When Silence Became Goodbye

The third time I caught my wife in bed with another man, I lost the ability to speak. Out of guilt, Helena spent a month teaching me to communicate with one and two. One meant yes. Two meant no. Whatever Helena said to me, if it had anything to do with Felix Danner, the answer was always one. She said Felix was in poor health and wanted to borrow the protective locket my mother left me. I answered one without hesitating. She wanted to push back our anniversary so Felix could have his birthday first. One. Even when she wanted to move the injured Felix into our house, I still answered one. And I packed my things and gave up the primary bedroom for him. Then I took our wedding portrait down off the wall. Her eyes filled and she caught my hand and wouldn't let go. "Simon, you told me that portrait never comes down unless we're divorced. Are you telling me you want a divorce?" She saw the one already forming on my mouth. Helena came apart and started screaming at me. "Simon, don't you dare say one. There is nothing wrong with your vocal cords. You can talk. So talk to me!" A second later, afraid she'd frightened me, she gentled her voice. "Simon. Say two. Please say two." I pulled my hand free and looked at her, honestly puzzled. Had she forgotten what she signed the year she loved me most? Two chances if she was ever unfaithful. A third time, and the filing instructions and settlement went into effect on their own. They'd gone into effect a month earlier. Chapter 1 Our wedding portrait hit the floor with a crash. Glass burst apart and skittered to a stop around Helena's feet and mine. I picked up a broom without a word and swept the ruined frame, photograph and all, straight into the trash. Anger flooded back into Helena's eyes as she watched me do it. Nobody knew better than she did how carefully I'd once guarded that portrait. Now it wasn't worth the effort of picking up. She reached over and took Felix's hand. "If it means nothing to you, Felix and I will go get ours taken. His and mine are what hang on that wall from now on." I nodded calmly and answered, "One." Felix couldn't keep the triumph out of his eyes, but he made a show of being flustered. "Helena, isn't that a little much? I already feel awful enough about moving in and putting you out of your own bedroom, Simon." He'd barely finished when I booked a session with the same studio that shot our wedding photos. I forwarded the confirmation straight to Helena's phone. Her face went flat and unreadable. She took Felix by the hand and walked out without a word. It didn't bother me. In the guest room, a notification lit up my screen. My flight was confirmed. I pulled out a suitcase and started packing, piece by piece, everything that was mine. Then my phone chimed. Felix had posted to his LinkUp feed and tagged me in it. A full carousel of wedding photos. Laid out exactly like the post Helena made the day we got married. There was only one difference. The image at the center was a short looping clip. The two of them kissing like neither one could stand to pull away. I hit the like button without any expression at all and typed a single word underneath. "Congratulations." After midnight, Helena shoved my door open. She came at me reeking of liquor. "Simon, what is it going to take for you to forgive me? "Felix and I are getting portraits done. Why aren't you angry? I waited all day. Why didn't you come stop us? "You were never like this. You used to get jealous." I looked at her and said nothing. My thoughts had already drifted somewhere far away. She wasn't wrong. I used to be a jealous man. The first time I caught her cheating, I drove to her office and slapped Felix across the face. Helena paid me back by accusing me of falsifying research. The university terminated me, and my career went with it. The second time, she and Felix were in our own bed. I was steadier by then. No shouting, no scene. I just sent the photos I'd taken to the company-wide staff channel. To make sure Felix came out on top, Helena cut off the grant covering my mother's treatment. And the only road back to her forgiveness, the only way to keep my mother alive, was for me, a former law professor, to strip on a live-streamed party feed while strangers watched. After that, even the smallest firms in town sent my resume back unopened. Every source of income was gone, and my mother's bills didn't stop. Felix mentioned offhand that the food in the company cafeteria was terrible. So I went from lecturing at the front of a classroom to cooking Felix's meals. The hand that used to hold a pen blistered over from the burns. Dishwater softened the skin every day until the blisters