The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again by Nancy Thayer Read Free Book Online

the right thing to do at the time. All their peers were getting married. Tim had finished the grueling years of school and was setting up his own orthodontic practice, and being married seemed the next logical step. Annette had finished college and tried a number of jobs, none of which had really caught her fancy. They’d been pleased when Annette was pregnant, adoring of their infant daughter. Annette lovingly performed the outward duties of homemaker. Tim came home every night to meals scrupulously made from the newest cookbook. His clothes were always clean and ironed, the house decorated to its furthest inch. But when Belinda was tucked away in bed at night and the dishes were done, Annette and Tim sat in the living room watching television with the warmth of strangers at an airport, and when they went to bed, they were both always too tired to do more than fall asleep.
    Annette’s illness brought them close again. They stopped speaking of divorce and spent their energies trying to make joyful memories for Belinda. They explained to Belinda that Mommy was ill, that she might have to go away for a while, that this would be hard for Belinda, but that she should know her mother would always love her, would always be there, somewhere, in the universe, like the wind or the sunshine, loving her. They did the best they could.
    The day after Annette died, Belinda, who was five, stopped speaking.
    For the first few months, Tim was patient. The loss was so devastating, so unfair, he seldom felt like speaking himself. Why shouldn’t a child react to such injustice, such a loss, with some kind of powerful, life-altering emotion? She would speak again, he was sure, because Belinda had been a normal and, for the first few years of her life, even a slightly advanced child. Because Annette and Tim read to her so much from the moment she was born, Belinda had developed a large vocabulary. She’d loved preschool and kindergarten and had plenty of friends, including a best friend named Sarah, with whom, during the last weeks of Annette’s illness, Belinda had continued to play. So the sudden muteness was obviously psychologically based. In a way, it had a rightness to it. Belinda would speak again in her own good time.
    But after three months, gradually, Tim began taking Belinda to a round of child psychologists. Nothing worked, not puppets or play-acting or music. The experts assured him this was not unusual, a kind of selective mutism that would eventually resolve itself. They advised him to simply give her time. After all, Belinda was continuing to attend school, where, her teacher said, she seemed alert and engaged. She could hear well and took orders with alacrity. Her penmanship was clear and firm. She did all assignments involving pen and paper. She was learning to add and subtract, and at recess she continued to join the little clique of girls she’d always been with. The other children had, during the first weeks of first grade, taunted Belinda, but receiving no reaction, quickly accepted her eccentricity and, somehow, in the way of children, included her in their games.
    Tim dated Julia for months before introducing her, gradually, to Belinda, and Julia, who by nature was impulsive, gave the child the space and time to get used to her. Before long, Belinda gladly snuggled up in Julia’s lap when Julia offered to read her a book. After a few months, Tim sat down with Belinda to tell her he wanted to marry Julia and have her live with them all the time. Belinda hadn’t raged or cried; she’d simply nodded. At the intimate wedding at a friend’s home, Belinda had been Julia’s flower girl, admiring her mirrored reflection in her flouncy pink dress and flowered circlet, and smiling during the wedding.
    When Tim proposed to Julia, he asked whether she might be willing to live in the house where he had lived with his first wife. He wanted to provide his daughter with as much stability as possible. Julia was so crazy in love