River's Return (River's End Series, #3) (8 page)

Jack didn’t like anyone intimidating Erin. Neither did Allison… but, Shane was right. It was an uphill battle, but it could change her life.
Do it.
Politely backing down accomplished nothing. If Erin would just hear her out, Allison might still manage to achieve something great.

Shane stepped closer to Jack and set a hand on his chest. “Just back off, Jack. I asked Allison to come here. And to do this. You know I’d never invite anyone here who could hurt her, in any way. You know that.” His tone was reserved and solid. Allison had never seen Shane like that. Usually, he was obnoxious and kind of a jerk. What he told her was heartfelt, and genuine. That was the kind of solid relationship he shared with his brother.

Jack glanced at her and then at Erin. Erin shook her head as if begging Jack to prevent them from doing that to her. Allison narrowed her eyes. Erin was good in her role, too. Like a small, sweet baby or a friendly puppy begging for protection from someone ready to beat them, neglect them, and abuse them. However, Allison simply intended to show her a video. Allison straightened up. “It’s a video. Only a half hour. It won’t hurt you.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“No, you don’t; but you owe yourself. And you owe Jack and Shane and Ian and Charlie and Ben. All of them asked me privately on separate occasions what they could do to help you. And do you know what my answer was? Nothing. I told them nothing because you had to be ready. Well, I get it now. You’re never going to be ready. And none of them can help you. But I can.” Her words seemed to be gaining steam, lifting her own confidence. She stepped forward and laid the tablet in front of her at the kitchen table. “Sit. For only ten minutes. That’s it. Then you can tell me to go to hell.”

Erin’s eyes lifted up and blazed at her. “How about I tell you to go there now?” she said, and her former innocence and sweetness were gone. She was livid with anger. Allison leaned on the table and bravely met Erin’s angry, belligerent gaze.

“Fine. Tell me now. But watch this,” she replied as she pushed the loaded link before a video popped up. She pressed play and passed it to Erin. “Just sit and watch it,” she ordered, using her best pissed-off teacher voice. She was pretty good at it too. Erin finally sat with an exaggerated jerk of her arms before taking the tablet and lifting it up so she could see it. Jack and Shane went behind her and watched from a distance over her shoulder. Allison sat down across from her. Taking out her phone, she started playing solitaire on it just to give Erin some space.

Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Erin had no comment. She didn’t react at all. But she also didn’t stop watching it. It was a long video featuring a woman who was a well-known speaker about dyslexia. She explained its symptoms, causes and prevalence in some people. She toured the country with this lecture, trying to prod the educators and parents of such an under-addressed and undiagnosed epidemic to action.

Finally, after forty minutes, Erin lowered the tablet. Allison laid her phone flat, and turned it off. She stared into Erin’s eyes, and Erin stared back at her. Licking her lips, tears shone in Erin’s eyes as she whispered, “Th—that… It describes me.”

“I know, Erin. It does. It totally describes you.” Allison’s tone was soft, but clinical. She had to make Erin understand it wasn’t her fault, but it was on her to find a solution. “I know you’re a dyslexic learner who went to school in a state that doesn’t screen for it or accommodate for it. You can only learn by a specific, systematic, multi-sensory reading, writing, and spelling program. You
cannot
learn, no matter how hard you try, by most methods. It’s not your fault; and there is nothing wrong with you. You are not stupid either. You’ve simply never been taught using the correct method. Do you hear me, Erin Rydell? You. Are. Not. Stupid.”

That quickly, Erin burst into tears. They poured from her eyes and sobs escaped her throat as she buried her face in her hands. Allison released Erin’s stigma after nearly thirty years of misery and self-loathing in one statement,
it is not your fault
. Sobs wracked her small, thin shoulders as Jack stepped forward. Allison shook her head. “Let her cry, Jack. Let her just freaking cry. All that time she wasted, when all along, it was curable and unnecessary. Just let her get it out. First, she has to accept this.”

She cried for several more minutes until finally, the tears started to lessen. Shane and Jack sat down quietly on either side of her. Jack held her hand while she kept crying with her head on the table. She finally lifted her tear-streamed face. “All those years.” She gulped with another sob. “All those schools. All those teachers. I always assumed I missed too much, and had to start over so many times, I always thought I was to blame for not getting it.”

“No. It only made it ten times worse, of course, but it was highly unlikely you’d have learned anything anyway; not unless it was a dyslexia-approved program.”

“But how can that be? In this day and age, how can the schools, whom parents entrust with teaching their children to read, not have the kind of help necessary for teaching kids with a reading disability?”

“Welcome to my battle. Dyslexia is ignored in most teaching programs nowadays. Yet, it’s an acknowledged condition. Schools don’t have to legally do anything about it. So getting a student with dyslexia into special education services can actually be more harmful than beneficial. It’s a specific reading disability stemming from a defect in the brain's processing of graphic symbols. That alters the way the brain processes any written material. It’s a neurological and often genetic condition. Your brain is ten percent bigger on the right side also. That means you possess a non-academic talent or ability that is far more advanced, or developed than a non-dyslexic person. Most of the things they teach in the traditional academic world are weak subjects for you, but ironically, you have gifts that far exceed what any of us non-dyslexic people can do.”

Erin’s gaze wavered as she shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

Allison shrugged. “It’s a scientific fact, Erin. If a brain scan were done on you right now, it would prove the right side of your brain is physically bigger than a non-dyslexic brain.”

“You’re trying to say I’m somehow gifted?” Erin’s jaw nearly hung open.

Something shifted in Allison’s heart. She’d never been able to reach or change anyone’s life as much as she could at this moment. “Yes, I’m telling you that. You watched the video, you know I’m not making it all up.”

