Page 73 of Hunted in the Silence

“Monday,” he agreed.

With a soft pat on his chest, she went back inside. He stood on the porch for one more moment, soaking in the cold and the quiet of the neighborhood and thought about the two lists he’d made and the overlap between them, and about Minnesota in the winter, and about a firm that didn’t have a name yet but had the right people, and about a woman inside the house behind him who understood what it meant to build something from scratch and see it come to fruition.

It was right, in every way that mattered.

He went back inside.

Chapter 23

The expansion permit came through on a Tuesday in February, three months after Devlin’s arrest, and Brynn stood in the empty storefront next door to the center with a set of blueprints and her center director Amara, staring at the space together, trying to envision the future.

The storefront had been a tax preparation office for twelve years and a vacuum repair shop for eight years before that, and before that nobody seemed to know. It smelled like old carpet and the mustiness of a space that had been closed too long, and the pale light through the front windows was indicative of the February cold.

Brynn looked at the far wall and thought about a dedicated crisis intake room, separate from the main space, private and quiet. She thought about a children’s area for the women who came in with kids and had nowhere to put them while they talked. She thought about a second counseling office so they could see two clients simultaneously instead of one, which would cut the wait time by half.

“We can be open by May,” Amara said. She was studying the blueprints over her shoulder, and she had the infectious energy of someone who was intending to move fast.

“April,” Brynn countered.

Amara’s head popped up and she looked at Brynn with an arched brow. “April is ambitious.”

“April is necessary,” Brynn said. “There are four women on the waitlist right now who have been waiting three weeks. Every week we’re not open next door is a week one of them doesn’t get seen.”

Amara looked at the blueprints again. “April,” she agreed, already recalculating everything in her head.

Brynn looked at the far wall one more time. Then she rolled up the blueprints and tucked them under her arm and walked back through the connecting door into the center, which was already in full motion at nine in the morning because every single person their believed in their work.

She stopped at the front desk where her assistant Reyes was going through the morning intake. “Dana Pryce’s placement coordinator called,” Reyes said. “She’s doing well. Started school last week.”

Brynn nodded. She’d been getting those calls for two months, small updates from the group home coordinator in Indianapolis who understood that Brynn wasn’t going to stop asking. Dana had started slowly. Had taken three weeks to come out of her room for meals without being asked. Had started talking in the fourth week. Had said something funny in the sixth week and apparently seemed surprised by her own laugh.

She was fifteen and she was in school and she had said something funny.

Brynn went to her office, sat down and opened her laptop, and started her day with a fullness she hadn’t felt since the first day she opened the clinic.

***

Quinn’s piece ran in March. Twelve pages in the magazine, long enough that it meant the editors understood what they had, with Brynn’s name in the second paragraph and the center’s address in the seventh. The calls started the day it hit newsstands. Donation calls, media calls, calls from women who had read it in waiting rooms and on lunch breaks and on their phones in parking lots and needed to talk to someone who understood.

The waitlist tripled in a week.

Brynn called Amara and moved the April opening to the last week of March. Amara said nothing for the span of a heartbeat and then said, “I’ll call the contractor.”

At this point, Brynn didn’t care if the center was one hundred percent ready or not. The doors needed to be open because victims couldn’t wait.

Cole read the piece at the kitchen table in the apartment they’d been sharing since January, when it became obvious that if they were going to share the same bed every night, they might as well be sharing a lease too. He read it twice and then looked at Brynn across the table.

“Quinn got it right,” he said.

“She did.” Brynn nodded. “Down to the last detail.”

“The third chapter comparison,” he said.

“She called me about that specifically. She wanted to make sure the framing was accurate before she filed it.” Brynn looked at her coffee. “It is. It’s exactly right.”

Cole watched her. “How does it feel? Seeing it in print.”

She thought about it honestly. “Strange,” she said. “And right. Both at the same time.” She paused. “I spent a long time not wanting anyone to know. And then I spent a long time deciding that what happened to me wasn’t mine to hide. And now it’s in a magazine and strangers are reading it in waiting rooms.” She held his gaze. “It feels like it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. That’s enough.”