"His words waited like landmines."
The unread portion of Eli's letter had taken up residence on Silver's desk like an unexploded bomb, its cream paper seeming to pulse with potential energy that demanded eventual release. She'd moved it three times already that morning in a futile attempt to find a position where its presence felt less threatening—off the bed where she'd originally left it, onto the scarred wooden surface of her Yale-issued desk, into the drawer where she couldn't see the elegant university crest, then back out again when hiding it felt more cowardly than confronting it.
Each time her fingers made contact with the heavy paper, her nervous system responded as if the black ink itself might burn through skin and bone to reach whatever remained of her emotional defenses. The physical sensation was absurd, but no amount of rational self-talk could convince her body that Eli's written words posed no actual threat to her carefully maintained psychological equilibrium.
