After a Year of Silence novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: What the Stone Costs

Quentin's POV

The cemetery gate closed at eight, and I came through it at ten past seven with a laptop bag and no plan for what to say.

Walter Linwood's stone was on the slope under a maple, with a coffee can of dead flowers at its base.

I had never seen it.

I had been told where it was, and I had not come.

I sat down on the wet grass in my work suit.

"Sir," I said.

He had hated being called sir.

"Walt," I said. "It's Quentin."

The wind moved the maple.

"I'm late," I said. "A year late. I'm sorry."

I did not know how to talk to a stone.

I talked to him plainly, as I had in his kitchen on Sundays.

He used to make me carry the dishes to the sink.

Three months after the wedding, he had asked what my intentions were toward his daughter.

"I paid your hospice out of the company's fund," I said. "I didn't tell the board. I told myself it was one favor, to be sorted out when I got home."

I opened the laptop on my knees.

"I'm sorting it out now."

First, the transfer.

I typed in the full amount for eleven weeks of care, plus the interest the fund's own rules named.

I sent it from my personal account to the company's.

It took most of my savings.

The screen asked if I was sure.

I pressed yes.

Second, the bonus.

The board had approved a payment of four hundred thousand dollars for opening the London hub on time.

I had not touched it.

I wrote to the board chair that I was giving it up in full.

I asked that it go to a fund for employees' medical emergencies, if the board would start one.

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