After a Year of Silence novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Out Loud

Quentin called the all-hands for nine the next morning, and every one of the forty came.

I stood at the back by the window with my arms folded.

The Freight Weekly piece was still on every screen, with the staff quoted by name.

Gwen had promised to bring something to the gala for everyone who called her a liar, and every person here knew it.

Miles stood beside me and said nothing, and I was grateful.

Quentin walked to the front of the open floor with nothing in his hands.

No notes, no microphone.

He stood on the same patch of carpet where he had taken my hand on the day he came back.

"On Monday I walked in here and grabbed my wife in front of you," he said.

His voice carried to the back without any help.

"She said no. She said it with her hands, because I had not given her another way. She was right, and I was wrong."

Nobody moved.

"For three years she asked me to keep our marriage private. I resented it, and I did not tell her so in words she could use. I told her in silence. Then I left for a year."

He looked down for a second and made himself look up again.

"I didn't leave because I stopped loving her. I left because I was proud. I let someone tell me what she wanted, and I never checked. I called once. I should have called every day, and I should have got on a plane when her father died."

The room had gone very still.

The man in the gray vest at the back wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

"I also spent company money that was not mine to spend," Quentin said. "I've repaid it and told the board. If they remove me, that's fair."

"What else?" a voice called from the left.

It was the analyst I had hired in March.

"What else do you want us to know?"

He looked straight at her.

"That I'm not asking you to like me. I'm asking you to hold me to this. If I ever stand in this room and put my hands on someone without asking, the dispatchers can walk me out."

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