Free River's Return (River's End Series, #3) by Leanne Davis Page A

came, thinking he was trying to fix me up with Jack. I also wanted to see and warn Jack. That was before he and Erin got together. There was an incident before that. Charlie asked her to come in with him for the annual Mother’s Day tea. He announced publicly that she couldn’t read his card before he read it for her. I’ve never seen anyone… oh, my God! It was heartbreaking. She turned so red. She was absolutely mortified. She is still that mortified, I believe, Shane. Anyway, Charlie asked me to come to dinner for a completely different reason; he wanted me to help Erin learn to read. It was quite touching for an eight-year-old little boy.”
    “And she promised to consider it?”
    “Yes, and I never heard from her again about it. I thought about mentioning it to her, but I didn’t know if it was my place.”
    “I can’t help her. Jack can’t either. It makes him crazy. He can’t get her to budge on that. She seems so unsure, mild-mannered, sweet, and yet, it would be comparable to moving a mountain if we could get her to let you work with her.”
    “It’s pretty sad, actually. I could help her a lot.”
    “How do you know? That’s my point. You’ve never worked with her. What if you’re wrong? And she is right?”
    “No, she doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. I know. She is highly intelligent and indicated many teachers tried many different reading programs with her, yet none of them worked. High functioning students who can’t learn to read or grasp rote information when most students do is a classic sign of dyslexia. She’s not stupid. Or slow. Or even remotely unteachable.”
    “What? Seeing letters reversed, or jumbled up, or whatever?”
    She snorted. “If that were the case, we’d hand every student a mirror, and voila! They’d read. No. That’s what’s so frustrating. It’s a complicated, all-encompassing language-processing disorder, with a broad spectrum of symptoms and degrees of severity. It is not her fault. Dyslexic readers need very specific reading instruction. Yet this state doesn’t have any standards in place to provide for it. They recognize it as a condition, but receive no federal or state money to enforce testing, or to provide the proper kind of instruction. She didn’t stand a chance of learning how to read. Even the nicest teacher, who was trying to help her, most likely didn’t have the proper tools available, so Erin falsely thought she could not learn.”
    Shane leaned back as she spoke and crossed his arms over his chest. His muscles bunched up and rippled as he leaned forward. His expression was bright. “Why don’t you talk like this to her? She might just listen, teacher. You should hear yourself. You’re bright and alive and animated. You’re never like this except when you talk about this. The thing is: she doesn’t believe me or Jack or Ian or Kailynn or anyone else. That’s only because we can’t really guarantee she isn’t right. We can’t argue with her. You can. You could change her fucking life, Allison. Tell me, why don’t you?”
    She tapped her fingers on the table, looking startled before she peered across at him. “What do you expect me to do? Storm in there and demand she listen to me? Give me a chance to teach her?”
    “Yeah,” he said simply. “That’s exactly what you should do. She’s missed another three years and still has no more confidence in herself and no more skills than when she first got here. It kills my brother. You can’t even imagine how helpless he feels. But worse, how she feels. None of us want that for her. So, yeah, you have the precious knowledge, you can help her.”
    “How? How do you propose I go about this? Don’t think it doesn’t kill me too. Just knowing what I could do for her and that she most likely will never give me that chance, or the opportunity to change her life? Yes, of course, I want to do that.”
    Shane stared at her. “How could you prove it to her? If she ever came to you, what