tore open. They wept, crusted, and finally scabbed. Each round bought another week of my mother's medication from Helena. Then it started again. Eventually the scarring got thick enough that it took several layers before anything bled. Not so different from my heart by then. Helena cupped my face and got the words out in pieces. "Simon, I made him take the post down. "He got hurt protecting me. Once he's healed, I'll send him away. "Let's stop this. Please." My fingers went still. Chapter 2 I picked up my phone. Felix's post was gone, exactly as she said. Even the matching profile pictures he'd talked her into using had been taken down. Helena's photo was a picture of me now. So was her banner image. Her display name read: Simon Is My Only Love. Even her status line had changed: Forever with Simon. When we were dating I'd asked her for things like this more times than I could count, and never gotten them. Felix had known her ten days and gotten all of it. Now I finally had what I once wanted. It sat in my stomach like something left out too long, with flies working over it. I couldn't stand the sight of it. Helena passed out drunk against my feet. Her phone slid out of her pocket, and a string of messages from an account I didn't recognize lit up the screen. "Helena, does this mean we're on burner accounts from now on?" "That's kind of hot." "I picked up something new. Go easy on me this time, or I'll be stuck in Simon's bedroom again with you putting the ointment on yourself." "If Simon kills me, who's going to keep you happy?" My right hand started shaking before I noticed it. I pressed it flat against my chest, closed my eyes, and waited until it stopped. I wasn't eighteen anymore. That was the only mercy in any of it. I wasn't going to forgive anyone over a trick that cheap. At eighteen, all I'd wanted was for Helena to love me loudly, in front of everyone. At twenty-eight, all I wanted was out. Permanently. Helena threw up. It sobered her. Her hand went out on reflex, expecting a bowl of hangover soup to be sitting there. And expecting me to start in on her about it. There'd been so many nights like this, and I'd never once gotten tired of telling her to slow down. This time her hand closed on nothing. No voice at her ear either. "Simon, where's my soup?" She still hadn't gotten used to the fact that I didn't talk anymore. All she got back was a flat, weightless "Two." The room went quiet. Making soup didn't require a voice. I just didn't make it. My face didn't move, and hers darkened as she watched it. She kicked the wall. "Simon, I knew I was wrong the day your mother died. That last time was an accident. I swear it was. "Felix's mother went to prison taking the fall for this company. She handed him to the Ashcrofts. What was I supposed to do? "I slept with a man. That's all it was. Why can't you understand that?" In the dark, I nodded like I agreed with her. Then I produced a single syllable with nothing behind it. "One." Helena lunged forward and locked both hands around my arms. "Simon, say something. Curse me out." She grabbed my hand and swung it against her own face. "Hit me." I pulled free, shook my head, and said, "Two." Her grip went slack. Then, as though none of it had happened, she leaned lightly against my back. "Simon, go to sleep. I'm staying tonight. I'm not going anywhere." I didn't push her off. There was no point fighting it. Besides, she wouldn't be here long. Sure enough, inside of half an hour, Arthur Blaine, the house manager, knocked at the door. "Ms. Ashcroft. Mr. Danner says his stomach hurts." She was on her feet instantly, out the door without a backward glance. The hallway erupted behind her. I went into the bathroom and scrubbed every place she'd touched. I'd just gotten back into bed when Helena burst in, eyes red. "Simon, Felix started coughing up blood. Could you—" I answered "One" before she finished. She stopped short. She'd caught the smell of soap on me. "You showered again? "Do you hate me touching you that much?" Chapter 3 This time I didn't answer. The air around Helena went cold. She took my jaw in her hand and turned my face until I had to look at her. A cruel little smile pulled at her mouth. "If you're so determined to play the bigger person, I'll give you all the room you need." Helena shoved me into the back seat of her car. "Felix is having surgery. You're going to look after him. "You've taken a knife before. You've got the experience, don't you?" My hand started shaking again, and I touched my stomach without meaning to. There's a scar there. I got it stepping in front of a knife meant for Helena. First year of the marriage. Ashcroft Biomed was climbing fast, and