She circled DEAF, just as she had back then. The next day when she checked the board Ambrose had circled both words. Both deaf and blind. She had wondered about his right eye, now she knew. Was he deaf in his right ear as well as blind in his right eye? She knew he wasn't deaf in both ears because of their brief conversation the night she almost hit him on her bike. Below the circled words there was a new question. He'd written, LEFT OR RIGHT?
This wasn't one they had asked before, and Fern had a sneaking suspicion Ambrose was referring to his face. Left side or right? She responded by circling both left and right, just as he had done with deaf or blind.
The next day everything was erased.
Two days went by and Fern decided on a new tactic. She wrote in careful letters:
“Love is not love
Which alters when alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”
Shakespeare. Ambrose would know why she wrote it. It was one of the sonnets he had said was his favorite. Let him make of it what he would. He might groan and roll his eyes, worried that she would follow him around with her tongue hanging out, but maybe he would understand what she was trying to say. The people who cared about him still cared about him, and their love or affection wouldn't change just because his appearance had. It might just bring him comfort to know that some things stayed the same.
Fern left her shift that night without seeing him, closing the store without a glimpse. When she arrived the next day the board had been wiped clean. Embarrassment rose in her chest but she tamped it down. This wasn't about her. At least Ambrose knew somebody cared. So she tried again, continuing with Sonnet 116, which had also been her favorite since Lady Jezabel had included it in a letter to Caption Jack Cavendish in one of Fern's first novels, Lady and the Pirate. She used a red marker this time, writing the words in her best cursive.
Love's not Time's fool,
Though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
“THEY DO NOT LOVE THAT DO NOT SHOW THEIR LOVE” - Hamlet was scrolled across the whiteboard in block letters the following afternoon.
Fern pondered that one all day. Obviously, Ambrose hadn't felt welcomed home with outstretched arms. She wondered why. People had wanted to throw him a parade, hadn't they? And Coach Sheen and Bailey had gone to see him and been turned away. Maybe people wanted to see him . . . but maybe they were afraid. Or maybe it hurt too much. The town had been rocked. Ambrose hadn't seen the devastation after the news had hit Hannah Lake. A writhing tornado had whipped its way up and down the streets, leaving families and friends leveled. Maybe no one had been with him in his darkest hours because they were stumbling around in their own.
Fern spent her half-hour dinner break finding a suitable response. Was he talking about her? Surely he hadn't wanted to see her. The possibility that he might be referring to her gave her the courage to be bold in her reply. He could doubt the town, but he wouldn't be able to claim that she didn't care. It was a little over the top, but it was Shakespeare.
“Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love.”
And his response?
“DO YOU THINK I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A PIPE?”
“Shakespeare didn't say that.” Fern scowled, talking to herself and staring at the flippant response. But when she typed the quote into the search engine, she found he had. The quote was from Hamlet again. Big surprise. This wasn't quite what she’d had in mind when she'd started writing messages. Not at all. Squaring her shoulders she tried again. And she hoped he would understand.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
She watched for him that night, wondering if he would respond right away. She checked the board before she left for the night. He'd responded all right.
NAIVE OR STUPID?
Fern felt the tears flood her eyes and spill out onto her cheeks. With a straight back and chin held high she walked to her register, picked up her purse from beneath the counter and walked out of the store. He might be hiding but she was through seeking Ambrose Young.
Ambrose watched Fern go, and he felt like an asshole. He'd made her cry. Awesome. She was trying to be nice. He knew that. But he didn't want nice. He didn't want to be encouraged and he sure as hell didn't want to keep finding Shakespeare quotes to write on that damn whiteboard. Better that he run her off right away. Period.
He scratched at his cheek. The shrapnel still buried in his skin drove him crazy. It itched, and he could feel the pieces working their way out. The doctors told him some of the shrapnel, the pieces buried deep in his right arm and shoulder and some of the pieces in his skull would probably never work themselves out. He wouldn't be going through any metal detectors without setting them clanging. That was fine, but the shrapnel in his face, the pieces that he could feel, they bothered him, and he had a hard time not touching them.