Unspeakable by Sandra Brown

photograph. "It's sad," he said. "But it's a great picture. You can tell exactly what he's feeling."
    He turned the page. The second photo had an even greater impact on him than the one of Dean. Reacting to it like a sock in the gut, he took a sharp breath.
    The film had been overexposed, creating extreme degrees of light and dark, but it was that contrast that made the picture so captivating. That and the subject matter. The background was a solid white sky. The foreground was inky black. On the horizon where the two came together stretched a wire fence, much like the one he'd helped Delray repair his first day. The rough cedar posts were uneven, some listing slightly. One of the strands of barbed wire had sprung, creating a cruel-looking curl. These imperfections didn't detract, however. They gave the fence character and told its story. They said that it had withstood years of hard use. But the fence was only a backdrop. The focal point of the photo was the woman leaning against one of the posts, her hands sandwiched between it and the small of her back. Her face was turned away from the camera, exposing her neck and throat to the harsh light, which formed deep shadows between the slender tendons and in the notch in the center of her collarbone. The wind had swept her hair across her face. The same strong wind—it had to be strong to have done such a good job—had molded her dress to the front of her body, delineating her shape so precisely and perfectly that she might just as well not have been wearing the dress. Against that sheet of sky, her breasts were high and small and provocative. The dimple of her navel held an innocent allure, while the vee at the top of her thighs was darkly shadowed and not at all innocent. The cloth seemed to have been liquefied and poured over her. It was an incredibly seductive photograph. Jack responded with a whispered curse and a dry swallow.
    Anna grabbed the album from him and got up to put it away. "Hey, wait. Who was that? Was that you?" Realizing he was talking to her back, he waited until she came back around. He repeated the questions, but she ignored him and began working backward out of her software program and shutting down the computer.
    Determined, he touched her arm to get her attention. "Was that you?" She pointed to her wristwatch, put her palms together, then rested her tilted head on her hands.
    "Bedtime," he said with chagrin. "A convenient retreat. To keep me from asking about the woman in the picture. Who I hope to God I have real dirty dreams about tonight." Of course she missed all that, as he intended for her to. They left the study together and she led him to the front door, where she stepped aside, waiting to lock up behind him. Jack stepped across the threshold, but before she could close the door, he said, "I almost forgot the reason for that meeting. You don't want David to teach me any more sign language, right?" She nodded.
    "Because that's your secret language. If people can't understand what you're saying, you have control. You feel superior. And you like to lord it over people that you're deaf. That sets you apart from us common hearing folk."
    She angrily shook her head no and began signing a rebuttal that he figured must be chock-full of epithets.
    "Yeah, that's what I thought," he said obtusely. "Well, I won't ask David to teach me sign because I don't want him to get into trouble on account of me."
    She bobbed her head in agreement, believing she had won the argument.
    But just as she was about to close the door, Jack tapped the porch lightly with the heel of his boot. Signing it perfectly, he said, " Good night, Anna. "
    CHAPTER TWELVE

    E zzy awakened at four-thirty, his usual time to get up. Retirement hadn't reset his body clock or altered his sleep patterns. But where work had once consumed his days, now the hours of wakefulness were barren and seemed to last forever. Most folks toiled for decades to reach this point in life. Ezzy couldn't figure