He shook his head again, sadly this time. “My dad—my real dad—once told me that my mom was afraid to let them cut my head open. He wanted me to have the surgery, but she insisted it wasn’t safe. But it is. And now it’s too late.” He was fourteen, long past the time doctors did the implant surgery. Usually they operated on kids under two.

She lifted her brows. “Of course it’s safe, and it might not be too late. You’re a little old now, but if you’re interested, we can still look into it. For now, relax. I’m going to make dinner and maybe watch some TV. If you want to eat with Coach and me now, that’s fine. If you want time to yourself, that’s fine, too. If you get hungry, there’s food in the fridge. Help yourself to anything you find, just don’t eat in your room, okay? I hate mice.”

Michael grimaced. “Mice?”

“I’ve never had them, and I don’t want to start.” She looked around the corner, but they remained alone. “The basement is a rec room with video games and a TV.” She smirked. “I’m a gamer, too, but don’t tell Coach. I don’t think he knows.”

“You planning to hustle him?” he asked.

“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet. Take a shower, get comfortable. We’ll talk about all the serious stuff later, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Any questions?”

“Yes.” Why are you doing this for us? What are you going to want from us? And why do you have biohazard bags in your closet? But that wasn’t the question that rolled off his hands. “Are you rich?” He immediately winced. It was rude, but he’d asked and now he couldn’t take the question back.

She blinked her mismatched eyes in surprise. “No. Barely middle-class. Why?”

He gestured around him. “All this. The nice furniture, the books, the strobe lights. It all costs money. We had money and my mom never put in emergency strobe lights.” He’d always wondered what might have happened had there been a fire. He wondered if his mother would have bothered to wake him up.

He was sure Brewer would have left him to die.

“Well, I’m nowhere near rich. I’m house poor, actually. I used to be an ER doctor, and that paid well, but the clinic can’t afford those kinds of salaries. I pay my mortgage and bills, but that stretches every penny.”

He frowned. “So you take in foster kids for the money?”

Something flashed in her eyes. It looked like hurt. “I’m sorry,” he signed.

“It’s okay. It’s a reasonable question. No, I do this because I had a deaf teenager come through my clinic last year. They’d been hurt.”

Michael swallowed. “Like me?”