Neighbors, Kendra’s father, Radhauser and his wife, co-workers from Gilbert’s, his family, Jason and Katja, his niece Brianna, his mother, and his nephew, Caleb, cheered and applauded from the kitchen doorway.
Bryce hugged each one of them. And in that split second when he reached for his mother, he caught a glimpse of all the beauty and symmetry in the world, like the first glare of sunlight on newly-fallen leaves.
Tilly’s grandson, Lonnie, headed for the food table. “Can we eat now, Grandma? I’m starved.” He pointed at Bryce and grinned. “Or do we have to wait for him to stop huggin’ people?”
Tilly patted her grandson on the belly. “You don’t much look like you’re starvin’, boy. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll wait till our guest of honor fills up his plate.”
She gently nudged Bryce toward a table of the best looking and smelling food he’d seen in months.
* * *
After the party, as Noah and Vision snored peacefully in the room Scott and Skyler had once shared, Bryce stood in front of his bedroom window, staring out into the moonlit garden behind his house.
Like most everyone else, Bryce carried a whole community around inside his head—people like Isaiah Bryce, Valerie, Courtney, and Skyler, places like Wheatley, Utah, The Institute, and a way of life that had long ago disappeared. And he hoped no amount of time or pain would ever blot out his memories of Courtney and Skyler. Somehow, the shame and guilt for their deaths had been replaced with ordinary love and grief.
For the first time, he realized there were many other worlds that breathed side by side. The criminal world was only one. There were the soft, padded worlds of the insane; the hazy, hopeless, drug-filled worlds of the terminally ill; the waist-high, wheelchair worlds of the crippled. Perhaps even the dead inhabited a tufted, satin, haloed world of their own, somewhere just outside organic confines.
He slipped into his own bed and realized Tilly had washed his sheets and hung them outside to dry. That night, he slept in a bed that smelled like lemons and sunshine.
In the morning, he made a pot of coffee, fed Pickles and waited for Noah to shower.
After breakfast, they lingered over coffee and the warm sticky buns Tilly provided. On the way to the airport, they stopped by the cemetery. It was a magnificent Ashland day, the sky bright and clear, the sun warming the early December air to a balmy sixty degrees.
“No wonder you like it here so much,” Noah said. “I can smell the snow on the mountain tops.”
They sat on the ground in front of Skyler’s grave. The ragged edges of turf had knitted together into a thick blanket of soft green grass. Bryce traced Skyler’s name with his fingertip. “It’s so hard to let go, especially with little kids.”
“On the plane coming here,” Noah said. “I tried to imagine what it would be like if one of my girls died. I got choked up just thinking about it. When Courtney died, you nearly drowned in your own pain. You’ve got to let it out, Bryce. Let it break loose. Maybe you’re afraid there won’t be anything left if you do, but you’re wrong.” Noah said softly. “The heart is a silent river. But it keeps flowing and there is always more. We all die, my friend, and those who are left go on loving and remembering. You can’t hide the dead away or you’ll never heal.”
Bryce leaned forward, put both hands on Noah’s shoulders, and retold the story of his love for Courtney, of how, for a year, Skyler had filled the empty place. The words rose from some bottomless and essential place inside him and declared themselves as if they’d been there waiting all along.
Noah was right—they were both part of the same stream, as surely as they’d been as boys together in the Institute. It was sorrow and shared grief that ripped down the walls that divided people. In some strange way, Bryce’s imprisonment had been a gift, a way of finding his way back to his family and Noah.
He no longer believed himself responsible for Skyler’s death. It was a terrible tragedy. And Henry was as innocent as a seven-year-old who’d believed he could help Skyler stop screaming and reunite Dana and Reggie.
Sitting with his oldest friend on the cemetery grass, Bryce knew he had come there to weep, then rejoin the living. His entire life was the sum of all the other lives he touched, of the people, living and dead, he had loved. It was the accumulation of remembering that mattered.
“Well,” Bryce said, rising to his feet. “I better get you to the airport or you’re going to miss your flight.”
Bryce dropped his arm over Noah’s shoulders as they walked, Vision trotting alongside. A shower of happiness fell over him. And the sudden, unexpected extent of his joy at being reunited with his family and his childhood friend was as mysterious as love itself.
On the way to the airport, Noah made Bryce promise to come back to Utah for Dr. Russ’ retirement party and meet Noah’s wife and daughters. That he’d consider applying for a teaching position at The Lake Institute once he completed his degree.
As his friend’s plane lifted up and disappeared into the dazzling blue sky, Bryce glanced at his wristwatch. He needed to hurry. The Oregon Ducks were playing a home basketball game tonight and Kendra was picking him up in an hour for their drive to Eugene.
AUTHOR NOTE
Thank you for taking the time to read A River of Silence—the third book in my mystery series featuring Detective Winston Radhauser. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends and posting a short review on Amazon. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and very much appreciated. I wish you all the best, Susan Clayton-Goldner
ABOUT SUSAN CLAYTON-GOLDNER
Susan Clayton-Goldner was born in New Castle, Delaware and grew up with four brothers along the banks of the Delaware River. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona's Creative Writing Program and has been writing most of her life. Her novels have been finalists for The Hemingway Award, the Heeken Foundation Fellowship, the Writers Foundation and the Publishing On-line Contest. Susan won the National Writers' Association Novel Award twice for unpublished novels and her poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Animals as Teachers and Healers, published by Ballantine Books, Our Mothers/Ourselves, by the Greenwood Publishing Group, The Hawaii Pacific Review-Best of a Decade, and New Millennium Writings. A collection of her poems, A Question of Mortality was released in 2014 by Wellstone Press. Prior to writing full time, Susan worked as the Director of Corporate Relations for University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona.
Susan shares a life in Grants Pass, Oregon with her husband, Andreas, her fictional characters, and more books than one person could count.
Find Susan online:
Website - http://susanclaytongoldner.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/susan.claytongoldner
Twitter - https://twitter.com/SusanCGoldner
Blog - http://susanclaytongoldner.com/my-blog---writing-the-life.html
Tirgearr Publishing - http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/ClaytonGoldner_Susan
BOOKS BY SUSAN CLAYTON-GOLDNER
WINSTON RADHAUSER SERIES
REDEMPTION LAKE, #1
Released: May 2017
ISBN: 9781370712939
Tucson, Arizona–Detective Winston Radhauser knows eighteen-year-old Matt Garrison is hiding something. When his best friend’s mother, Crystal, is murdered, the investigation focuses on Matt’s father, but Matt knows he’s innocent. Devastated and bent on self-destruction, Matt heads for the lake where his cousin died—the only place he believes can truly free him. Are some secrets better left buried?
WHEN TIME IS A RIVER, #2
Released: September 2017
ISBN: 9781370576975
Someone is stalking 2 year old Emily Michaelson in Lithia Park playground as she plays with her 18 year old half sister, Brandy. Not long after Emily's disappearance, Detective Radhauser finds her rainbow-colored sneakers in Ashland Creek, their laces tied together in double knots. He ins
ists Brandy stay out of the investigation, but she’s obsessed with finding her little sister.
-also-
A BEND IN THE WILLOW
Released: January 2017
ISBN: 9781370816842
In 1965, Robin Lee Carter sets a fire that kills her rapist, then disappears, reinventing herself as Catherine Henry. In 1985, when her 5-year-old son, Michael, is diagnosed with a chemotherapy-resistant leukemia, she must return to Willowood and seek out the now 19-year-old son she gave up for adoption. Is she willing to risk everything, including her life, to save her dying son?
A River of Silence Page 32