FascinatingRhythm (13 page)

Leaving Sabina had been like tearing off an arm and leaving
it behind, but he knew she wanted it. She’d have grown distressed if he’d
insisted, he could see it in her eyes. If not for that, he’d have told everyone
to fuck off and stayed with her.

Driving back to Stockholm along the broad, beautifully kept
road, so typical of his country, her face swam before his eyes as he’d last
seen it.

That expression, so quickly masked, could mean only one
thing. She loved him. Maybe as much as he loved her. But could he tell her?
Their enforced separation would be rendered even worse.

In a year, maybe—but who knew what would happen in that
time? Things were happening so fast for the band, they couldn’t be sure of
anything. It was all very well for the poets to go on about love, how it
lasted, how it was forever, but Hunter was less sure. He didn’t write lyrics,
he created heartbeats, and they ran along more practical lines.

He liked it here. One day he’d come back to live and maybe
then he could call her and they’d get something going. No, by then she’d have
married, with a passel of kids around her. He couldn’t let her wait for him.
Apart from anything else, the responsibility would kill him.

Why did everything come back to Sabina?

The outskirts of the city came into view. He had to
concentrate, because his turnoff for the airport was coming up. Oh fuck, he’d
missed it already, he realized when he saw signs for the city. So fucking
distracted, he’d have to turn around and go back.

Except he had four hours before his flight. Sabina had sent
him away so she could sleep and the doctor had confirmed it. He’d rather she
slept in his arms, but she’d made it clear she didn’t want that.

Love, lust, infatuation. What he wanted more than anything
else was time with her, but he couldn’t have it. He’d nearly had it when they’d
canceled the operation.

That reminded him.
They
didn’t cancel. His mother had
done that. Making a swift decision, he took the next right, the road leading to
the suburb where she lived, instead of the airport. He wouldn’t have to show
for a couple of hours yet. Plenty of time.

He arrived to the usual silent hubbub. Like a lot of things
about the deaf community, contradictions ruled. They used typical hearing words
like
sounded
when they meant something in their heads. Something he took
for granted for the first twenty years of his life, but now, involved in a
world where sound meant everything, he noticed.

Just another facet of his fucked-up existence.

Pulling into the drive, he didn’t bother to use the sheltered
areas put aside for cars. He wouldn’t be staying too long. Just long enough. He
strode into the large, cool hall and headed for the office wing. Someone
gestured at him, someone new. He waved her off and carried on.

Surely the fact that he knew all the security codes to get
past the main gate outside and the front door meant something. The lights would
have alerted them, but only to him entering the building. Not an alert. Fool.

Before she could alert the authorities, he turned around and
faced the woman. Beautiful in a tall, blonde way, but nowhere near as lovely as
his Sabina. Typical that he noticed. Not typical that he decided not to use his
easy charm to get his way. He signed instead. “Ms. Ostrander is my mother. I’ve
come to see her. Is she alone?”

Bewilderment crossed the woman’s face as she signed. “She
didn’t say her son was here.” She peered at him, frowning. “Oh yes, you’re the
musician, aren’t you?”

“Some people would question that,” he answered with a smile,
figuring that charm wouldn’t go amiss. “I’m a drummer.” He kept to verbalizing,
in no mood for soothing ruffled staff.

Turning, he headed for his mother’s office. The woman hadn’t
answered his question but he’d take his chances.

She looked up when he came in, smooth blonde head moving
slowly, secure in her own domain. Her smile was polished but he detected a hint
of concern in her eyes. She put down her pen so she could sign. “Hunter, I
thought you were in Beijing.”

“I will be tonight. I flew back to see Sabina before her
operation. I’ve just come from the hospital.” He spoke and signed this time.

Raising her brows, she signed, “How is she?”

Nice answer.
“She’s fine.” Two could play this game.
“A surprise when we discovered you canceled the procedure. Why did you do
that?”

Watching him, her blue eyes unreadable, she heaved a sigh.
“She did not want the procedure.” She emphasized the “not”, her chin going up
and her eyes flashing.

