Page 1 of Quiet
Prologue
BRIAR
“Briar never says a word. Don’t you think that’s strange? For a child his age, I mean.”
“He’s still young.”
“He’s five, Marie.”
The wooden block stayed firmly in the child’s hand. The hushed conversation in the kitchen was nothing new to him, and this tower wasn’t going to build itself.
His mom and aunt were doing grown-up talk. Grown-up talk was itchy. But not in a place he could scratch. Building things helped quiet the itch.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but there’s a spell—”
“Not more fairy nonsense, please.”
“Just hear me out, it can’t hurt to try. Don’t you want to be able to talk to your son? Gramps said there was a girl back in the old country who was like this. He said it helped.”
A wistful sigh. “No, it won’t hurt, but . . .”
“Here, I have everything we’ll need in my bag. Let’s do it now before you change your mind.”
A crinkling sound assaulted his ears, and he wrinkled his nose when an acrid, pungent smell drifted toward him.
When he completed the third tier of his tower, he felt a kiss on the top of his head, then another. The skin on the back of his neck began to prickle. The prickling grew long, branching fingers as it tickled its way inside his head. He scratched at it, but it didn’t help so he tucked the sensation away with all the other distracting things the world threw at him.
He poured his attention into his tower and let everything else fall away. Once the tower was finished, he would glue it together and paint it. Hopefully the prickling would be gone by the time he was done.
Chapter1
Isa
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
Anice, full tummy on a warm day was the best thing ever.
Stumbling across a horde of people protesting the availability of birth control at the school’s clinic was not.
Especially when Isa recognized his cousin Paul in the crowd.
Don’t make eye contact. Don’t make eye contact. Isa put his head down and turned to go in the opposite direction. He had plenty of time before his next class, so a detour was looking really good right now.
“Isaiah!”
Isa’s shoulders stiffened. Crap, there had been another cousin he hadn’t seen. Maybe Josh would think he’d made a mistake if Isa kept going?
A sharp tug on his backpack yanked him to a halt. A hand on his shoulder spun him around, and he saw his sister Rebecca glaring at him. “Freeze, squirt.”
Her long, glossy brown hair—a match to his own, shorter locks—shone in the sun, framing her face. On her it was a glorious lion’s mane.
Isa, however, looked like he was a pixie on holiday from Underhill. Not intimidating at all. That was okay with him, though. He didn’t need to be intimidating, but he could have stood to be more observant. If he had been, he would have realized he’d had more than one person to dodge.
Now he was stuck with a confrontation he was not looking forward to.
“What’s up, Rebecca?” Isa gave her his sweetest smile. Doing his very best to play the baby brother card to its fullest. “What are you guys doing all the way out here?”
His hometown was a little nowhere village in New Hampshire—about a four-hour drive north from Isa’s college in Massachusetts. He came from a family of homebodies—mostly only concerning themselves with the people in their town.
