“Where did he come from?” he asked.
The boy clutched a note: “Please help him. I can’t. Forgive me.”
Despite Misha’s protests, I lifted the child into my arms. “We’ve waited five years,” I whispered. “He’s ours.”
We named him Ilya. Days later, we noticed he didn’t respond to sound. A doctor confirmed: congenital deafness. I cried. Misha just said, “We’ll manage.”
I learned sign language. Ilya learned to read, count, and draw—beautifully. Our village mocked him, but Misha defended him. He never flinched.
At 17, Ilya’s art was discovered at a fair. A gallery in Moscow bought his painting. Soon, he became known as the Artist of Silence.
Years later, he brought us to a new house he built. On the wall, a painting: a woman holding a child, signed above with, “Thank you, Mom.”
Ilya can’t hear music, so he paints it. He can’t hear my voice, but he understands every word.
And I now believe—some of life’s most profound moments happen in silence.
