After dinner, I helped wash the dishes. Silas tried to object, but I took the towel from his hand.
“I know how to dry a plate.”
“I never doubted it.”
“Most people doubt everything I do.”
“Then most people are careless observers.”
I glanced at him.
“You say things like that as though you’ve known me for years.”
“No. I say them because they’re true.”
We stood in the small kitchen, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the rain.
Then his phone rang.
Silas glanced at the screen.
The shift in his face was almost imperceptible, but I noticed it.
He dried his hands and walked toward the front door.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“A work contact.”
He stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him.
I didn’t mean to listen.
But the cabin was quiet, and his voice carried through the thin glass.
“No,” he said. “Not tonight.”
A pause.
“I told you to hold everything until I confirmed.”
Another pause.
His voice lowered.
“Then tell them the transfer is not authorized.”
I stood beside the sink, motionless.
The rain thickened around the cabin.
Silas turned slightly, his back to the window.
“Do not send anyone here,” he said. “I mean it.”
I looked away before he could catch me watching.
A few minutes later, he came inside.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You sounded worried.”
“I was handling a mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“An administrative one.”
I wanted to ask more, but something in his expression warned me that he wasn’t ready.
So I nodded.
That night, I slept on one side of the bed while Silas remained on the other, a careful distance between us.
Neither of us said much.
But sometime after midnight, I woke to find him sitting beside the window, fully dressed, staring into the darkness.
Moonlight outlined his face.
“You’re awake,” he said without turning.
“So are you.”
“I’m a light sleeper.”
“Do you often sit by windows at night?”
“Only when something is bothering me.”
“Is it the administrative mistake?”
He looked back at me.
“No.”
“What is it?”
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he reached for the phone on the table beside him.
The screen lit his face blue-white.
“I should have told you something before we married.”
My heart began to beat faster.
“What?”
He unlocked the phone but didn’t hand it to me.
Instead, he stared at the screen as though trying to decide whether the truth would be kinder than silence.
“Your stepmother wasn’t the only person who contacted me,” he said.
“Who else?”
“Someone from your father’s financial office.”
I sat up.
“Why?”
“To ask whether I would accept a transfer.”
“What transfer?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
He looked down at the phone again.
“The first offer was fifty thousand dollars.”
I stared at him.
“And you refused?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it came with conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“That I would keep you away from Asheville. That I would make sure you didn’t contact your father. That I would sign a statement saying you had entered the marriage voluntarily for financial gain.”
The room seemed to grow colder.
“Why would anyone want that statement?”
Silas’s gaze met mine.
“That’s what I was trying to find out.”
I got out of bed and walked to the window.
Outside, the stream reflected the moonlight between the trees.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I’m saying your marriage may have been arranged for reasons that have nothing to do with punishing you.”
“Then what reason?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You agreed to marry me without knowing?”
