She Read Their Lips and Ruined Them

I'm hard of hearing. The day the Hensons took me back, the fake heiress Sabina Henson leaned close to my ear and smiled.

「Sis, it's actually kind of nice that you can't hear well.」

「At least when people call you a deaf hick, you won't have to feel bad about it.」

She kept her voice low.

My mother, Valerie Delgado, only saw her linking arms with me, all affection.

I nodded and opened the live captions on my phone.

A line of text jumped onto the screen.

【deaf hick】

The whole living room went quiet.

I held the phone up in front of her.

「Do me a favor and say it again.」

「This time, into the mic.」

My brother, Ethan Henson, frowned right away.

「Lottie, Sabina was only joking with you.」

I looked at him.

「If it's a joke, why not say it louder?」

Nobody answered.

Sabina's eyes went red. She turned and handed me a keycard.

It read: 【Family Escort Pass】

Her voice trembled.

「Sis, your ears aren't good.」

「From now on, whenever you come and go from the house, I'll go with you.」

I smiled.

「So you're saying, to get into my own home, I have to have you lead the way?」

...

I held it in my hand and turned it over, looking twice.

No name of mine on it. Just a string of temporary numbers.

Sabina's eyes were still red, her voice soft as cotton.

「Sis, don't misunderstand.」

「I just worry that you've only just come back, and you won't hear what the guards at the gate say.」

「If you wander into the wrong place, people will laugh at you.」

I looked up at her.

「Laugh at me for what?」

She froze for a second.

I said:

「Laugh that the Hensons' real daughter needs the adopted one to show her the way home?」

The color drained from Sabina's face.

My brother Ethan came straight over.

His tone was cold.

「Lottie Bishop, Sabina meant well.」

「You've barely walked in the door, and you're already set on making her cry?」

I watched his lips move. A few of the words I couldn't catch.

But I understood him.

I opened the captions on my phone and turned the screen face-up.

「Slow down.」

「I'm hard of hearing. I'm not on trial.」

Ethan's face darkened further.

「You——」

Valerie hurried over to smooth things over.

She's my birth mother.

Her eyes were red, and when she looked at me she seemed to want to hold me, and to be afraid of dirtying somebody's rules by doing it.

「Lottie, you must be tired from the trip.」

「Come inside first.」

I glanced at her.

She hadn't had anyone put my name into the system, and she hadn't taken away that escort pass.

She only said: 「Come inside first.」

「No need.」

「I remember the way.」

The Henson house was big.

Big enough that every few steps someone lowered their head and murmured, “Miss.”

But it was Sabina they were greeting.

Sabina walked ahead like the real mistress of the house.

She glanced back at me, smiling sweetly.

「Sis, the stairs wind around a bit.」

「Stay close to me.」

I said:

「My ears are bad.」

「My legs aren't broken.」

A maid beside us jerked her hand and nearly dropped her tray.

Sabina's tears started welling up again.

「Sis, I really only wanted to take care of you.」

Ethan said coldly:

「Can you not talk properly for once?」

I turned to look at him.

「Can you get her to act like a decent person first?」

The living room fell silent.

That was when Brendan Henson came out of the study.

He's my birth father.

His face was heavy. He looked first at Sabina, then at me.

「Lottie.」

「Now that you're back with the Hensons, you'll need to learn some sense of propriety.」

「Sabina grew up in this house. She knows how to look after people.」

「Your hearing isn't good, so a lot of situations are awkward for you. Letting her guide you is for your own good.」

I let out a small laugh.

I'd heard this many times as a child.

Just not on Old Street. I'd heard it when someone found me to be a nuisance.

At the Old Street soup shop, my grandmother never talked like that.

When she called me, she'd tap the rim of the bowl with a spoon first.

Valentine Chavez, a neighbor, would bend down and look me in the eye when he spoke to me.

When my adoptive father fixed radios, he even built me a little lamp.

When someone called for me, the lamp lit up.

My grandmother said:

「Lottie, not being able to hear well isn't your fault.」

「Anyone who really wants to talk to you will come stand in front of you.」

「The ones muttering behind your back were never saying anything worth hearing.」

So I looked at Brendan Henson.

「Mr. Henson.」

Valerie went pale.

「Lottie, that's your father.」

I said:

「What he just gave me were the house rules.」

「I thought I'd walked into a board meeting.」

Brendan Henson's brow furrowed.

Ethan gave an outright sneer.

「Raised out in the sticks. No wonder she's got such a sharp tongue.」

Sabina quickly tugged at him.

「Ethan, don't talk about Sis like that.」

Even as she pleaded, she dropped her voice.

「Sis will hear you and get hurt again.」

The captions on my phone lit up.

【Raised out in the sticks. No wonder she's got such a sharp tongue.】

I held the screen up.

「I don't catch all of it.」

「But it keeps a record.」

Ethan's face went stiff.

Sabina's hand stopped too.

Valerie looked at that line of text, and her tears spilled over at once.

「Ethan, how could you say that about your sister?」

Ethan pressed his lips together. He didn't apologize, only turned his head away.

Sabina said quietly:

「It's all my fault.」

「If I hadn't tried to help Sis, none of this would have blown up.」

The moment she cried, Valerie softened.

「Sabina, it's not your fault.」

Suddenly I felt tired.

The Hensons had searched for me for eighteen years.

Yet on my first day in the door, the one they pitied first was still the person who cried prettily.

That night, Sabina took me to my room.

The far end of the third floor.

The door opened onto a space clean as a guest room just tidied up.

The sheets were new.

The curtains were new.

Even the flowers on the table were new.

A shriek of static ripped through my hearing aid, sharp enough to make my temple twitch.

I stood where I was, not moving.

Sabina asked softly:

「Sis, what's wrong?」

I went to the wall and pressed close to listen. Next door there was the low noise of a machine running.

A humming, coming in waves, boring into my ears.

I turned back to her.

「What's on the other side?」

Sabina blinked.

「The equipment room, I think.」

「But it's very quiet.」

She leaned in close, her smile faint.

「You can't really hear it anyway.」

「What difference does it make where you sleep?」

I watched her mouth.

This time I didn't look at the captions.

I said:

「That part, I heard clearly.」