Charms Of Silence

Chapter 3

 "I told them." As John spoke, Peggy didn't think twice about feeding the flame of anger inside her.

"Did I not make it very clear that the only person I wanted to know was Kate?" She felt the fire grow; she knew that it was getting out of control. She welcomed the rage. She had kept it quiet for so long, afraid to use the power she knew was there. "The police will not keep it quiet! All I asked was that nobody knew. That was all!"

"It will be better this way."

"Is that the only argument you have?" Peggy screamed. "Maybe I should have known better than to tell you. You were skeptical from the beginning. Did you not know that I would have my reasons? I trust Kate, and Kate only. She was always the one who understood me best. She was a friend when I needed one. Don't you understand? The police never get anything done: everything is publicity. That is what private detectives are for. Privacy! I didn't want the book's publicity, and I don't want this."

"This way, the crook won't be able to get away with a court case; everyone knows that the files were stolen." John's argument was reasonable, thought Peggy, but the thought that she might be wrong only made her more angry. She found herself missing Red. Even if he was a drunk, she had had a reason to be mad at him. She had no reason to be mad at John; he was only trying to help. Seeing reason made her mad. She was ready to let out the years of anxiety that had only been partially expressed in her novel.

"That doesn't matter. There won't be any more court cases: it's clear that they are my ideas," she explained impatiently.

"If it doesn't matter, why are you bothering to hire someone?" John sighed, genuinely confused. "I was just trying to help." He turned on his heels and walked back outside.

Margaret sank back down in the chair, too upset to care where he went. Didn't he understand how hard this was for her? Couldn't he see that she needed something to be happy about, and the book was that something? She felt the flame inside her turn into ashes. That's all she ever was. Ashes. The remains of something great, no longer in its glory. Not even that. She was the remains of someone else's glory, the remains of a happiness that she never really had. A sunrise over someone else's lake. She had always been the odd one. Everyone had told her she had something great inside of her, but the fear of ruining it had kept it quiet until it was too late. A fire can't be lit from ashes.

She thought about fire. When she was three and her skirts had caught on fire. She thought about her mother. She felt tears fill her eyes as she saw her mother's face float before her. She hadn't been able to say goodbye. Her mother had died from the flu the day before Peggy got home from university. Peggy remembered the stories she had told to her mother; her mother had always believed in her potential. But now she was gone... gone. She had welcomed attention as a distraction from her grief. She thought about attention. As a child she had written hundreds of stories and plays, always casting herself as the hero. She had performed them with her friends for attention. Attention. She had destroyed them all when she was nineteen, the year her mother died. She couldn't stand the memories. She had thought she needed more attention. She had been a flirt: a horrible, stupid, grief-stricken flirt of a woman.

Peggy cried. She let herself go into that half-conscious, sobbing, dream-like state. Except it wasn't a dream. It was real.

All the sounds around her faded away. All that was left was an eerie silence. A quite that felt like it could last an eternity. After all the noise, chaos, and publicity the silence was a blessing. An angel's kiss. Yes, a blessing, but no, not a happiness. It was Peggy standing on the edge of a cliff about to fall into a pit of consuming darkness. She could feel it pulling her; it was a vortex of energy that every time she tried to pull away got stronger, it was gradually pulling her into its all-consuming darkness. Something was wrong. Something was missing someone was missing.