Priceless (Forbidden Men #8)(5)

“Okay, you can stop now, Sarah.” He sat his hand on my knee and sent me a warm smile. “That’s enough for today. We’ll pick up here tomorrow. Sound good?”

“Oh! Uh...” Reese squeezed my fingers and coughed delicately. “Can we skip tomorrow? Sarah, um...she won’t be available then.”

What she really meant was that my mom would be home.

My mother didn’t exactly know about these physical therapy sessions. When Reese had discovered the home visits Dr. Besby was offering, she’d brought a pamphlet straight to Mom, so excited to sign me up for them. But Mom had vetoed them, saying she could never afford such one-on-one care.

So...Reese had gone behind her back with the help of Mason and somehow funded and set up the therapy without Mom’s knowledge. I had a bad feeling my brother had either forged Mom’s signature a few times or illegally signed something as my guardian. Whatever the case, I wasn’t supposed to let Mom in on the secret.

At first, it’d been thrilling to keep the news from her. But now, a few weeks after the sessions had started and I’d already improved so much, I was kind of scared. What if she did learn about them and stopped them, and I never got any better than I was now?

I wanted to be the best I could possibly be.

After Reese worked out a new time to meet later in the week and Dr. Besby went on his way, she turned to me with a cheery smile while she rubbed her hands together. “I don’t know about you, but all that talk about ice cream made me crave a heaping bowl of orange sherbet.”

I laughed. How had I guessed she’d want that flavor?

As she helped me into my wheelchair, I wondered what it’d be like if I could climb in by myself or downgrade to merely a walker someday. I could get around so much easier that way. I would love to ditch them both, but honestly, I’d take any improvement I could get. Sometimes I got so frustrated about things I couldn’t yet do.

Once we made it to the kitchen, Reese hummed to herself as she fixed me my favorite, Neapolitan, before she got her orange sherbet. Then she sat across from me and went about cutting my ice cream into bite-sized chunks.

I said nothing about how humiliating it was for her to baby me this way because at least she let me eat it myself. My mother still hand-fed me when she was home, oftentimes pureeing my meal to make me drink it through a straw. It might take me twice as long as a normal person, but I could definitely feed myself. I had lots better control over my arms than I did my legs.

“So I have a surprise for you,” Reese started with a wiggle of her eyebrows as soon as we dipped our spoons into our respective bowls. “I told you my parents got me a new laptop last week for my birthday, right?” she started, only for her cell phone to ring.

“Ack. Hold that thought.” Popping to her feet, she hurried to her purse, dug her phone free and checked the screen. “It’s Eva. I better take this. Be right back, kiddo.”

She strolled into the other room as she answered, and I found myself abandoning my bowl to roll closer to the doorway and listen in on the conversation. Eva was her pregnant cousin who’d moved up here from Florida a few months after we had and begged for a place to stay with Mason and Reese. She was beautiful and flashy and had always been nice to me, so I liked her, but I knew my brother wasn’t a fan and only let her stay to make Reese happy.

Curious what she wanted, I stopped just on the other side of the doorway out of sight. It’d become a habit for me to eavesdrop over the years. I don’t think people realized I understood as much as I did, so they didn’t bother to tell me much. Ergo, I usually stole my intel by lingering in passageways, just out of sight.

“Yes, of course,” Reese was saying. “You know I’ll always attend a doctor’s appointment with you, E. You don’t even need to ask. This one’s another sonogram, right? Ooh, how exciting. Yep, I’m free that afternoon.” She paused a moment, then rolled her eyes, “Yeah, the therapy sessions are going great. Wait until you see Sarah again. It’ll shock you how much she’s already improved. I just...” She shook her head and pressed her hand to her brow. “I can’t help but get livid every time I watch her work her heart out.”

I held my breath and leaned closer, scared to hear why she was so mad at me, but also determined to know what I was doing wrong so I could fix it.

“I just...” She shook her head and gritted her teeth. “I want to strangle Mason’s mother. How could she not want something that’s obviously good for her daughter? I know this is probably a crappy thing to say, but I swear, she wants Sarah to stay as dependent as possible just so she can keep getting government-funded checks. I mean, God forbid Sarah learn how to manage on her own so that she can someday move out and live independently. Do you know Dawn still feeds her blended food through a straw?”

I blew out a breath as Reese raged on, relieved to learn her anger wasn’t directed at me. I was used to Mom’s ways, but the longer Reese was around us, the more it bugged her.

“And get this, Dawn hadn’t even heard of the Anat Baniel method? It’s like she doesn’t want to learn any more about cerebral palsy than she has to. And guess what else. I did, like, five minutes of internet research to discover there’s a World CP Day every year on the first Wednesday in October and March is CP Awareness month. Dawn had no idea when I told her. No. Idea. How could someone treat her own daughter this way?”