“My dad…” she started, faltered, then tried again. “He came over once a month. He’d show up with a present from the Dollar Store, spend an hour or two with me, then have ‘date night’ with my mom, stay the night, and then he’d disappear the next day. When I was really little, I used to think he was some kind of secret agent. Like, maybe he had a really important job, and that’s why he couldn’t be around.” Poppy’s fingers twisted the frayed edges of the pillow in her lap. “Then when I was eight, I found out he had a whole other family, a real family, and we were just…I don’t know, whatever we were.” She said it lightly, almost as a joke, but AJ detected the bitterness under the sugar. “What about you?”
“My dad was amazing. He was my hero, and he died when I was six. He was a firefighter, and one day he went to work, and he didn’t come home.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.”
“I didn’t talk for almost a year.” AJ never shared this information with anyone before, apart from therapists. He had no idea why he felt compelled to share it with Poppy.
“Oh.” Poppy appeared genuinely concerned. “How did you…what made you start to talk again?”
A warmth spread through his chest. “Frankie. She was on a mission. Every day after school, we’d go out in the woods behind the cottage, and we’d look for my voice because she thought me losing my voice was literal. We’d look under my bed, in closets…everywhere. She was so patient, so positive, and so supportive, telling me not to worry or be scared because we would find it. She just made me feel safe again.”
“So that’s why you didn’t speak, because you felt unsafe?”
“In high school I was diagnosed with Asperger’s and retroactively with selective mutism,” he explained. Again, not something he shared with people because he felt everyone was on a need-to-know basis and no one needed to know. “Then as an adult my diagnosis changed to Level 1 Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
“That is so…”
AJ waited for her response. Whenever people discovered that information, from whatever sources they did, some people took it well. Others did not. Typically, he could care less. But this response mattered to him. He found himself holding his breath, waiting for her reaction.
“…amazing,” she breathed.
“Amazing?” he repeated.
“Yes!” She nodded enthusiastically. “You don’t have a neurotypical brain like everyone else, like I do. I mean, how bo-ring. Your brain is an entirely unique world that you get to live in.”
AJ could see that she meant every word she said sincerely. He’d never had anyone respond to his diagnosis the way she was. With so much unabashed enthusiasm.
“Sorry.” She put her hands over her chest. “I’m so sorry. Is that rude?”
“No.” He shook his head. He loved when people were authentically themselves, and he could see that’s exactly who Poppy was being.
“Oh…” Her expression changed as if something was dawning on her. “Isthatwhy your aunt said you don’t like to be touched?”
“I also have sensory sensitivities.”
“Okay, I thought you had a germ thing, like Howie Mandel.”
“No.”
“So, is it just touch, the sensory sensitivity?”
“No. It’s sound, touch, smell, taste, light…anything can be too much and overstimulating.”
She exhaled with compassion that AJ could feel radiating off of her, something that he’d never experienced before. “I’m so sorry. One of my patients, a kid who routinely had to get full CT scans, had sensory processing disorder, it was absolute torture for him. I did everything I could, dimmed the lights, and was able to get him a special lead apron, several different fidget toys, special headphones and playlists, worked with his therapist on new stimming techniques to help him cope with the procedure. It got bearable, and he was a rock star, but it was still just miserable for him.”
AJ couldn’t imagine a kid having to face going into a machine making those noises, surrounding you, and having to stay perfectly still. He could see from Poppy’s face the empathy she had for her patients.
“I’ve never talked about him, about that, to anyone outside of work,” she admitted.
“I’ve never told anyone about my childhood.”
Poppy glanced down at the pillow, then back up at him. AJ thought she was going to say more, but instead she stood, picked up the glasses, and walked to the kitchen. He followed behind her.
After she rinsed them out in the sink and put them in the drying rack, she turned and took a breath. “Can I ask you something…personal?”
“Yes.” She could ask him anything that wouldn’t be against the law for him to tell her, and he’d answer her. His life, to her, except for the top security clearance, was an open book.
“Have you had girlfriends? I mean Frankie told me that you’ve dated people,hotpeople, but I’m talking about relationships.”
