In Silence, I Let You Go novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Founder Wall

Hannah's POV

Dorothy Corbin stood in the Fieldwork lobby at two in the morning in her green cardigan, holding a hammer.

She had a nail in her mouth and a framed photograph under one arm.

The night guard stood next to her with a stepladder.

"I couldn't sleep," Dorothy said around the nail.

She took it out and tried again.

"I saw the video on my niece's phone. All of it. The ballroom, and that poor girl, and you holding up that little certificate."

"Dorothy."

"I raised him," she said. "I'm allowed to say what I think of the result."

Maggie had driven me over in her scrubs, still pinned with her grandmother's brooch.

Colter had walked in behind us and stopped inside the doors.

He stood against the glass and kept his hands in his pockets.

Dorothy looked at the pale rectangle on the wall, the place where the first-office photo had hung for six years.

"This is the spot, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I brought mine."

She turned the frame around.

It was the garage photograph, the same one, printed larger than the original.

Tim stood in it at twenty-four, with his sleeves rolled.

I stood next to him at twenty-two, in a hoodie, holding a laptop with a sticker on it.

We were both laughing at something the photographer had said.

"I had it in my front hall for years," she said. "I looked at it every morning going out to work."

"You two looked so happy."

"We were," I said. "I thought we both were."

Keep reading free with an account. Start In Silence, I Let You Go from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.