Chapter 11

Leo was in bed when Nikki returned. Harry was pretending to read, he looked whiter than ever.

"You alright?" Nikki asked. Harry ran a hand over his face in lieu of a reply. "The samples are all sent off, they might be back before next weekend, but more likely early the following week."

"Thanks." Harry said wearily.

Nikki couldn't hold the question in any longer. "What if he's not yours Harry, what are you going to do?" Harry sat forward and held his head in his hands.

"I don't know Nikki. I don't even know if I want to know. But I HAVE to know."

She stepped closer but didn't reach out and touch him. He had carried this last pain by himself and she could feel herself excluded by an invisible wall. She had no right to break into it.

"He has your eyes," she said quietly.

"Let's just wait for the science," Harry said gruffly.

"You never told me he was deaf," Nikki continued after mentally counting to 10 after Harry's last comment. That was one thing she hadn't missed in the last four years; his moods and his temper.

"Leo's not deaf, he loves music…" Harry continued defensively.

"Sorry, I just saw you using sign language…"

Harry sat up straighter and summoned energy from somewhere within and began to talk. "When I first took time off work to help look after Leo, he was about 9 months old. I'd heard about a music group at NYU designed for babies and pre-schoolers and so I took him along. The parents and children all sang especially created songs and nursery rhymes with signs. It taught them to say please and thank you, to say hello, lots of basic vocabulary that a child needed but isn't able to say. "More cookies please." Were Leo's first words, well signs. Harry demonstrated the simple signs. It was fun we liked it, he would watch the others and sometimes join in. Afterwards we took the children to a park if the weather was fine, it was a lovely morning and Leo enjoyed it. I thought he would stop signing when he started to talk, it's what all the older children in the group did. They just used the signs alongside to make their meaning clearer."

"You're not saying that because you taught him to sign, he didn't learn to talk?"

"No, he learned to talk. He used to be quite the chatterbox but as Laurie grew worse, Leo got quieter and quieter, he was still signing to me so I didn't notice until after Laurie left and I realised he'd stopped talking altogether.

"So he's a selective mute?" Nikki asked.

"He's my Leo. I'm not sure labels are that helpful."

"And the thing with the cars and the rocking…"

Harry interrupted. "Nikki, please, I'm not stupid. I know what it looks like. You put him in for any evaluation and they will diagnose an autistic spectrum disorder, most likely Asperger's Syndrome but I know him. Before it all went wrong with Laurie; he was just like any of the other children in that group. Maybe it's some kind of post-traumatic stress thing. I just need to find out if he's mine and then work out how I can get the real Leo back.

"And if he's not yours?" she repeated.

"It won't be my problem," he said callously.

"You wouldn't give him up?"

"I wouldn't have a choice," Harry replied with a choke.

"And if he is yours and he doesn't get better?"

"It will be tough, but he will still be my son and I will be the father he needs." Harry rubbed his hand across his face again. It was odd how the two of them had ended up working together, him losing his father at the age of 11, her losing her mother at a similar age. It had scarred them both, so she knew how vital it was to Harry to be the father to Leo that he had never had.

"We'll just have to wait and see what the results bring," Nikki said. She saw Harry yawn. "You look exhausted."

"I am," he admitted. "You wouldn't believe how much space a child that size can take up in a double bed." He stood and picked up the book he'd been holding. "There's spaghetti and meatballs, waiting for you."

"Thanks," Nikki said to his retreating form. "You don't always have to cook for me," she said.

"I can't do much else," Harry called back.

Nikki lifted the top plate gingerly to inspect the contents. She really couldn't face tinned spaghetti, her student days of pot noodles and tinned food were long gone. She was surprised to see a healthy plate of fresh pasta and home-made meatballs with a garnish of basil left on the side so it didn't spoil when she reheated the dinner in the microwave. She thought with not a little relief that it was obviously more than just childcare and sign language that Harry had learned whilst he'd been away.