The Demon in the Pastry Shop

46: The Note and the Fermata

 "Oh, Kit," Jude whispered, resting his elbows on the table and laying his chin on top of his knuckles, "you never told them?"

Kit slapped her hands over her face and shuddered with sobs. Silus only half understood what was going on, but he was putting things together slowly.

"Told us what?" Chloe blurted, almost angrily at Jude. Silus thought she was upset that he was in the know and she wasn't (Lovell got the same way about assignments).

"Well, Kit..." Jude treaded carefully, trying to give her space but trying to mediate the crisis, "you have your notepad, do you want to tell them?"

Kit peeked through her hands and looked at her parents, then shook her head violently. She pushed her chair out from the table and ran down the hallway. Silus counted the thud of twelve steps upstairs and heard a door close.

"What did you do to her?" Petra snarled, leaping up from her seat and leaning toward Jude with a vicious glare Silus would never have expected from her.

"Please, sit down and I'll explain," Jude requested calmly. Petra complied but her eyes never stopped narrowing at him. "First I have to ask -she's been writing letters to you, hasn't she? She told me she was."

"We've gotten at least two letters from her every month," Chloe supplied tersely from the other end of the table, "so if she left anything out, it must be because she thinks she's not allowed to talk about it."

"I see," Jude nodded. He scratched the bandage on his wounded hand and with a voice that sounded full of the coffee grounds from the gritty cups they had on the train, said, "Kit is mute. After Luca... she... she just couldn't make noise anymore. She doesn't talk. She likes to write and use her hands, but Kit doesn't make sound anymore."

"What... I don't understand... what are you saying?" Petra's face softened but Silus knew what hidden resentment looked like.

"She's not mute. She can't be!" Chloe countered. She even laughed and said, "maybe you don't know because you haven't known her very long, but Kit is a chatterbox! Very loud and she loves to talk!"

"Kit couldn't even make noise when her life depended on it," Silus told them, trying to sound sympathetic to the shock, but trying to be definitive enough for them to understand.

"What do you even know!" Petra growled, folding her arms, "how long have you known her? Not very long. And she never wrote about you. She could never be mute. Kit isn't restrained and silent. She's boisterous. She couldn't live not being loud!"

Jude went to say something, but Silus cut in before him, "she is boisterous. She is loud. Just not in a way where she makes noise. You should see her when she's writing and making signs with her hands. She communicates very flamboyantly sometimes. That, apparently, hasn't changed."

"Apparently?" Chloe scoffed, "so you're not even certain about how she got like this?"

"Well... no... I met her when she was silent already."

"I could never believe she would become like this," Petra fought back, "what could possibly make her stop chiming? Stop talking? Stop laughing? No. I think maybe you're forcing this on her. Forcing your grief onto her."

Jude closed his eyes.

Silus looked at him. Grief?

"You weren't there when Luca was shot," Jude stated in a steady tone. It sounded labored. Hardened. Not like the kindhearted Jude Silus knew. "I wasn't there either. Kit was there. Kit saw it. And after Luca died, I was there with her. I was there."

Something like a lightning bolt was what struck Silus and brought him to life from stone and something like a lightning bolt was what struck him now but this time it paralyzed him.

Luca. Was dead.

Kit was a widow.

He deserved that slap.

"In the beginning, she struggled to croak out words. It was killing her to speak. She was so weak. She could hardly move," Jude relayed, pressing on even though tears were glittering his eyes and choking his words, "she would work very hard most days trying to get her sounds out but it was taking too much from her. She didn't want to speak and she couldn't. But she tried so hard for other people's sake. I told her to stop trying. I told her it would be okay to be a silent Bell Spirit. I told her she didn't have to make noise to talk and she didn't have to make noise to be heard. That was when she finally started getting better."

"What do you know about how Bell Spirits work, huh?" Chloe challenged, though she said it gently on account of Jude wiping his tears on his sleeve. "She needed her parents. Her Bell Spirit parents. What you said could've been the thing that stifled her."

"She's not stifled," Silus defended. He was riled on Jude's behalf. He was impassioned on Kit's. "She's happy with the way she is as long as she's talking to people who accept it."

"Who are you though? Honestly?" Chloe stared at him.

"I'm... I'm just here to protect Kit and your household," he faltered under her bladed gaze.

"Is she hiring you?" Petra asked.

"Well... no."

"Then why are you doing it?"

He stood up from his chair. His fingers tented on the table, he looked around. At Petra. At Chloe. At Jude who looked very tired. Silus swallowed hard and bowed his head to Kit's mothers.

"Thank you for the meal," he said, although he hadn't touched his plate, "I'm going to check the perimeter and secure the house."