climbing fast makes enemies. A competitor paid someone to put her in the ground. I took the blade instead. At the hospital, Helena held onto me and cried like a kid. She swore she'd spend the rest of her life being good to me. Now she was smiling and telling me I had experience getting stabbed. Somewhere in the fog, a message from my old mentor came through. "Simon, the fellowship came through. It's approved. "Don't panic. I've sent Vivian to come get you." Something in my chest that had been drifting for a year finally caught hold of solid ground. So I let Helena run every red light between the house and Grayhaven Medical Center. I let her drag me into the blood-draw room. I let her shout at the physician, "He has the same rare blood type as Felix. Take his." I didn't make a sound. The nurse got the needle into my vein, and then Helena told her to stop. She bent down until we were eye to eye. "Simon, talk. Say no. Say one word and nobody takes anything." She knew I'd been afraid of needles since I was a kid. She knew the sight of blood made me faint. She brought me anyway. For a second the face in front of me slid back into the face of the cool, guarded girl I used to know. Helena had pulled me out from under a crew of men collecting my father's debts and run me to a clinic without stopping once. When the nurse came at me with a needle, she covered my eyes, awkward about it. "Don't be scared," she'd said, right against my ear. "It stops hurting in a second." Later she emptied out savings she'd been building since grade school to clear what my father owed. Call this the last of it, I told myself. Call it paid. After today, neither of us would owe the other anything. So I managed something close to a smile, looked straight at her, and said quietly, "One." Helena shut her eyes. Her breathing went fast and shallow. She stood up. "Fine," she said. "Fine. Fine." Then, flatly: "Simon, you brought this on yourself." She turned on the medical staff. "You said you needed units on reserve. Is ten enough for you?" By the sixth tube I couldn't hold myself upright. The physician called for a stop, and Helena snapped, "Ten. Not one less." Her smile never got near her eyes. "My husband wants to be generous. Who am I to get in his way?" The physician started to argue. I patted his hand and nodded for him to keep going. There was no point. Ashcroft money was in the walls of that hospital. If a physician's objection meant anything there, my mother wouldn't have spent her last months waiting on medication Helena kept cutting off. I closed my eyes and felt myself draining out a tube at a time. My lips went white. My body started to sway. Then the sounds came through the wall. Felix, who wasn't supposed to be out of bed at all, called out loudly, "Helena, easy. Simon's right next door." What answered him was a woman's breathing I knew far too well. The curtain ripped back. The two of them were tangled on the hospital bed, half-dressed. Helena gave the doctors and nurses one cold look. "Out." In seconds the big room held nobody but the three of us. Helena smiled, ugly with it, and put her hands on Felix where I couldn't avoid seeing. "Keep your eyes open, Simon. You can't stand my hands on you, but there's no shortage of men who'll line up for them. "Don't ever think you're the only one I've got." Then she kissed him, right in front of me, like it was nothing. She'd hung my mother's locket out over the open window. The second I shut my eyes, the last thing my mother left me was going to be gone. When they finished, Helena threw the sheet at me. "Get rid of that." Felix gave me a look of manufactured embarrassment. "God, that's got all of my— "I couldn't possibly make you wash it." He got out of bed slowly and came over to where I stood. He lifted the locket off the latch. Turning it over in his fingers, smiling. "Weren't you the one telling everybody this thing keeps people safe? Then why is my heart acting up again with it on me? "I was going to give it back to you. But I think it's picked up something dirty. "Let me take care of it for you." "No—" Felix flicked the locket out the window. Chapter 4 I got to the window in time to watch the locket break apart on the pavement below. Traffic rolled over the pieces, and in a heartbeat there was nothing left of it. My eyes went wide, and every bit of rage I'd swallowed came loose at once. I threw myself at Felix. The words came out of me slurred and shapeless, but they were threats. Felix ducked behind Helena, covering his mouth, smiling over the top of his hand. "Helena, what did I tell you? "Push Simon hard enough and he talks." Helena's eyes darkened, as if she were actually weighing whether