There are a hundred kinds of silence.
There’s the thick silence of places long sealed shut, and the muffled silence of ears stoppered up. The empty silence of the dead, and the heavy silence of the dying.
There is the hollow silence of a man who has stopped praying, and the airy silence of an empty synagogue, and the held-breath silence of someone hiding from themselves.
There is the awkward silence that fills the space between people who don’t know what to say. And the taut silence that falls over those who do, but don’t know where or how to start.
Henry doesn’t know what kind of silence this is, but it is killing him.
He began to talk outside the corner shop, and kept talking as they walked, because it was easier for him to speak when he had somewhere to look besides her face. The words spilled out of him as they reached the blue door of his building, as they climbed the stairs, as they moved through the apartment, and now the truth fills the air between them, heavy as smoke, and Addie isn’t saying anything.
She sits on the sofa, her chin in her hand.
Outside the window, the day just carries on as if nothing’s changed, but it feels like everything has, because Addie LaRue is immortal, and Henry Strauss is damned.
“Addie,” he says, when he cannot stand it anymore. “Please say something.”
And she looks up at him, eyes shining, not with some spell, but tears, and he does not know at first if she is heartbroken or happy.
“I couldn’t understand,” she says. “No one has ever remembered. I thought it was an accident. I thought it was a trap. But you’re not an accident, Henry. You’re not a trap. You remember me because you made a deal.” She shakes her head. “Three hundred years spent trying to break this curse, and Luc did the one thing I never expected.” She wipes the tears away, and breaks into a smile.
“He made a mistake.”
There is such triumph in her eyes. But Henry doesn’t understand. “So our deals cancel out? Is that why we’re immune to them?” Addie shakes her head. “I’m not immune, Henry.”
He cringes back, as if struck. “But my deal doesn’t work on you.”
Addie softens, takes his hand. “Of course it does. Your deal and mine, they nest like Russian dolls together in a shell. I look at you, and I see exactly what I want. It’s just that what I want has nothing to do with looks, or charm, or success. It would sound awful, in another life, but what I want most—what I need—has nothing to do with you at all. What I want, what I’ve always truly wanted, is for someone to remember me. That’s why you can say my name. That’s why you can go away, and come back, and still know who I am. And that’s why I can look at you, and see you as you are. And it is enough. It will always be enough.”
Enough. The word unravels between them, opening at his throat. It lets in so much air.
Enough.
He sinks onto the couch beside her. Her hand slides through his, their fingers knotting.
“You said you were born in 1691,” he muses. “That makes you…” “Three hundred and twenty-three,” she says.
Henry whistles. “I’ve never been with an older woman.” Addie laughs. “You do look very, very good for your age.”
“Why thank you.”
“Tell me about it,” he says. “About what?”
“I don’t know. Everything. Three hundred years is such a long time. You were there for wars and revolutions. You saw trains and cars and planes and televisions. You witnessed history as it was happening.”
Addie frowns. “I guess so,” she says, “but I don’t know; history is something you look back on, not something you really feel at the time. In the moment, you’re just … living. I didn’t want to live forever. I just wanted to live.”
She curls into him, and they lie, heads together on the couch, intertwined like lovers in a fable, and a new silence settles over them, light as a summer sheet.
And then she says, “How long?” His head rolls toward her. “What?”
“When you made your deal,” she says, voice careful and light, a foot testing icy ground. “How long did you make it for?”
Henry hesitates, and looks up at the ceiling instead of her.
“A lifetime,” he says, and it is not a lie, but a shadow crosses Addie’s face.
“And he agreed?”
Henry nods, and pulls her back against him, exhausted by everything he’s said, and everything he hasn’t.
“A lifetime,” she whispers.
The words hang between them in the dark.
