Free The Silent History: A Novel by Eli Horowitz, Kevin Moffett, Matthew Derby

spiral notebook. All of that time we spent developing the curriculum, sorting out logistics, an insane amount of work that we all did on top of our regular jobs. Raising the money to buy the old bakery on Myrtle and converting it ourselves. Everyone working together, just pouring all of our energy into the place, day after day. I was actually hanging sheetrock, which I had no idea how to do. All of us were driven by that hope, you know, that the school would save our children. I think that’s what made it come together so quickly.
    Flora had been making progress in our apartment. There was no actual speech yet, but she was engaging with the lessons, doing the activities I developed for her. I could get her to open and close her mouth, to roll her jaw and move her tongue from side to side. I even got her to make a few sounds, letter sounds that she was sometimes able to repeat. These were seen as great victories by other parents. They watched videos of her doing these things and got inspired. They started to contact me, asking for advice and techniques, and I told them everything I was doing. A few of the other parents lived nearby and we started to get together, and the idea of the school quickly caught fire.
    But by the time the school was finished and ready for students, I felt like … I mean, it never came to the point where I gave up on Flora completely. I still felt like there was an answer out there. I knew her mind was active. But she just wasn’t changing. Or, if she was changing, it wasn’t in any way that was improving her condition. Physically she was fine, and she was even starting to help me out with basic motherboard repair, but she wasn’t any closer to talking than she was when she was three. And so when I was standing out in front of the school, holding her hand, I felt a—I’m going to call it a sagging. Of the spirit. When you get that heaviness in your chest. It hit me suddenly that we’d essentially just built this temple to our own fears. It didn’t have anything to do with the children. I mean, it did, of course. It did. We really did believe that our kids would learn there. And just having them be together—to be around other kids like them. All of that would help. But it wasn’t only about the children. It was about us, the parents. The school building was this crazy clown house that we were using to keep us focused on the future, on this dream of the day when we believed our kids would be normal, where they could talk to us, tell us what was going on in their heads. Instead of the present, which was where our kids were sort of dead. Walking dead.
    Or maybe it was just me who felt like this. All the other parents did seem happy enough. And the Oaks building itself was warm and inviting. I walked Flora to her classroom, which had walls and countertops I’d built myself, and I brought her to her rug area on the floor and spread the marble works out in front of her. Her teacher Ms. Chang came up and put a hand on Flora’s shoulder to introduce herself. I was sort of taken aback by her—not only because she was younger and more attractive than I’d expected from seeing her application, but because she instantly knew how to act with Flora. They seemed to bond in that first moment, and I felt a little better knowing I was leaving my daughter in the hands of this well-trained expert. And I walked out of the school and drove home to the apartment, and for the first time I spent the day there myself. Sitting with the piles of chips and optic fiber and other silicon junk. And I could actually hear her absence. The silence had a vacuum quality to it. I know it sounds weird, but I think my sense of hearing was actually different, more sharp or something, for having spent so many years with no one but Flora. Her presence had a warmth, a texture. I could sense, in this palpable way, from moment to moment, that she was not in the apartment. I remember almost laughing. Not that it was funny, but just