On A Quiet Street Novels & Stories

She says nothing. They move towards the grand staircase. The secretary goes first. My grandfather follows slowly. I walk behind them. The house is always so quiet. It is too quiet. I prefer the noise of the city. We reach the bottom of the stairs. The front door is already open. A car waits outside. It is a black sedan. My car is parked already. It sits next to the sedan. My grandfather stops at the door. He turns his head slightly. He looks back at me. His eyes are cold.

"She told you." "Yes." He was quiet for a long time. The passage held the sound of the street beyond it, muffled and distant, someone's cart on the main road, a door closing two houses down, the ordinary sounds of the Lowlands morning on the other side of the walls. Theo stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the end of the passage and I stood near him and did not say anything because there was nothing useful to say and I had learned a long time ago that filling a silence just because it was there was not the same as helping.

Serena had done her homework and zeroed in on the bar that Heather had frequented during her last days. Unhurriedly, the young woman turned the corner onto Maple Street, her boots clicking against the salted pavement. The street was half-asleep, muffled under the hush of winter, with only a few cars parked along the curb, their windshields fogged from the morning chill.

The neighborhood was virtually a quiet one, single detached houses that if not for some children playing on a few lawns, you'd assume it's empty. Soft howling of the wind could easily be heard as it was accompanied by some birds chirping and the flight of a few fallen leaves like it would be in the autumn. Although our footsteps on the pavement was the most prominent sound, a few cars passing by and a bike had dulled that for a few seconds. Some seconds had passed and not a word had been said between us. I was still slowly trailing behind her to avoid bumping into her fragile frame in case she decided to stop abruptly.

“I’m hoping that you’ll be able to explain some of the… oddities, I suppose, that I’ve noticed in this little town of yours.” I shrugged, falling into step beside him as we headed down the high street. It was eerily quiet – usually the town would be bustling on a Friday morning, teeming with the older residents in line at the bakery, or hanging around outside Waypavers. I imagined that most of the crowd were tucked away at the diner, and I felt a wave of relief that I was not there for the morning rush.

I don’t feel this at ease around men I hire myself and have known for years. “Have you noticed, though, how quiet the street was when we left the apartment?” “It’s early.” “Yeah, but this is New York; there’s always someone outside, no matter how late or how early it is. I don’t think there was even a pigeon on the sidewalk.”

Perfect height, I decided, recalling our earlier kiss and how perfectly her body fit against mine. Downtown Stump River was eerily quiet. Most residents were tucked away in their homes, leaving the deserted businesses with dark windows and locked doors. The only sign of life was a lone car patiently waiting for the traffic light to turn green, its tires whispering against the pavement before disappearing into the night.

The taxi came to a smooth halt outside a tall, aging building nestled on a quieter street west of downtown Los Angeles. The area had a strange silence about it—neither too dark nor too loud, yet it felt like the city had forgotten this corner of itself. Streetlamps buzzed overhead, casting a pale orange hue across cracked sidewalks and rusted stair rails.

Finally, after what felt like hours trudging down empty side roads and past shuttered shop windows, I reached the quiet street where my apartment was located. It was really quiet, the kind of quiet where you hear crickets instead of cars at night, where the neighbors leave their porch light on until midnight just in case. My shoes scraped against the pavement, loud in the stillness, and the only other sound was my own breathing. The town was very quiet but boomed with life in its own gentle way. Tall trees lined the sidewalks, and colorful flowers grew in front of many houses. I could smell the sea air even from here, fresh and salty.

It was quiet in the countryside, too quiet sometimes. The kind of silence that left space for thoughts to turn dark. Her house sat tucked at the edge of a narrow gravel road, surrounded by hills and whispering trees. No neighbors close enough to hear. No traffic. No noise. Just birdsong and wind. And lately, the occasional low hum of aching discomfort beneath her skin.