“How can you tell?”

“She was doing it for you.”

Anger rose like lava inside him. “For me? What makes you think
that?”

“She said she wanted to hear you play.”

Their gazes clashed and held, his furious, hers calm. Hunter
counted. He’d always done that since he could remember, to give himself time to
think, time to calm down. Because his temper was vicious and sometimes scared
him. Playing the drums had helped, but he hardly ever went onstage angry
anymore.

He should remember that. He tried to calm down, then he
recognized what she was doing and it was like a bucket of cold water over his
head. “You can’t do that, Mother. Not anymore.” She was taking selective points
of what someone had said and using it as a basis for a whole new argument that
was never meant in the first place.

She smiled. “Trying to turn your argument on to me?”

He shook his head. “I’m not interested in arguing. You can’t
live people’s lives for them. It’s not up to you.”

“Sometimes it is. Sometimes they come to me for help. Why do
you think Sabina came here before the operation?”

For once, he knew the answer for sure. Emmelie found doubts
in people’s minds and worked on them. She’d always done it, but it had taken
him a long time to realize it. That was what made her a great politician.

Still beautiful in her fifties, with the cool blonde hair
and startlingly blue eyes, both of which he’d inherited, she stood slender and
tall and defied the world. Good copy for the media. Even better that she was
deaf, otherwise they’d consider her invulnerable, and that rarely made for a
good story.

His new understanding of the media, in his own right now
instead of as Emmelie Ostrander’s son, gave him a fuller picture. The knowledge
gave him a steady beat, something he could use to calm his wayward temper. Only
then did he sign and speak once more. “Sabina needed to be close to Uppsala but
she didn’t want to be alone. She was scared. Everyone is scared before an
operation, everyone in their right mind, anyhow. She wanted familiar people and
I couldn’t stay with her.”

“I know. Isn’t that a signal that she shouldn’t have the
procedure? It will make her into a different person, Hunter. She won’t be
Sabina anymore.”

On secure ground now, he could speak with confidence.
“You’re wrong. She will always be Sabina. People grow, people change. Everyone
does. This is just another development in her character. Or not. Hearing may
help.”

“I gave her work, kept her busy. She may return here if she
wishes.” Emmelie’s eyes widened fractionally. “What do you mean, ‘hearing may
help’? Are they rescheduling the operation?”

“No.” He watched his mother, saw how she leaned back into her
chair, thinking she’d won. “Sabina is a good interpreter, isn’t she?”

Her reply was brief. “The best.”

“If she hears, will that impair her work?”

Impatient now, Emmelie sat up once more. “Of course. I can’t
have a hearing person working for me, and Sabina gained all her clients through
me.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not. It goes against everything I stand for!”
Indignantly, she slapped her hands against each other as she signed. “I
represent the deaf community. Nobody else.”

“What about the people who are partially deaf? The ones
who’ve had an operation and can now hear? The ones who are neither one thing
nor the other? The ones who their deaf colleagues repudiate, but have
difficulty fitting in? Where do they go?”

She shrugged. “It’s not my concern. They must form their own
organization.”

Fury rose. She cared for nothing and nobody outside her own
narrow circle. “Then when Sabina recovers, she will come to me,” he said. “I
won’t have you hurting her. She has to stay near the hospital for the first
month and have therapy for as long as she needs it.” He’d give everything up
for her, no doubt in his mind about that.

“This won’t happen for some time.” His mother still thought
he was signing hypothetically, that Sabina had remained on the waiting list but
at the bottom.

“The next person in the list backed out of the operation.
Sabina was there so she had the procedure. She may hear. You can’t always have
everything your way. Think gray, as most of the world does, not black and
white. If she hears, she won’t automatically fit in to the hearing world. Nor
will she belong to the deaf community any longer. She’ll have no one. No one,
do you understand? But that’s not true. She’ll have me.”

