She nods eagerly, and I hold out my hand to take her down with me.
“Waffle?” she asks as we walk into the kitchen.
“Hm, maybe. What else, do you think?”
“Cheese.”
“Waffles and cheese?” Lincoln asks, looking up from the coffee maker. “Unconventional.”
Cora wrinkles her nose at the big word and then shakes her head. “Eggs too.” Like that should be obvious.
Everett snorts. “And now you’re getting sassed by a four year old. Deserved.”
It makes all of us feel happier than we know how to say to hear Cora starting to talk more. Her words are coming back more and more, and it’s clear that some of the trauma that led to her selective mutism is starting to fade.
It’ll never be truly gone, but Harper has been so good with her, and it makes the rest of us glad that we’ve provided a place where Cora feels safe enough to start to open up again.
I love Cora just as much as Harper, and at this point, I can’t picture my life without her.
“Waffles?” Cora says again, looking to Lincoln with those big eyes.
“Waffles,” he agrees, getting down the waffle iron and pulling out ingredients to make them.
Breakfast is a group effort, and half an hour later we’re all at the table with plates weighed down with waffles and cheesy eggs and bacon. Cora tucks in happily, her little legs swinging as she carefully pours syrup into each individual square on her waffle and then dips her eggs in them.
Harper watches her with that smile that means she’s overfull of emotion, and I nudge her gently, reminding her there’s something we need to tell the little girl.
She clears her throat. “Cora, do you want to go out after breakfast? We have a surprise for you.”
Cora’s head snaps up the way it always does when one of us mentions doing something nice for her, and her eyes get very big. She mouths the word ‘surprise’, and even though no sound comes out this time, we all get the picture of what she’s trying to say.
“Yup, a big surprise,” I tell her. “Once you finish up here and wash up and change, we’ll all head out.”
Never before has a four year old plowed through a plate of breakfast so quickly. She finishes her food in record time, despite Harper urging her to slow down so she doesn’t choke.
When her plate is clean, she hops down from her chair and runs up the stairs, her feet pounding as she heads for the bathroom to clean syrup off of her face and hands and brush her teeth.
“I can’t remember the last time I was that excited about anything,” Lincoln murmurs, sipping his coffee.
“Two days ago,” Everett says. “When you ate Harper out on the couch.”
Lincoln smiles like he’s enjoying that memory now. “I mean, she sat on my face. That was worth the excitement.”
“No argument from me.” Everett lifts his hands in a gesture of peace. His eyes skate over Harper as she cuts the last of her waffle and eats it, watching as she licks syrup from her lips.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Harper says, pointing her fork at him. “We have an excited kid to take somewhere. Don’t think she’s just going to sit quietly and wait now that we’ve gotten her riled up.”
As if to illustrate the point, Cora calls, “Surprise!” from the top of the stairs, letting us know she hasn’t forgotten and is basically ready to go.
“I would never keep her waiting,” Everett says, and even though it’s mostly teasing right now, I’ve known him long enough to hear the sincerity there.
Harper must hear it too, or sense it through the bond, because her smile softens. “I know.”
Once we’re all dressed and ready to go, we pile into the truck and drive over to the farm where Bessie lives. Cora recognizes it, and immediately gets even more excited to be there.
We walk through the field to the fence line, and Harper bends down to Cora’s level.
“We know how much you love Bessie,” she starts. “And how you always want to come visit with her. Her owner isdownsizing, selling off some of his animals, so we bought Bessie. She’s going to come live with us.”