Otis listened the way he had learned to listen over fifteen years in the Iron Vow and eighteen years at the bench: without interrupting, without rushing past a detail that mattered, without making Silas feel he would have to explain himself twice. He asked careful questions, the way a man asks when he is trying to fix something he cannot yet see. When had the account change happened? Could Silas remember what the bank papers had felt like, what Paula had said when she brought them? When had the mail started disappearing? What did Karen's calls sound like now, compared to before? Silas answered what he could, and where he could not remember, he said so plainly, and Otis did not press him. He took a notepad from his apron pocket and wrote down what details Silas could offer — the account, the timeline, Karen's name and the general area she lived in — in his blocky handwriting, slowly, so that Silas could hear the pencil moving and know that his words were being taken down as something solid.
Otis asked him about the bank visit first, because money left a trail even when a man could not see it. Silas described the day Paula had taken him there, the way she had guided his hand to the counter and told him where to sign, the pen she had pressed into his fingers, the paper that had felt too smooth under his palm. He remembered the clerk's voice, polite and distant, and Paula's voice close beside him, warm, explaining that this was only so the bills could be paid on time. He remembered asking whether Karen should be told, and Paula saying there was no need to worry his daughter over paperwork. Otis wrote that down, and then he asked about the withdrawals, and Silas told him what he knew and what he only suspected: that Paula's summaries had grown shorter, that the numbers she read him — when she read him any numbers at all — no longer matched the shape of his spending, that once, when he had asked about a particular sum, she had laughed and said he was misremembering, and he had believed her, because doubting her meant doubting the only person who came to his house every day. Otis asked about the mail, and Silas told him about the mailbox lid and the stack that never seemed as thick as it should have been, about the veterans' letter that never arrived, about a birthday card from Karen that had come a week late with the envelope already torn. He asked about Karen's calls, and Silas told him about the Sundays that had grown short, about Paula's voice answering first, about the way his daughter sounded farther away each time, as if the phone line itself had stretched. Through all of it, Otis wrote steadily, and the pencil's scratching became a small, regular sound in the shop, like a clock ticking in another room. He did not hurry Silas. He did not finish his sentences. When Silas faltered, Otis waited, and when Silas found his way back, Otis nodded, though Silas could not see the nod, and said, "Go on," in a voice that made going on possible.
He asked, gently, whether Silas knew Karen's number by heart, and Silas recited it slowly, digit by digit, the way a man recites something he has held onto for years — a Chattanooga number, four hours away, the number he had dialed a hundred times before his sight failed and Paula began answering the phone. Otis wrote each digit twice, to be sure, and read the number back to him, and Silas nodded and said, "That's it. That's my girl." Then Otis told him what would happen next, in plain terms: no one would come to the house today, no one would confront Paula, no one would ask Silas to repeat any of this until he was ready. "You don't do anything today," he said again, because some truths need saying twice before they can be believed.
I don't know if any of it's against the law, Silas said at one point, his voice thinner. "I only know I stopped asking about Karen after that night. And some nights I lie awake and wonder if the house is still mine."
Otis stopped writing. He looked at the old man in the plastic chair, at the hands folded tight and the shoulders braced as if against a blow that had not yet landed, and he understood that what Silas needed in that moment was not a plan, and not a promise he could not keep, but a simple thing said plainly and meant completely.
I believe you, Otis said. Three words, and something in Silas's shoulders came down from wherever they'd been braced for months. It was not a collapse. It was the slow lowering of a weight a man had carried alone for so long that he had forgotten what it felt like to set it down, even for a minute, even in a stranger's shop.
What do I do? Silas whispered. The fear in the question was sharper now that saying the truth out loud had made it fully real.
You don't do anything today, Otis said. "I'm going to make some calls, quietly, and I need you to let me get your daughter's number before Paula gets back."