“But he knows the adults around him have been keeping something from him. That uncertainty has frightened him enough to approach a stranger outside his school.”
“I wasn’t a stranger,” Silas said.
Daniel turned.
Silas continued, “I saw her help someone.”
His father’s expression shifted. The argument seemed to leave him all at once.
He sat down on the chair beside the bed.
For a while, nobody spoke.
Then Daniel picked up the framed photograph.
“Elena didn’t die,” he said.
Silas went completely still.
Daniel looked down at the woman in the picture.
“She became very sick after you were born. Not the kind of sick you catch from another person. She was sad and frightened, and sometimes she couldn’t tell which thoughts were true.”
Silas moved one step into the room.
“Where did she go?”
“She left.”
“Why?”
“She believed you would be safer without her.”
