He Thought I Was Deaf, I Heard Everything novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Furniture

Nina plays deaf at breakfast while Tobias talks over her, tells Peter what she heard, and refuses to leave because the proof is locked in Tobias's safe; Geneva arrives and whispers that she should enjoy the house while it's hers.

I did not sleep.

Tobias slept beside me with one arm across my ribs, and his breathing filled the whole room.

I had forgotten that people breathe loudly.

I had forgotten the refrigerator downstairs, the radiator ticking, the neighbor's dog.

Each sound arrived without asking and stayed.

At six I lay still and counted them, because counting was the only thing I could do without moving my face.

At seven Tobias woke and kissed my shoulder, and I made myself yawn.

Breakfast was the first test.

The housekeeper set down a tray of eggs, and the plates clacked, and the clack went through my skull.

I did not flinch.

Tobias sat across from me with his phone propped against the juice and talked to the housekeeper.

"She had a long night," he said.

"She's been tired since the surgery, you know."

"She won't mind if we skip the doctor this week."

I buttered my toast and looked at the window.

The housekeeper looked at me with something close to pity, then at him with something that was not.

He signed good morning to me, three clumsy signs, and smiled for no one.

I signed good morning back and thought, I will remember every word you say in this house.

At ten I told him in sign that I wanted to walk by myself.

He nodded without looking up from his phone.

I walked forty blocks to West 68th Street.

Peter's lab was on the second floor of an old brick building, above the clinic where I had cried the day before.

He opened the door before I knocked.

He wore the same grey shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and his hair was sticking up in the back.

"Say something," he said.

"Hello, Peter."

He closed his eyes and breathed out.

"Your voice is lower than I remembered."

"I haven't used it in two years."

"It's good." His throat worked. "It's very good."

I had meant to be calm.

Instead I took out my phone and pressed play.

The recording was thin and hissing, and underneath the hiss was Tobias.

Tobias's voice came up thin under the hiss, and it did not take long to say what it meant.

Peter did not move while it played.

When it ended he put one hand flat on the workbench, hard.

"Ninety days," he said.

I looked at him.

"You were standing by a marble column," he said.

"I never told you about a column," I said.

"You hold on to something when you're scared." He rubbed his jaw. "Old museums have columns."

I was too tired to chase it, and I let it go.

"He means it," I said.

"And the merger closes soon. I'm worth more to him gone."

"Your forty percent."

"The filter is mine, Peter. Every line of it is mine. The notebooks are in his safe. I need them before I can prove a single thing."

He pulled out a stool and sat me on it.

"Stay here," he said.

"I have a room upstairs and a lock on the door. You don't go back to that house."

"If I don't go back, he knows something has changed."

"Nina."

"He thinks I'm furniture," I said.

"Right now that's the best thing I own."

He looked at me for a long time.

He had looked at me that way once, across a lab bench at two in the morning, years ago, before I married a man who stood outside my door every night.

"Then you take this," he said, and put a tiny black recorder in my palm.

"It holds forty hours. Keep it in your pocket. Come back every few days and I'll tune the array."

"And if he touches you," he added, very quietly, "you call me before you do anything else."

I closed my fingers around it.

I walked home slowly, listening to New York.

Horns, a pigeon, someone's laugh.

A child on a stoop was singing a song with no tune.

I stopped and listened to her all the way through.

When I came up our front steps the door was already open.

Tobias stood in the hall with a young woman in a cream coat.

She was twenty-four at most, with glossy blonde hair and a face that had never been told no.

"Nina," he said, slowly and loud, "this is Geneva. She's joining us at the company."

I recognized the girl's voice before she said a word.

She stepped close and took my hand in both of hers, with a big sweet smile, and put her mouth close to my ear.

She spoke in a bright whisper.

"Enjoy the house while it's yours."

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