Chapter 2 - The Letter He Never Read
Silas reached the hallway before Gideon could leave.
“My office.”
Gideon adjusted his glasses.
“Of course. Is there a problem?”
Silas almost put him through the wall.
Almost.
Then he remembered Laurel sitting at the table, unable to follow a conversation whenever someone turned away.
He looked back.
She was watching him.
He faced her fully.
“Would you like to come?”
The question felt unfamiliar in his mouth.
Laurel considered him before nodding.
Inside the office, she chose the chair facing both men. Silas moved a lamp so their faces were lit.
Gideon noticed.
Something tightened around his eyes.
“What letter?” Silas asked.
“I handle a great deal of correspondence.”
“Laurel’s letter.”
Gideon glanced at her.
“She was distressed after the accident. There were concerns about—”
“Speak to me.”
Laurel’s voice was quiet.
Gideon turned toward her reluctantly.
She took out her phone and activated a transcription application. Words began appearing as he spoke.
“They weren’t concerns about you personally.”
The screen rendered the sentence imperfectly.
Laurel read it, then looked up.
“I gave you an envelope. I asked you to put it in his hand.”
Gideon sighed.
“You were recovering.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I summarized the relevant information.”
Silas’s hands flattened against his desk.
“What information?”
“Your wife required specialist appointments and time away from social obligations. I arranged both.”
Laurel shook her head.
“That isn’t what the letter said.”
She opened an old email on her phone and placed it on the desk.
It contained a photograph of three handwritten pages.
Silas recognized her handwriting.
He recognized the tiny crooked stars she used instead of dots when she was nervous.
His wife had written:
The doctors don’t think my hearing will come back. I wanted to tell you in person, but every time you ask whether I’m better, you look so relieved when I say I’m trying.
I’m frightened. I don’t know how to do this yet.
Please come to my appointment Thursday. I need you there.
The date was eighteen months earlier.
Silas remembered that Thursday.
Gideon had told him Laurel wanted privacy during a minor follow-up.
Silas had gone to Milwaukee.
He read the next page.
I still love you. If I miss something you say, I’m not ignoring you.
His chest hurt.
He looked at Gideon.
“You told me she wanted space.”
“She did need space.”
“You told me she was considering leaving.”
Gideon said nothing.
Laurel’s eyes moved between their faces and the changing text on her phone.
Her voice became very still.
“You told him that?”
Gideon removed his glasses.
“I was trying to preserve stability during a difficult period.”
Silas stepped around the desk.
Gideon backed up once.
Hollis appeared in the doorway.
“Sir.”
Silas stopped.
The restraint cost him enough that his hands shook.
Laurel opened another photograph.
A typed note.
Your medical needs are being handled. Please stop making this more difficult than it needs to be.
At the bottom was Silas’s name.
Not his signature.
His name.
“I thought you dictated it,” Laurel said.
Silas stared at the page.
He remembered saying those exact words about a supplier who had delayed a shipment.
Gideon had taken something cruel but ordinary and placed it in his wife’s hands.
“Why didn’t you ask me?” Silas whispered.
Laurel looked at him for a long moment.
“I did. In the kitchen. You were leaving.”
He searched his memory.
Then found it.
Her standing beside the refrigerator.
Asking if he had read what she sent.
Him fastening his watch.
Gideon had briefed him about a request to spend several weeks at her aunt’s house.
He had answered without looking up.
I read it. Do whatever you want.
Silas sat down.
He could not stay standing beneath the weight of it.
“I meant something else.”
“I know that now.”
The words offered no comfort.
They should not have.
Silas lifted his eyes to Gideon.
“Why?”
Gideon’s voice changed.
“Because men were watching. Because Kessler was testing your position. You were canceling meetings to sit beside her hospital bed. You were distracted.”
“She is my wife.”
“And you were becoming careless.”
Silas looked at Hollis.
“Take his phone. Remove his access. Keep him here until we know what he has done.”
Gideon straightened.
“You need me.”
“No,” Silas said. “I needed to read my own mail.”
After Hollis escorted him out, silence filled the office.
Laurel could not hear it.
Silas had never understood that silence could belong to two people in completely different ways.
He pulled a chair opposite hers.
“I believed the worst of you because it was easier than asking whether I had failed you.”
Her eyes filled.
She wiped them impatiently.
“I hid things too,” she said. “After a while, hiding was how I got through dinner.”
He nodded.
There was nothing he could say that would make twenty months smaller.
So he asked one useful question.
“What would help right now?”
Laurel breathed out.
“Let me leave this room without following me.”
May you like
Silas moved aside.
This time, when she walked away, he understood that letting her go was the first decent thing he had done all night.
