Page 33 of The Weight of Her Silence
She saw the change in Caleb that afternoon. He lingered closer to her, fetched her tea without being asked, and sat beside her on the couch with a book he didn’t really read.
She didn’t question it. She simply reached for his hand and laced her fingers through his. The boy didn’t speak, but his grip was tighter than usual. As if afraid she might vanish if he blinked.
Chapter 27
The Questions We’re Afraid to Ask
Ava heard the silence before she stepped through the front door. It wasn’t the peaceful kind. Not the comfortable quiet of a house where people were resting, or reading, or safe. It was the brittle, suffocating kind—like the whole place had stopped breathing.
She dropped her backpack by the stairs, shrugged off her coat, and paused to listen.
Nothing.
No hum of the TV.
No distant clatter in the kitchen.
No soft coughs from upstairs and then—Caleb’s door shut.
Softly. Deliberately.
She climbed the stairs slowly, her footsteps sinking into the carpet. Her brother was lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling with his headphones on. But she knew the music wasn’t playing. She knew that blank look. She’d worn it herself lately.
“Hey,” she said, standing in the doorway.
He didn’t look at her.
She came in anyway.
“Did he lie to you too?” Caleb asked, barely above a whisper.
Ava froze. “What?”
Caleb sat up now, pulling the headphones from his neck.
“Dad.
Did he ever lie to you about where he was?”
Ava felt a chill spread through her chest, icy and slow.“What are you talking about?”
He shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter.”
But it did.
Ava could feel it—something important had cracked. Something in her brother that had once believed their father was a man of his word.
“I don’t know what he tells you,” Caleb added.
“But I think he’s hiding something. I think he’s been hiding it for a long time.”
She wanted to brush it off. He was just a kid.
Just confused.
But he wasn’t wrong. She had noticed the same things. The late nights. The hollow excuses. The strained look in their mother’s eyes whenever Nate walked into the room.
