Page 111 of The Silence Between

“Where's Leo?” Diego demanded before I could even speak.

Eleanor touched his shoulder gently. “Let Ethan explain.”

I sat down on the couch, trying to project a calm I didn't feel. “Leo is in the hospital,” I began, choosing my words with extreme care. “He's been admitted to the psychiatric unit for treatment.”

Mari's sharp intake of breath was the only sound in the sudden stillness.

“Your brother has been under an enormous amount of stress for a very long time,” I continued. “Yesterday, with everything happening at once—the court hearing, your mother in the hospital—it became too much for him to handle alone.”

“Is he going to die?” Sophie's small voice broke my heart.

“No, sweetheart. Absolutely not.” I moved to sit beside her. “He's getting help so he can get better. Just like you'd go to the hospital if you broke your arm or had pneumonia. His mind and his emotions need some healing right now.”

Diego stood abruptly, turning away from us. “This is bullshit. He was fine. He's always fine.”

“No, he wasn't,” Mari said quietly. “We just didn't want to see it.”

The anger in Diego's posture crumpled slightly. “When can we see him?”

“I don't know yet. The doctors will let us know when he's ready for visitors. But I promise I'll take you as soon as they say it's okay.”

Sophie leaned against my side, her small body trembling slightly. “Was it our fault? Because we need so much?”

“No.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “None of this is anyone's fault. Not yours, not Leo's. Your brother has been carrying too much for too long. Sometimes even the strongest people need help.”

“So what happens now?” Mari asked, the practical question anchoring us all.

“Now we work together to manage things until Leo comes home. I'll be here as much as you need me. Eleanor will help. Damien is handling the legal issues.” I looked at each of them in turn. “We'll get through this. Together.”

“You won't disappear?” Diego's question came with a challenging stare. “Now that things are really hard?”

“I'm here for as long as all of you need me,” I said firmly. “Period.”

The collective exhale that followed told me everything about their deepest fear—that like so many adults before me, I would walk away when things got difficult. That they would be abandoned yet again.

“I promise,” I added, meeting each of their eyes. “I'm not going anywhere.”

That night, after the siblings were finally asleep, I returned to the bridge alone. I needed to face it—the place where I'd almost lost Leo forever, the concrete ledge where he'd stood ready to end everything.

The wind was colder now, cutting through my jacket as I stared at the spot where he'd been. My legs shook as I remembered the terror of those moments—seeing him there, not knowing if I could reach him in time, the agonizing slowness of guiding him back to safety.

I sat down hard on the concrete, unexpected tears burning my eyes and throat. In the apartment, with the siblings, I'd maintained composure because they needed it. But here, alone with the night and the rushing river below, I finally let myself feel the full weight of what had happened—what had almost happened.

“Fuck,” I whispered to the darkness, voice breaking. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The tears came then, harsh sobs that felt torn from somewhere deep inside me. Guilt for missing his calls when he needed me most. Fear that still lingered beneath relief. Grief for everything he'd endured trying to hold his family together without support.

When the storm passed, leaving me hollow but somehow clearer, I wiped my face with my sleeve and stood up. There was no point assigning blame—not to myself for missing calls, not to Leo for hiding his suffering, not even to Townsend and Miguel for their deliberate cruelty. The problem wasn't individual failures but systemic ones—a society that expected one young man to sacrifice everything for his siblings without adequate support, institutions that created impossible obstacles rather than assistance, communities that looked away from struggling families until crisis struck.

The realization settled into my bones as I walked back to my car. Supporting Leo's recovery wouldn't just mean being there while he healed. It would mean fighting the conditions that had broken him in the first place—advocating for institutional change, building sustainable support systems, creating partnership that addressed structural problems rather than just personal ones.

As I drove back to the apartment where Leo's siblings slept under Eleanor's watchful eye, I made a silent promise to the night. This time would be different. This time, Leo wouldn't have to carry everything alone. This time, we would build something that could bend without breaking, that could weather crises without collapse.

This time, we would rewrite the story—not just for Leo and me, but for Mari, Diego, Sophie, and anyone else trapped in systems designed for them to fail. And we would start with a semicolon, not a period.

The sentence would continue, but differently than before.

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