Ashes of Silence
The morning after felt strange, as if the house itself had been rearranged in the night. The boy woke to the familiar ticking of the clock, but the sound no longer pierced him with the same sharpness. It was softer somehow, like footsteps moving further away.
Downstairs, his father sat at the table not with his usual ledger, but with the letter.....creased, fragile, the ink faded at the edges. His rough hands turned it over again and again, as if afraid that if he stopped, it would vanish.
The boy lingered in the doorway, heart thumping. His father glanced up once, his eyes darker than usual, rimmed with something that might have been grief or memory or both.
"You shouldn't have found these," he said at last, voice low. Not angry, not scolding. Just tired. "They were not meant for you."
The boy swallowed. His throat ached with all the words pressing to rise. But when he opened his mouth, only one emerged: "Why?"
His father blinked, as though startled by the question. For a moment, silence stretched long. Then, slowly, he said, "Because some things hurt too much to carry forward. Some things belong to the river."
The boy stepped into the kitchen, his bare feet whispering against the worn boards. "But the river carried them to me," he said, almost a whisper.
The man's hand trembled against the paper. His gaze dropped. "Then the river is cruel."
Later that day, the boy returned to the attic. He lit his candle and spread the letters once more. His hands moved differently now.....less like a thief hiding secrets, more like a caretaker, preserving something fragile.
He read Anna's words again, slowly, aloud this time:
If time is a river, maybe it remembers better than people do.
The attic seemed to breathe around him, the dust stirring faintly in the candle's glow. He whispered her line again, tasting it, and in it he heard something else: time remembers even when we try to forget.
That night, at supper, his father said nothing of the letter. But the silence was no longer sealed tight; it felt cracked, uncertain, as though words might yet leak through.
The boy wanted to push. To ask: What happened to Anna? Why did you bury her voice in the river? Why did you leave her there alone?
But he didn't. He waited. And maybe that was braver.
Days passed this way. The letters burned in the attic. His father moved through the house slower than before, pausing sometimes by the window, staring at the horizon as if listening to something the boy could not hear.
Once, late at night, the boy caught him standing in the doorway of the attic. He had not lit the candle, had not touched the papers. He only stood there, breathing the silence.
When their eyes met, his father turned away without a word. But the boy felt something pass between them.....an unspoken acknowledgment, like a shadow giving shape to light.
The river swelled with autumn rains. The boy returned again and again, sitting at its edge with the tin box in his lap. He began to write longer notes now, not only to Anna but to his father, too. Notes he could never say aloud.
I know you were a boy once. I know you tried to speak. I found your voice in the water.
I'm not afraid of your silence anymore. It's only a wall. And walls can fall.
Sometimes he left the notes in the tin, letting the river guard them. Sometimes he folded them into the chest with the others, trusting that time itself would keep them safe.
And once, on a daring afternoon, he slipped one beneath his father's ledger in the kitchen. He never asked if it was found. But a few days later, he noticed his father's hand resting on the ledger longer than usual, as though weighing something unseen.
One evening, when the light fell red through the windows, his father finally spoke.
"I used to sit by that river every day," he said, voice quiet but steady. "I used to think it could hold all the words I couldn't say. But rivers don't keep.....they carry. They take things away."
The boy held his breath.
His father looked at him, really looked, and for the first time there was no mask of silence, no wall of indifference. Only rawness, old and jagged.
"But you found them," he whispered, almost to himself. "You brought them back."
The boy nodded, his throat too tight for speech.
And in that moment, the silence between them felt different again.....not heavy, not suffocating, but tender, as if silence itself could heal when shared.
The boy did not sleep that night. He lay awake, listening to the house breathe, his father's words replaying over and over. You brought them back. They felt like an opening, a door cracked just enough for light to slip through.
He wanted to push it wide, but doors that had been shut for decades did not swing easily.
So he waited.
The next days passed in a strange quiet. His father moved differently.....slower, yes, but also more present, as though some invisible weight had shifted. He lingered at windows, paused by the clock, touched the chair at the table where Anna's absence still lived.
The boy followed him with his eyes, silent, patient.
At night he returned to the letters. He read them aloud, line after line, until the attic seemed full of voices. Sometimes he imagined his father as a boy again, sitting cross-legged beside Anna, their knees touching as they scribbled in notebooks, sharing their fears of silence, of time.
Sometimes, he imagined himself there too, a third presence, bridging what had been lost.
One evening, as dusk fell purple across the fields, his father came into the attic. For the first time, he did not stand in the doorway. He stepped inside, his hand brushing dust from the old beams, his eyes falling on the letters spread across the floor.
The boy froze, his candle flickering between them.
His father knelt slowly, his joints stiff, his face unreadable. He picked up one of Anna's letters.....the one that read, If time is a river, maybe it remembers better than people do.
He read it silently, lips moving faintly, then let out a breath that shook.
"She believed that," he murmured. His eyes glistened. "She really believed time would remember for us."
The boy's mouth opened, but no sound came.
His father's hand trembled on the page. "And maybe… maybe she was right. Because here you are. Reading what I tried to bury."
His voice cracked. He set the letter down carefully, like glass. Then he rose, and before leaving, he placed a hand briefly.....awkwardly, but firmly.....on the boy's shoulder.
The touch burned like sunlight.
After that, the silence in the house changed. It was still there, yes, but softer, fractured, as though words might break through at any moment.
The boy began to notice small things: his father humming low while mending a hinge, his eyes lingering longer at supper, his footsteps pausing outside the attic door as if listening.
One morning, the boy found a slip of paper tucked into the diary, written in his father's hand. Only five words:
I hear you. I remember.
The boy held the note to his chest, his throat thick. He had not expected an answer.
Yet the river still pulled at him. He returned often, sitting on the damp bank, the tin box in his lap. He began to think of the river not as cruel, not as a thief, but as a keeper.....yes, it carried things away, but only so they could return when the time was right.
On a gray afternoon, as the water rushed swollen with autumn rain, he whispered: "I'll give it back, when I'm ready."
He pressed the tin box into the reeds, burying it half in mud. He left it there, trembling, uncertain. But he felt lighter walking home.
That night, by the fire, his father spoke again. "Some things must burn before they can live," he said, almost absently, staring into the flames.
The boy thought of silence. Of letters buried and then unearthed. Of promises whispered to the dark.
And he thought: maybe silence itself could burn. Maybe that was what they were doing now.....letting the ashes fall, so something new could grow.
He did not say it aloud. He only looked at his father, and for the first time, his father met his gaze and did not look away.
The silence between them glowed.....not empty, not suffocating, but alive.
Ashes of silence.