All Chapters of When Silence Became Goodbye: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

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 f

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 m

Helena took the two certified copies and stood there without moving.She could no longer hear a word the man on the phone was saying.She read the names on the papers again and again.Both signature blocks were there, hers beside Simon's, in the same hand she'd used the day they filed for their license.Then she saw the date.Judgment entered. Yesterday.She'd spent all of yesterday with Felix. She'd never set foot in a courtroom with Simon.The line between her brows loosened a little, and she tossed the papers back at Arthur."Don't bring me somebody's idea of a joke again," she said, impatient with him.Then she picked the phone back up. "Tell Simon that forging a couple of documents isn't going to scare me."Until he apologizes to Felix out loud and swears he'll leave him alone, he stays where he is."There was a silence on the other end before Marcus answered, and when he did, he sounded afraid. "Ma'am, somebody took Mr. Caldwell. They came in hard. Our people couldn't

She'd barely laid it over me before I opened my eyes.I smiled at her. "I wasn't asleep. Just resting."Vivian stopped short, then settled the blanket across my legs."It's getting cold out here. You're not dressed for it."Then she ran through it like a status report. "We found what was left of your mother. It isn't much, but I had a service held for her at the cliff."What we recovered went back to her hometown. Eleanor's buried there now, near her own people."I've traced the research-fraud allegation to its source. Counsel is filing the defamation suit."There's also—"I cut her off."Vivian."She stopped."Thank you."When she was dying, my mother kept talking about the persimmon tree outside the house she grew up in.After she was gone, all I could think about was keeping her close, so I buried her at Willowridge.It never occurred to me to send her home.Vivian had thought further than I could.Something finally gave in that guarded face of hers, close to a smile