely you still have quite a lot of family in Belfast.”
    “My sister Cath’s the only one who could take them. And most of hers are already grown and gone. And she’s got a job to think of and everything. Things just weren’t working out. And we didn’t want them in a foster home. They’d been in a foster home part of the time as it was. We just wanted to give them a fighting chance.”
    A small silence sprang up unexpectedly. Both of them had grown thoughtful. I was jotting notes, and when I looked up and saw them, I was unwilling to intrude on their thinking.
    Then Mrs. Lonrho raised her head. “Shemona cries at night,” she said softly. “It’s the only time I hear her. Usually she does it after Geraldine is asleep, but if I go in to her, she falls silent. I put the light on and I see her lying there, her