Now was his chance, the one time he could tell his mother
things he’d never said before. Too eager to keep the peace, not to upset her,
he’d abandoned it when he left. Except that he hadn’t. The emotions traveled
with him. “When I left home, I was angry and scared. Your friends and employees
always pushed me aside. I always felt inferior because I was the only person in
this house who could hear. Do you know how weird that felt, especially when you
banned talking in favor of signing? I couldn’t speak, even with people who
could lip-read.”

Then he told her what he’d never admitted to anyone. “I
learned the drums because of you. Evelyn Glennie has been profoundly deaf from
birth, and she’s one of the world’s best percussionists. Plays with the best
classical orchestras. She was and is my inspiration. I thought because of her
and what she said about drumming in all the interviews I read that it would
please you. Instead of learning piano or violin, which you couldn’t hear, I
could communicate with you and the rest of the community with my drums.
Vibrations and rhythms. That I came to love it for its own sake isn’t something
I need to justify. But you took no notice, ever. You never came to the school
when they had concerts and you never came to any of my performances, not until
Malmö.”

He shook his head. “But it’s too little, too late. You were
close to the stage and you spent most of the evening texting. I saw the light
from your phone reflected on your face. That was when I realized that I didn’t
care anymore. You don’t care about me. You wanted a deaf child, and when I was
born hearing you lost interest.”

She’d gone white and her hands lay at rest on the desk
before her. She was staring at him as if seeing him for the first time. If she
protested, he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

He’d just bared his heart to her, as much as he could, because
Hunter found it hard to put his emotions into words. The one and only time he’d
ever do it. Because it sounded selfish, uncaring that he wanted her to pay
attention to him rather than to all her good causes, and now her burgeoning
political career. She’d tried to hijack his press conference instead of
attending as a proud mother, she’d texted through his performance, she’d gone
to Malmö under duress.

Hunter turned around and started walking, not stopping until
he reached his car, and then only to open the door and climb in. He doubted
he’d ever return here and he didn’t feel in the least sorry.

Until his phone chimed with the text melody. He dragged it
out of his pocket and, instead of Sabina or Adela, who he’d made sure had his
number before he left Uppsala, it was his mother. He nearly didn’t read it.
Three words. “Wait. Come back.”

That was so atypical he froze, staring at the screen, going
over the possibilities in his mind. But that number belonged to his mother
alone, her private number. She’d sent it.

He got out of the car and went back in.

This time nobody tried to stop him. Word must have gone
around or someone had notified the assistant. The two other people now in the
outer office, who hadn’t been there before, took care not to look up as he went
in, but he doubted the scanner held that much interest for anyone.

Sabina’s predicament, the canceled operation and her
uncertain future had ratcheted his temper up from its usual controllable level
to where he didn’t care anymore. The short walk had given him a chance to calm
down, so at least he’d regained control of himself. But he still didn’t feel
like apologizing to his mother.

She was waiting, her laptop closed, a rarity in itself, her
hands placed before her. When he closed the door, she motioned to a chair. He
sat.

“Have you ever wondered about your father?” she signed.

He shrugged. “Sometimes.” His father was a name on his birth
certificate. Swedish, and while Hunter had googled him, he’d never found out
which of the Christer Sandbergs that came up was his father. The man hadn’t
hung around long enough to introduce himself to his son. Truthfully, he didn’t
care. “I never knew him. You made it clear he was never going to be part of my
life.”

“It was the shortest marriage outside celebrity stunts you
can imagine.” She smiled when Hunter showed his surprise. He hadn’t thought
they were married. He’d carried his mother’s name, for good and bad, all his
life. Nobody in his home country was small-minded enough to care if he was born
out of wedlock or not. The lack of a father had never been an issue for him.

“He was handsome, the complete alpha,” she signed now. “I
fell for him. He knew I was deaf and he found me someone who would give me a
cochlear implant. I decided against it. The procedure was still new, but most
of all, I was happy as I was. I’ve been deaf from birth—it would have changed
me too much. And the operation was still experimental. I didn’t want to take
the chance.” He could understand that, in his mother’s case. She didn’t need to
hear to be the person she was and the fact that she’d never been hearing made
it unlikely she’d develop the right brain functions to effectively hear, even
with the implant.