After a Year of Silence novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Gwen Gets Her Say

Harper's POV

We moved into the glass conference room, because Gwen asked to sit down.

Forty people watched through the walls and pretended to work.

Miles had called the board chair, and she arrived eight minutes later in a gray coat with her phone still in her hand.

She took the chair at the head of the table.

Gwen sat across from me with her hands folded in front of her.

The twelve letters lay on the table between us.

I had still not opened one.

"Say it from the beginning," the chair said.

"I don't have anything to hide," Gwen said.

Nobody answered that.

"The week Walter died, Harper called Quentin," she said. "Thirty-one times. She was a mess. I was with her, and I told her to try the London number."

"It was your number," I said.

"It was my second phone. I got it for work trips. I thought if you left the messages somewhere, you'd feel better."

"You told me it was his."

"I told you what you needed to hear."

Quentin's hands were flat on the table.

"You told me she asked me to stay away," he said.

"She did say it. On the third night."

"I said nothing like that," I said.

"You said you couldn't look at him." Gwen's voice stayed calm. "That's the same thing."

"It is not the same thing."

"You were grieving. I translated."

I stared at her.

I had known her for six years.

She had taught me which restaurants in the harbor district would hold a table for us at the last minute.

She had stayed on my kitchen floor with me, and held my hair back when I was sick.

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