“Rough night for a walk,” she said gently, placing the menus down.
The girls did not move. They sat with their hands folded on their laps, staring at the center of the table as if waiting for a verdict. Julian sighed, a sound that seemed to scrape the bottom of his lungs.
“I apologize,” he said, his voice raspy. “We… we don’t need menus. Just four tomato soups. And warm bread. Please.”
Clara nodded, sensing the fragility of the moment. “Coming right up.”
As she walked away, she heard a crash.
A heavy tray of silverware had slipped from the busboy’s hands near the kitchen doors. The clamor was deafening—forks and knives shrieking against the tile.
The reaction at table four was instant and terrifying.
Iris threw her hands over her ears and curled into a ball. June began to rock back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut, her breath coming in silent, jagged gasps. Rose simply froze, her mouth open in a silent scream, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as if waiting for it to collapse.
Julian sprang up, knocking his chair over. “It’s okay! It’s just a noise! Look at Daddy, look at me!”
His voice was rising in panic, which only made June rock faster. The silence of the children was louder than the crashing silverware had been.
Clara didn’t think; she moved on instinct, driven by a memory of Toby, who used to panic during thunderstorms. She reached into her apron pocket. She always carried a small, textured fidget square—a remnant of velvet and satin ribbons woven together—that she used to calm her own anxiety.
She slid to the floor next to the booth, ignoring the dirt on her skirt. She didn’t speak to Julian. She didn’t say, “Calm down.”
She simply began to tap a rhythm on the wooden floor with her knuckles. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
It was a heartbeat rhythm.
She held out the velvet square, the red ribbons dangling like gentle tendrils. She kept her eyes low, submissive, non-threatening. She hummed a low, vibrating note—not a song, just a resonance. Mmmmmmmm.
Slowly, the rocking slowed. The atmosphere in the corner shifted from sharp panic to a wary stillness.
Rose was the first to look down. Her eyes locked onto the red velvet ribbon. Clara extended her hand, offering the fabric not to the girl, but to the space between them.
Rose reached out, her small fingers brushing the velvet. The tactile sensation seemed to ground her. She took a shuddering breath.
And then, a sound.
“Soft.”
It was a whisper, fragile as spun glass.
Julian froze, his hands hovering over June’s shoulders. He looked at Clara, his eyes wide, swimming with sudden, shocking tears. He hadn’t heard his daughter’s voice in three years.
Clara smiled, continuing the rhythm. Tap. Tap-tap.
“It is soft,” Clara whispered back, keeping her voice in the same low register. “Like a bunny’s ear.”
Iris uncurled. June stopped rocking. They looked at Rose, then at the ribbon, then at Clara.
From the shadows of the bar area, a woman watched. She was sipping a martini, her posture rigid. This was Lydia Sterling, Julian’s sister-in-law. Her eyes narrowed as she watched the waitress interact with the nieces she deemed “broken.”
The Silent War
Julian Sterling was a man drowning in money but starving for hope. His wife, Elena, a concert cellist, had died in a car accident three years prior—an accident the girls had survived. Since that day, the music had died in the Sterling house. The girls had retreated into a collective traumatic mutism that the best specialists in Switzerland and New York had failed to crack.
Lydia, Elena’s sister, had moved in “to help,” but Julian knew the truth. Lydia was petitioning the courts for custody, claiming Julian’s grief made him unfit, angling for control of the girls’ substantial trust fund. She needed the girls to remain broken to prove that Julian was failing them.
Clara didn’t know the politics; she only knew pain.
See more on the next page
Advertisement
