Chapter 1 - The Question at Dinner
“What should I say?”
Laurel’s question settled over the dining table.
Reid Kessler smiled. Beside him, a man with a crooked nose stopped chewing.
Silas set down his fork.
“Something charming,” Kessler suggested. “Your husband tells me you used to be charming.”
Laurel watched his face. Then her gaze moved to Silas.
“Does he?”
Silas had said many careless things over the past year. He could not remember saying that one. He could remember worse.
Kessler leaned back, studying her.
“I said you look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“And that your husband must enjoy the peace.”
Laurel’s fingers tightened around her napkin.
Silas saw the movement and mistook it for embarrassment.
“Enough,” he told Kessler.
But their guest had found something interesting.
While Laurel looked toward Mae, who was pouring water, Kessler lifted a heavy serving spoon and struck the side of his crystal glass.
The sharp note made everyone flinch.
Everyone except Laurel.
She continued watching Mae’s hands.
Kessler’s smile disappeared for a fraction of a second.
Then it returned.
“Oh,” he said softly.
Silas looked between them.
“What?”
Kessler turned toward Laurel, making certain she could see him.
“Does he know?”
Her face drained.
Silas stood so abruptly his chair scraped backward.
“Know what?”
Laurel rose too.
“Silas. Please.”
He barely noticed that she was looking directly at his mouth now.
Kessler spread his hands.
“I assumed you knew. After all, she lost it saving you.”
The dining room went still.
“Lost what?” Silas asked.
Laurel reached for her water glass. Her hand trembled hard enough to send a thin ripple across the surface.
Kessler answered with the casual cruelty of a man mentioning bad weather.
“Her hearing.”
For a moment, Silas understood every word separately.
Together, they meant nothing.
He looked at Laurel.
She was watching him with an expression he had never seen before.
Not hatred.
Dread.
He said her name.
She did not respond until his mouth formed it again.
A terrible memory opened inside him.
Laurel looking at his lips during arguments. Turning only when someone touched her. Missing footsteps behind her. Smiling half a second late when everyone else laughed.
His voice sounded strange.
“Laurel?”
She put down the glass.
“Yes.”
Kessler lifted his wine.
“The terminal explosion. Bilateral damage, apparently. Quite devastating.”
Silas looked at him.
“How would you know that?”
The question changed the room.
Hollis straightened beside the door.
Kessler noticed.
“Oh, people talk.”
“Which people?”
Laurel stepped between their lines of sight.
“Not here.”
Silas looked down at her. Her eyes were bright, but her chin remained steady.
“Please,” she said again.
That word did what threats could not.
He turned to Hollis.
“Dinner is over.”
Kessler chuckled.
“We haven’t discussed the lakefront properties.”
“You have ten seconds to leave my table.”
The twelve men along the walls moved without appearing to.
Kessler studied Silas, reconsidering his entertainment.
Then he stood and buttoned his jacket.
At the doorway, he looked back at Laurel.
“You should be careful whom you protect, my dear.”
She watched him leave.
Only when the doors closed did she sit.
Silas knelt beside her chair.
He had knelt before exactly twice in his adult life. Once to ask her to marry him. Once in the burning terminal when his leg would no longer hold him.
“Tell me he’s lying.”
Laurel swallowed.
“I can hear some things,” she said. “A few low sounds. Vibrations sometimes. Not words.”
He stared at her.
“How long?”
“Since the fire.”
Twenty months.
Twenty months of calling from doorways.
Twenty months of turning away while speaking.
Twenty months of believing her silence was punishment.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The question came out wounded.
He saw what it did to her face.
She opened her small evening bag and removed her phone. Her fingers moved quickly across the screen.
Then she turned it toward him.
Speaking is exhausting when I’m frightened. Please let me type.
He nodded.
She typed again.
I tried.
Silas read those two words until they blurred.
“You told me your ear would heal.”
At first, I thought it might.
“And after?”
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she typed one sentence.
Ask Gideon what he did with my letter.
Behind Silas, Hollis drew a slow breath.
Gideon Mercer had managed Silas’s private affairs for eleven years.
He handled sensitive documents, medical arrangements, difficult people.
He was the man Silas trusted when he could not afford mistakes.
Laurel looked toward the dark windows.
A reflection moved beyond the dining-room doors.
May you like
Gideon stood in the hallway.
And for the first time since Silas had known him, his trusted adviser looked afraid.
