Free Silence by Michelle Sagara

doesn’t change anything.” She shook her head, bit her lower lip. Tried to make the anger return to wherever it had unexpectedly come from. It fought back. “I go there,” she added, “because it doesn’t change anything. I don’t expect him to answer me if I talk. I don’t expect to turn around in the dark of night and see him. I don’t expect him to—” She looked across at Eric, realy looked at him.
    Something about his expression was so unexpected, she said, Something about his expression was so unexpected, she said, “You lost someone too?”
    It was his turn to laugh, and his laughter? As wrong as hers had been. Worse, if that was possible. He turned his hands palms up on the table and stared at them for a long time.
    Begin again, Emma thought. There was no anger left. What she felt, she couldn’t easily describe. But she wondered, watching him in his silence, if this was what people saw when they watched her. Because she wanted to say something to ease his pain, and nothing was there. It made her feel useless. Or helpless.
    “You’re right,” he said softly. “It’s none of my business. I don’t even know why I asked.” He took a breath and then picked up his coffee. This time, he even drank some of it, although his expression made her wonder why he bothered.
    Which was a whole lot safer than wondering anything else at the moment.
    “Can you see them?” Emma asked, trying to shoulder her part of the conversation.
    “The dead?”
    She nodded.
    “Yeah. I can see the dead.”
    “Does it help?”
    He gave her the oddest look, and then his smile once again spread across his face. It made him look younger. She wanted to say it made him look more like himself, but what did she realy know about him?
    know about him?
    “No. It doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t help at al.” He paused and then said, “Did it help you?”
    She nodded. Lifted her hands, palms up. “He’s my dad,” she said. “It was almost worth it—the pain. To see him again.”
    He grimaced. “Don’t go there,” he said, but his voice and tone were different. Quieter. “You’re not dead. He is. Emma—” he hesitated, and she could almost see him choosing the right words. Or choosing any words—what did right mean, now? “I know the pain is bad. But you can get past it. It stops. If you can ignore it for two more days, you’l never be troubled by the dead again.”
    Thinking of Nathan’s grave, she was silent.
    “Why can I see them? Is it because of—”
    “Yes.” He didn’t even let her finish the question. “It’s because of that. You can see them,” he said, “and you can talk with them.” He hesitated, as if about to say more. The more, however, didn’t escape.
    “And it’s only that?”
    He looked out the window again. After a long pause, he said, “No.”
    Emma hesitated. “I can touch them,” she said, a slight rise at the end of the sentence turning it into a tentative question.
    He nodded.
    “My dad—people could see him because I touched him.”
    “Yes. Only because of that. If you hadn’t, he would have stayed invisible and safely dead.”

    stayed invisible and safely dead.”
    She wanted to argue with the use of the words “safely” and “dead” side by side, but she could see his point. “Can you?”
    “Can I?”
    “You can talk to them. You can see them. Can you touch them?”
    “No.”
    “Oh. Why not?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “Eric, why is it important to you that I—that I stop seeing the dead?”
    “Because,” he replied slowly, “then I won’t have to kil you.”
    EMMA BLINKED. “Can you say that again?”
    “I think you heard it the first time.”
    “I think you heard it the first time.”
    “I want to make sure I heard it the first time. Sort of.”
    He merely watched her. She watched him right back. It was almost as if they were playing tennis and the bal had somehow gotten suspended in time just above the net; she wasn’t sure which way it would fly