#jeriterra

It was ten in the morning when the car pulled up.

The neighbor's dog started barking and Joey looked up, startled, the pencil slipping from his fingers and clattering to the hardwood.

The car was black, big, and sleek. A girl about his age was leaping out, blonde hair whipping in the wind. The driver was invisible from this angle.

Something grabbed Joey's feet in that moment. Something in his chest, something in his heart, a whisper of premonition.

No specific thoughts. No conscious understanding, just his feet pounding down the stairs and a dawning certainty blooming bright yellow and warm in his lungs.

His mother called his name as he flung open the door. The girl was leaning back into the passenger window, shouldering a backpack and arguing.

"I know, I know, you've said it a million times, I get it."

She straightened, rolling her eyes. And then she saw Joey.

"Hey."

A mini salute, and combat boots, and flannel, but the other car door was opening and Joey's attention leapt with his heart.

Stepping out onto the street

--tall and regal and silver and strong

was his father.

Joey's face hurt from smiling. He lifted his hand then dropped it, thought about running into his father's arms, then decided to wait. Vibrating around a single point in space, a single point in time.

His father rounded the back of the car and stopped. He looked Joey up and down, and Joey stood up taller, and his father smiled.

"You've grown."

Yes.

Then the spell was broken and he was running. His father's heart beat firm and steady beneath Joey's ear. His arms felt just how Joey'd remembered. Except Joey was a little taller, now. His head came up nearly to his father's shoulder.

Then his mother was calling his name again. The screen door slammed. She stopped short.

Joey tugged away. Mom, it's-

She lifted her chin. Her arms were folded over her cardigan. "You're early. And unannounced."

She... of course. She already knew.

A smirk lifted Joey's father's mouth. "You would pick those to be the first words you've spoken to me in three years."

In the thick silence spread thin across the distance between them, his mother's shoulders slid down, inch by inch. She shrugged and pivoted on her heel. "You might as well come in."

Triumph lit his father's eye. Someone cleared her throat, and Joey blinked at the strange girl he'd forgotten about.

"Will I get my own room or what?"

"You will." Then, then- his father reached out, and, casual as could be- he ran a hand over her hair.

He didn't even look her way. Eye still focused on the gate leading to their home, it was so second nature. He'd done that a million times.

For three years, Joey has laid awake imagining his father's gruff, loving touch, and his father picked someone to replace him.

...How long? How long before he chose someone else to give his attention? Did- did his father even miss him at all?

"Hey," the girl elbowed his father with a whisper, and even that sent pangs of purple envy through Joey's throat. "You didn't mention he was broken." She nodded at Joey.

"Tara." His father looked at him. "Show some civility."

There's an empty room upstairs. His fingers stung like that time he'd been plunged into ice water. It has a nice window. Joey was not a petty or mean person.

His father laid his hand on the girl- Tara's shoulder, and nudged her forward. "Show her."

Joey swallowed his heart and nodded.

"What? What was that?" Stumbling into step beside him, jogging up the stairs to the front door, Tara asked Joey, or his father, or the world. Somehow, it was hard to tell. She stared at Joey's hands.

I-

The most frustrating part was how futile it was. Joey couldn't even explain himself. He checked over his shoulder, knowing the answer but still disappointed when his father was busy unloading the car. Silver hair hanging around his eyepatch, longer than Joey remembered.

They walked through the door his mother left open and Joey snatched his sketchpad from the entryway table.

It's American sign language.

Her eyes flew to his, still leaning over the sketchpad, a little too close. "Teach me."

His eyebrows flew together and he was lifting his shoulders and palms before he thought about it. What?

Tara shrugged too. Joey guessed she didn't really need to know sign language to understand his reaction. "Teach me," she repeated, still clearly a command, though her tone was less bossy. "You can't speak English, so teach me your language."

It's not my-

He grabbed the sketchpad.

'It's not my language,' he wrote. 'And I can speak English, I just can't'

...He just couldn't speak.

Joey let the sketchpad fall back to the table in defeat.

"Well?" When he looked back up, Tara had her fists on her hips, chin lifted like she was taking his attention back. "Are you gonna teach me or not? What's your name?"

He traced the letters in the air.

"Joey? Well, are you?"

It was the summer of 1992. Grant wouldn't be home. Aside from his paints, and pencils, and piano, Joey had nothing else to do and no one to do it with.

He shrugged and nodded.