the method might work. When I came at him again, she shoved me back. I'd already lost too much blood. I went down and couldn't get up again, no matter how long I fought for it. She seemed about to step toward me. Then Felix spoke, sorrowful all of a sudden. "Helena, today's the anniversary of when Rocco died. "You promised me you'd find him somewhere beautiful to rest. "I think Willowridge would be perfect. "I just don't know whether Simon would be willing to give up the plot. "That's where his mother is, after all." The sound that tore out of my throat wasn't a word. I lunged for him, wanting nothing in the world but to shut that mouth. I never reached him. He was already falling backward. "My heart. It hurts. "Helena, I was only teasing him. I wanted to help him talk again. "How was I supposed to know he'd take it seriously? He knows about my heart, and he still shoved me— "He wants me dead. That's what this is. "I don't care if I die. But my mother's still in prison, and now I'll never see her again." I watched him work through it, badly, and tried to defend myself. Nothing came out but noise. Helena's eyes on me went colder by the second. "Simon, so all that meekness was an act. "What you actually wanted was Felix dead." She called for someone to get him to the emergency department. On her way out, she looked back at me with open disgust. "If anything happens to Felix, I will never forgive you." I stayed where I was on the floor. I didn't have anything left. Half an hour later, the director of Willowridge Memorial Gardens called. "Mr. Caldwell, I'm calling about Eleanor Caldwell's plot. Circumstances outside our control have forced us to close that section. "The remains have to be relocated immediately. Please come now. If you delay, we can't be responsible for their condition." A high ringing filled my ears. I didn't stop to think. I called a car and went straight to Willowridge. By the time I got there, the grave was already half open. I threw myself in front of the shovel. Felix shrank back into Helena's arms as though something had frightened him. "Helena, the adviser was right. There's something buried here that's making me sick. "The second Simon showed up, my heart started hurting again." I went down on one knee in front of Helena, shaking my head, and dragged two words up out of my throat by force. "Don't. Please." Helena was quiet for a moment. Then she told Marcus Vance to pull me back anyway. "Simon, Rosalind gave everything she had to this company. I'm not gambling with her son's safety. "Don't worry. I'll find your mother somewhere just as beautiful." Two men held me at the side while I watched them dig up the woman I'd buried weeks before. While nobody was paying attention, Felix leaned in close to my ear. "You still don't know, do you? Eleanor didn't die of her illness. "She saw Helena kissing me, and it killed her right there. "Same hospital bed we used today, actually. Eleanor was next door, listening to the two of us, a long time. "That night Helena had you cleaning up a mess I made at work, so you never picked up your mother's call. "You work so hard for me, Simon." I screamed. I tore loose from the men holding me and got both hands into Felix's hair. Somewhere in the struggle, a boot caught me in the stomach. The pain went through me white and total. I looked up. Helena stood over me with my mother's urn in her hands. I got both hands around my own throat and forced it out. "Give. My mother. Back." She laughed at me, short and cold. "So you were pretending after all. "If it takes pushing you to make you talk, then I'll keep pushing." Then she threw the urn straight off the cliff. It broke apart on the rocks, and my mother went out into the wind. "Mom—" I went after her down the slope, and the men caught me again and held. Helena gave the order the way she'd order lunch. "Keep him here until he can put a full sentence together. Then let him go home." She turned Felix's wheelchair around and walked away. She never noticed the helicopter coming in low from the far side of the ridge. When I got a look at who stepped out of it, my eyes burned. Helena got home distracted. Felix said her name several times before she answered. "Helena, everything we did today was to get Simon talking again. "Don't worry about it. He isn't going to hold it against you." Helena lifted her head. The unease wouldn't leave her. She was reaching for her phone to tell the men to bring me back when Arthur ran in, out of breath. "Ms. Ashcroft, someone just delivered certified copies of your divorce decree." Before she could react, Marcus Vance's voice came through the open line, and there was panic in it. "Ma'am, we have a problem—"