Chapter 2 - THE SILENCE OF THE LAMB
The night that followed was a symphony of silence,
the kind of quiet that feels like it’s waiting for a scream.
Ethan wouldn't eat dinner.
He sat in his room,
lining up his wooden trains in a perfect,
unbroken row on the rug.
Blue,
red,
green,
yellow.
He didn't look at me when I brought him a sandwich.
He didn't even look at the trains.
He just sat there,
rocking back and forth,
his shadow stretching long against the wall.
“Gary makes Mom quiet,”
he whispered suddenly.
I sat on the floor beside him,
careful not to touch him too quickly.
“What does that mean,
Ethan?”
He pointed to the door.
“Gary talks.
Mom listens.
Then Mom is quiet like the birds in winter.”
I thought about the way she had stood in the kitchen.
The way she had watched the belt strike.
She wasn't quiet because she was scared of Gary.
She was quiet because she was listening to him.
Like she was waiting for instructions.
I went into the hallway,
the floorboards groaning under my feet.
I could hear them in the living room.
The TV was on,
but the volume was low.
Gary was speaking in a low,
urgent tone.
“We’re almost there,
Sarah,”
he said.
Sarah was my mother’s name.
“But the girl is a problem.”
“Brooke is just protective,”
my mother replied,
her voice sounding tired and thin.
“She’ll settle down.”
“She’s looking for things,”
Gary hissed.
“I see it in her eyes.
She’s looking for the cracks.”
I held my breath,
pressed against the wall in the shadows.
“If she finds out about the settlement,
it’s over,”
Gary continued.
“The boy is the only witness that matters.”
“And the boy doesn't speak.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Settlement?
Witness?
The construction accident that killed my father.
It had happened five years ago.
A crane had collapsed on a site in downtown Columbus.
There had been a lawsuit,
but the company had won.
They said my father had been in an area he wasn't supposed to be.
They said it was his own fault.
Mom had gotten nothing but a small life insurance payout.
But Ethan had been there that day.
Dad had taken him to the site because the sitter had canceled.
Ethan was four years old.
He had been sitting in the truck,
watching the "big yellow cranes."
I remembered him crying for weeks afterward.
“The yellow crane fell on the blue truck,”
he used to say.
But no one listened to a four-year-old who couldn't stay still.
Especially not a four-year-old with autism.
I realized then that Gary Mills hadn't met my mother at Murphy’s Bar by accident.
He had hunted her.
He had found the one person who knew the truth but couldn't tell it.
May you like
And he was making sure Ethan stayed silent.
Permanently.
