Dear Eve
Danny talking! This must be like a miracle for you. It will bring some huge changes into your life.
You only realize how precious communication is when you have to go without it.
We had to face new problems here.
Thanks to some very nice, large walking paths it is possible for the both of us to get around the vineyards.
Yesterday Robert and I were enjoying ourselves on one of those paths, not too far away from our home. Suddenly we got startled: in one of the vineyards the leaves of the grapes were already withering!
Robert alerted the owner instantly. Bruce Lambert is almost eighty. I think he hadn't even realized that he had a problem. If this was a pest it could have spread out over other properties. We had to try to find out what it was.
Robert called an expert professional. He took soil samples and leaves with him.
The analysis highlighted that the withering was caused by an herbicide containing sulfonylurea.
Lambert must have used far too much of the stuff. He may have Alzheimer's...
Dear Katherine
What a good thing that you are there to help all these elderly people! What would they do without you?
Danny has really started to talk to Ed, a little less to me.
He told him that he had heard what Suzanne had said. He must have been devastated. That's why he sneaked out on Suzanne when she thought that he was asleep, and wanted to go back to the orphanage. Two of the home children were on their way out of the home when he reached it. They took him with them, and that's how he ended in the bar.
The form of Autism Danny is suffering from is called 'Asperger's syndrome'. Some kids affected by it are almost like others, almost like 'neuro-typical' children, others like Danny are severely handicapped by this disease.
Ed also explained to me why Danny is so good at logical topics. The world is a chaos for him. For him, looking at things must be like for us seeing them through a narrow tunnel. He seems to see only small snippets of the world; but of these snippets he perceives every detail. It is very difficult for him to get an overview of things. Some autists lose themselves in a chaos of details, and they withdraw into themselves because they can't understand the world and especially people's emotions. Danny is very smart and has learned to handle his snippets quite well: He looks for patterns in the chaos and finds them.
"He sees patterns almost everywhere. But he can't see a pattern in the behavior of a dog, or in a fire, or in splashing water, or in people. That's why he's afraid of them," said Ed.
His training in looking for patterns helps Danny to understand very abstract topics like mathematics or physics, and on the other hand these topics help him understand the world and lay his own patterns into the menacing chaos.
Yesterday I gently told Danny that it might be possible to operate on his scar to make it less visible. His answer was no, he would not want it. "My father wears long-sleeved shirts, and so will I."
Dear Eve
Something very troubling has happened: Robert got a threatening letter.
It said, "We don't need your kind of people here. Go away or you will regret it!"
Robert said that he had gotten hundreds of threatening letters in his life, but I'm not sure whether he really takes it that easy.
Who might want us out of the way?
I'm so afraid that something might happen to him.
He's incredibly strong, but we have to consider that he can't walk.
I will never understand how he was able to beat Gilette, that strong police officer who had gone rogue, when he and Ed were on that train and McManus and Gilette attacked them. He only told me that portable fire extinguishers make very useful weapons...
Oh dear, where will this go? Will we have to live in permanent fear? Will there ever be peace again?
Dear Katherine
I am very sorry to hear that you have to go through such sad experiences in your paradise. I hope for you that this is only a bad joke.
Today I lit a fire in the fireplace because it was a little chilly in the house. Danny noticed it and started to scream. I had to extinguish it, otherwise he wouldn't have calmed down.
When my resourceful husband came home I told him about it.
He sat down with Danny and explained to him what exactly happens in the combustion process and what temperatures develop when you burn different materials, and how you can keep a fire under control. He thought that Danny might lose his fear if he understood it – if he saw some kind of 'pattern' in it. I think it was hard work for both of them, since the topic is like a red rag to Danny.
Finally Ed asked if he could live with it if he got the fire going again. Danny shouted "no" and hid under the corner table.
"It's all right, son. I understand how important this is for you."
Ed needed quite some time to calm him down. Finally Danny crept out and shouted, "But you promise that you don't ever make me go or stay near a blaze! Never, ever!"
Priority e-mail:
Dear Katherine
We have a serious problem.
Today Commissioner Fisette ordered Ed into his office.
"Brown, you know that the good reputation of the Denver police has been ailing lately. The last thing we need is another scandal around our Chief of detectives."
In my humble opinion Ed has done much more for this good reputation than the Commissioner!
Of course Ed didn't mention this. He asked Fisette what he meant.
"People talk, you know. If you had a son, wouldn't he most probably be tall, slim and gifted for logic and science like you? Come on, the boy even looks like you! Today everybody has illegitimate children, I don't care about that. The problem is that you don't confess to being his real father – and that he is a criminal. This has to change."
"Sir, I am Danny's real father, although not biologically. I wish I were. And nobody is a criminal until proven guilty. As far as I know Danny is no criminal at all but a troubled, traumatized child. My wife and I do our best to help him."
"I don't doubt that. But there was some damage in that bar, and people realize that the Chief of detectives' son was with the kids causing it. I need this cleaned up, and you are biased, people won't trust you with this."
Ed looked like a ghost when he came home.
Katherine – I don't dare to bother you and Robert again, but I don't know what to do.