Erin dropped her head and stared at her lap. “I can draw pretty well.”

“You can?”

“Yes. I can draw anything. I can see it in my mind and recreate all of it. It’s nothing for me. It’s easy.”

“Do you like to do it?”

Erin glanced up and around as she shrugged. “I—yes, I like to do it.”

“Then why don’t you?”

She shrugged. “Because I used to do it instead of all the stuff for school I was supposed to be doing. Everyone told me to concentrate. Try harder. Quit wasting time scribbling that crap. It was useless. I needed to focus on what really mattered, or I was going nowhere. But the thing was, I couldn’t. I tried to focus. So hard. And I tried to concentrate, but I couldn’t do it, so I knew I was useless. But drawing…”

“Became part of what you thought was useless. And thus, part of your problem.”

“I thought it was frivolous and kept me from being who I really needed to be.”

“Start drawing, Erin. Start drawing everything. Embrace what and who you are and what you can do; and through your expressions, tell people who you are.”

“I just gave it up,” she said softly, shrugging her shoulders as if in complete and utter defeat. “I gave up and let illiteracy define me.”

“But it doesn’t now. You have legitimate reasons now to explain why you couldn’t learn to read. That means from here forward you can change that.”

“I’m going to start drawing,” she said in a strong voice, the antithesis of how she formerly spoke.

“Good. I think, that would be really good,” Allison said, but tears made her voice waffle.

Erin smiled in response and said, “Yes, it would be good.”

Jack was silent while listening to their exchange, his hand grasping Erin’s in a death grip. Finally, he swallowed and Allison knew he was trying very hard to hold back his own tears. It was just such a profound moment. There might have been many more emotional issues out there, and Allison was sure there were, but watching a grown adult who never thought much of her abilities suddenly realize her innate worth as well as possessing other gifts, most of all, hope, was more than enough to have tears shimmering in Allison’s own eyes.

“What now? What can we do now?” Jack asked softly.

“Now? I teach you. The right way. The correct way.”

Erin sat up straighter, her neck jerking like Allison physically startled her. “Teach me?”

Allison smiled, blinking the tears away. “Why did you think I was showing you all that? You understand the cause, and now we need to implement the solution. And we will be doing that, won’t we?”

“You’d be willing to do that for me?”

“I’d be honored to do it for you,” Allison answered simply, and honestly. Something stirred in her chest: excitement, anticipation, and interest. All things that her job and daily life had been missing for years now. When she first moved to River’s End, it was such an adjustment and the job was so challenging, she received a bit of relief from the pain and emptiness that comprised her former existence. Now? The pain was less, but the emptiness felt like so much more. So this? It stirred something wonderful inside her, despite her normal apathy.

“We’ll pay you. Whatever it costs.” Jack’s tone was firm.

“No. Just—no. Don’t pay me. Just promise to do this with me. You don’t understand how much I want to do this.”

“What is this?” Erin finally asked.

“The Orton-Gillingham-based approach recommended by the International Dyslexia Association. Seems like a good place to start. As of now, there are several different reading, spelling and writing systems that use this approach, and I think I know which one will work best. I have a little more research to do, and I still have to order the starting materials, which I will review, and then we’ll get started.”

“It sounds overwhelming. How do you even know where to begin?”

“Because I know how to teach. You’re gifted in drawing? Well, I’m gifted in teaching. I know how to assimilate new information and break it down so I can share it with others. We can and will do this.”

She leaned across the table and squeezed Erin’s hand. Erin nodded back, her eyes weary as the familiar doubt surfaced again. “You can be scared. You can be nervous, but you don’t get to give up, or lose faith. You have to believe in me, okay? Believe I get this so well, that you can do it too.”

“I will never be able to thank you enough,” Erin said softly.

“I don’t need your thanks,” Allison said, and she’d never spoken a more honest statement.

She stood up and quietly exited the room as Jack leaned in. They were talking to each other, and Shane followed her out to the porch. The sun was now setting, stretching across the sky and beyond the covered porch.

Shane shut the door with a gentle click, turning oddly silent. Allison never heard him being so quiet, and almost totally unassuming for that long. She turned and looked at him. He was staring at her, with a gleam in his eye. She never saw that gleam directed at her either. He looked at her like she was some kind of living miracle or something. “That was pretty fucking amazing what you just did.”

Allison spontaneously threw herself at him and was suddenly pressed against his chest, her arms around his thick neck as a flood of tears wracked her body. She curled up against the length of him and let his body heat and large muscles warm her. Her head lay easily against his chest. His big paw-like mitts stroked her back as he mumbled into her ear, “Shh, hey, shh teacher. You did it. You should be celebrating right now, not crying.”

Allison had not lost her composure like this in months… no, more like years. She had no idea even why she was crying. It all ended so positively. Far better than she could have ever imagined. But it was so much.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes before she looked up at him. He stared down into her face, his gaze traveling over her eyes and neck and up to her hair. His hand came off her back to gently entangle her hair. His other hand cupped her face and he softly swiped the tears still resting on her eyelids. “I never knew anyone could be so lost in her own life. In her own brain. She doubted her ability to draw, the thing she could obviously do so well. I have never spent a day feeling that bad. It just hit me how desperately I needed to convince her. I had a moment where I thought I might lose her. It felt more… dire than I can remember with any… and I mean
any
of my students.”

“That was epic. I mean it, teacher. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”

Her emotions settled down as she realized she was still clinging to Shane. She stepped back then and self-consciously slid her hands off his neck before tucking them into her coat pockets as she turned and leaned onto the railing. She stared out towards the land and the sinking sun. “Thank you,” she said after a long, lengthy silence.

“What did I do?”