Chapter 6: Gerald's Silence

“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you still there?”

“I’m here,” I said, and hung up before she could ask me anything else.

Eight months. I sat with that number a long time, the flowers going soft and forgotten on my counter, until the shaking in my hands finally slowed enough to think straight. There was only one person left who might tell me the truth without a script sitting in front of him first.

Gerald.

I called ahead. He said come by, too fast, the way people do when they’ve been waiting for a call and dreading it at the same time.

His hands were shaking before I said a single word, and I hadn’t even sat down yet.

I found him in his study, surrounded by the usual mess — half-read books stacked wrong, a manuscript spread across the desk I’d spent three years helping him shape into something he could put his name on. He stood too fast when I walked in, knocking his knee against the drawer.

“Elena.” He said my name like it cost him something. “Come in, sit — can I get you tea, coffee—”

“I’m fine, Gerald.”

He ushered me to the chair by the window anyway, like the seating arrangement itself might protect him from whatever was coming. I sat. He didn’t. He picked up his coffee cup instead, and I watched it rattle once against the saucer before he steadied it with both hands.

I set the manuscript pages down between us. Didn’t open them.

“I brought your edits,” I said. “But that’s not really why I’m here.”

He didn’t look at the pages. Didn’t look at me either. His eyes went somewhere over my shoulder, out the window, like there was something out there worth staring at instead of his own study.

“I got a bouquet yesterday,” I said, watching him carefully. “Congratulations on the baby. Standing order. Monthly.”

Something crossed his face. Fast. There and gone, like a door cracked open and shut before I could see what was behind it.

“I didn’t know about that,” he said. Too quick.

“Gerald.”

“I didn’t.” Sharper than I’d ever heard from him. Then softer, almost apologetic. “I mean — I knew things were happening. I didn’t know the specifics.”

“What things?”

He set the cup down, both hands still around it like he needed something to hold onto.

“Elena, you have to understand. Margaret runs things a certain way. She always has. And I—” He stopped. Started again. “I told myself it wasn’t my place to interfere. That’s not the same as knowing everything.”

“But you knew something.”

He didn’t answer. His knuckles had gone white around the cup. In three years I’d never seen Gerald like this — not scared of a deadline, not scared of a bad review. Scared the way a man gets when the silence he’s been keeping finally runs out of room.

I leaned forward.

“Gerald, what aren’t you telling me?”

His cup rattled once against the saucer. He set it down like it weighed more than it should have, and when he finally looked at me, his eyes were wet.

“There are things I should have said a long time ago.” His voice cracked right down the middle of my name. “Elena — things I let happen because I told myself it wasn’t my place to—”

The study door opened without a knock.

Margaret stood in the frame. Smile fixed in place, eyes cold as anything I’d seen at that luncheon.

“Gerald,” she said. “A word.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​