In Silence, I Let You Go novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Loading Dock

Hannah pulls the framed first-office photo out of a dumpster, Colter offers his coat, and Tim calls with a four million dollar release; she says no and finds the wedding fund empty.

I carried the box to the sidewalk and opened the lid under a streetlight.

My coffee mug was in it, and a dead fern, and the stack of nurse interview notes I kept for the product meetings.

My laptop was not in it.

"The laptop belongs to the company, ma'am," the guard said from the doorway. "He told me to keep it."

"It has my work on it."

"I know. I'm sorry."

I looked past him through the glass at the lobby wall.

For six years the first thing a visitor saw at Fieldwork was a framed photo of two people in a rented garage, grinning over a folding table.

Tim and me, twenty-four and twenty-two, with takeout and a router.

Tonight there was a pale rectangle on the paint and a nail with nothing on it.

"Where's the photo?" I asked.

The guard rubbed the back of his neck. "Facilities took it down this afternoon. It's out at the loading dock."

"Out where?"

"By the bins."

I walked around the building in my party shoes with the box on my hip.

The dock was a concrete bay lit by one yellow bulb.

The frame was in the second dumpster, face up, lying on a torn bag of catering napkins.

I climbed onto the rim and pulled it out by the corner.

The glass was whole.

The two of us looked up at me, young and sure, and I wiped a smear of cream cheese off Tim's face with my thumb.

"You'll want to hold it by the sides."

I turned so fast I almost lost the box.

A man stood at the edge of the light, tall, in a dark overcoat, with his tie pulled loose.

I knew him from board meetings.

Colter Hartigan, the independent director from the fund that had led our first big round.

He had left the party early, before the game, and I had not seen him since the bell.

"One of your engineers sent me the clip," he said. "It was in a channel I'm only supposed to read. I thought you'd come for your laptop."

"They kept it."

"Of course they did."

He did not say he was sorry.

He took off his coat and held it out, and only then did I notice I was shaking.

I took it because the night was cold and my arms were full.

It smelled like cedar and rain.

My phone rang in the pocket of my dress.

Tim.

I stood in a stranger's coat in the light of one bulb and let it ring four times, and then I answered and put it on speaker.

I did not say hello.

"Hannah." He sounded tired, which was how he sounded when he had already decided how the conversation would end. "Where are you? I've been calling you for an hour."

I said nothing.

"Okay. Listen. I know tonight was a shock. I should have told you privately, and I'm sorry you heard it that way."

Colter's face did not move, but his jaw tightened.

"Here's what I can do," Tim said. "I've talked to legal. Fieldwork will buy out your options for four million dollars, cash, and we keep this out of the papers. You sign a release Monday morning. That's more than generous, and you know it."

My options were worth forty-one million at the opening price.

I had checked three times that afternoon, standing at the back of the trading floor, thinking of the kitchen we'd buy.

"And if I don't sign?" I asked.

"Then the board may decide there's cause. After tonight's behavior. You'd get nothing."

"What behavior?"

"Walking out. Leaving the party. People saw you." He lowered his voice, gentle again. "Don't make me do it that way, Han."

I looked at the photo in my hands.

"No," I said.

"Hannah."

"No."

I hung up.

My thumb was steady, which surprised me.

"Four million," Colter said quietly.

"Don't."

"I wasn't going to say anything kind."

For the first time that night, something in my chest loosened enough to let me breathe.

"I need to get to my friend's place in Park Slope," I said. "I'll take a car."

"My car is on the corner."

"I don't know you."

"You've been in eleven of my board meetings." He nearly smiled. "You corrected my pronunciation of Kubernetes once. I still think about it."

I almost laughed, and then I almost cried, and I did neither.

I let him carry the box.

In the back seat, in the dark, I opened my banking app because my hands needed a job.

I wanted to see how much money I had left for a hotel.

The checking balance was normal.

The savings account, where Tim and I had put every spare dollar for the wedding we kept not scheduling, said zero.

The history showed one transfer, made Wednesday afternoon, for two hundred and twelve thousand dollars.

It had gone out the day before the bell, in a single piece, to an account I did not recognize.

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