The Book Quiet Novels & Stories

Some words were meant to fade, not stay. Later that night, he went for a walk along the boardwalk. A small bookstore had left its lights on, so he stepped inside. It was quiet only the faint sound of pages turning. He ran his fingers along the spines until he found it her book. “The Quiet Between Us.” He’d read it before publication, but seeing it here, on a shelf, felt different. Realer. He opened to the dedication page. “For the ones who taught me how to leave and the one who taught me how to stay.”

I thought about closing the vent, shoving things inside it to block the sound out, but then I’d have no air coming into this tiny room. I began to laugh loudly, then screamed at the top of my lungs, “you’re trying to drive me crazy, well good luck with that asshole, should have been around a few months ago, deal with the bullshit I’ve dealt with, this noise won’t do it.” I grabbed the book about baby steps to a clear and focused mind and began reading as Scarlett hummed in my head. I’ll drown out this sound or just be annoyed with it, but I won’t go crazy, and I won’t fail this test. I found the book interesting and practical, but it also stated that the mind needs quiet time to recharge a

I let myself sit inside that word—quiet—for a long minute. Quiet was a country I had not been able to find on any map for as long as I had been wearing my sister's name. Quiet was the inside of a basement only as long as it took someone to come back to it. Quiet was a roadside in Connecticut between two sets of headlights. I had not slept inside a quiet in over a year. He felt the shift in me. His hand on my back stilled, then resumed its slow, even circle. "Breathe," he said, low. "There is nothing to listen for. Not anymore."

But it was a good quiet. The kind you fought for. The kind you kept. *[End of Chapter 74]* --------------

"A shell of her former self, eh? That's spot on, Grandpa. Let's just focus on ourselves from now on. They're nothing to us." He nodded in agreement. "I won't get worked up because of her anymore. We'll live well together." Jolene dropped by not long after. She came bearing gifts for Bruce, but didn't plead for Leon. "Bruce, I'll get to the end of this. I'm just glad you're alright." Bruce didn't give her a warm response. She felt guilty and left on her own. However, she felt an odd sense of emptiness growing inside her as she walked away, leaving her increasingly uneasy. She lit a cigarette—something she hadn't touched in a long time.

Too small to tell someone. A waterglass that didn't stand in the morning where she left it in the evening. Wet footprints in the hall, although no one had been outside. And last night — a children's song. Quiet. Under her bed. She hadn't looked. Not because she was afraid. Because she knew there was nothing there. And that just made it worse. That morning it knocked on her door. Without waiting for the answer, Lena Weber joined. She seemed pale than usual. “You heard it, didn’t you?”

"I got the house back. And every single person who hurt you is going to pay." Outside, the winter wind howled, and the cries of Aunt Zoe and Quinn began to fade. Inside, the heating was on full blast. I took a long, deep breath, feeling the weight that had crushed my chest for 20 years finally begin to lift. But I didn't expect Quinn to actually have the nerve to send over a text full of arrogant taunts.

At some point he becomes aware that the household is quiet in the way it has been quiet for three evenings, the inhabited quiet of a space with another person in it, and he works in the inhabited quiet and he does not examine what it is doing to the eleven years of silence in this tower and in this room and he does not examine what it means that the quality of the quiet has changed and he does not examine any of the things he is not examining. He works. The pen moves. The sea sounds.

My fingertips went cold for a second, but I felt no regret. Turning away, I walked over to the river's edge and let the ring drop from my fingers into the water. "Let the past sink to the bottom," I whispered. The river rippled once, then stilled, as if nothing had ever happened. The sun still shone brightly, and the breeze was gentle. All those past hurts that once took my breath away were just a tiny drop in the vastness of the world. I lifted my head and started walking toward the far-off horizon.

I have never trusted quiet. Not the gentle kind you get after rain, when the world smells rinsed clean and birds reclaim their arrogance. I mean the kind of quiet that arrives after violence, when people pretend the silence belongs to them and not to whatever is simply waiting its turn. The village had that second kind.