Chapter 1 #2
I passed him without a word, like a stranger moving through a place that wasn’t mine anymore.
A place haunted by memories I couldn’t stand to look at.
I didn’t bother taking off my muddy shoes, just headed upstairs, step after step, carrying out the only ritual I had left.
My penance for still being alive. I repeated it every day with some futile hope that things might be different this time, even though I knew it was impossible. Still, I hoped.
At the end of the hallway, their bedroom door waited. Shut, but not locked. Not that it ever was. The kind of shut that begged to be left alone. But I turned the knob, anyway.
My hand trembled as if it already knew what it would lose. The metal felt colder than it should have, leaching heat from my skin. I held it too long before I moved it like a masochist chasing pain.
The air inside was stale, tinged with lavender and dust and something fainter, something ghostly and warm and gone.
Her robe still hung from the hook on the bathroom door.
Her slippers sat beside the bed, toes turned in like she’d just stepped out of them.
The bedspread was pulled tight, corners tucked with her military precision, and the remote lay neatly on the nightstand where she always left it.
Everything was paused. Preserved. Like the room was holding its breath. So was I. For a second—a single, treacherous moment—I saw her.
Curled up on the bed, a paperback in her lap, one of those terrible true crime shows murmuring in the background. I could almost hear her laugh, that hoarse giggle she gave when she caught me sneaking snacks up to my room after midnight when I was a child.
The sound of it echoed in my chest.
That thought cracked something in me.
The walls I’d built, brick by bloody brick, split wide open. Memories didn’t drift in. They surged. Feral and relentless. They didn’t ask permission; they assaulted me, one after another, too fast, too sharp, each one cutting deeper than the last.
I was ten. Drenched and shivering. The storm I thought I could outrun had broken over me like a punishment.
Water ran from my hair, stung my eyes, and soaked the cuffs of my jeans. It filled my shoes until every step squelched. I stood in the foyer like a drowned cat—small, and miserable, shaking so hard my teeth clicked together.
She didn’t yell at me like my dad would have. She didn’t scold. She just appeared out of nowhere with that quiet, steady presence she had. That put me at ease in an instant.
She wrapped me in one of those oversized cardigans that swallowed me whole.
It smelled like cinnamon and laundry soap and her—something warm and safe and impossible to name.
The fabric was soft and heavy around my shoulders, still warm from her body, and she pulled me into the curve of her like I belonged there.
Like that was where I was supposed to be.
Her arm fit across my back perfectly. Her hand pressed between my shoulder blades, slow and grounding, a steady weight that told my shaking body it was allowed to stop running.
No lectures. No anger. She led me to the kitchen and sat me at the island while she busied herself making me a hot drink. Her voice was husky and low as she stirred hot chocolate in a chipped white mug that had once been hers but now was mine.
“Some days, baby,” she whispered, brushing the wet hair from my forehead with gentle fingers, her thumb warm against my cold skin, “you just have to survive one breath at a time. One moment. One sip.”
The mug steamed between my hands. The heat burned my palms just enough to keep me present and stop my mind from wandering. Her fingers kept moving through my hair. Over and over in a rhythm that was almost hypnotic.
She hadn’t told me I was weak or stupid. Or made jokes at my expense. She had made me feel human. She’d made me feel seen and understood.
And now?
Breathing felt like drowning.
Every inhale scraped like glass against my ribs. Every exhale my lungs clawed for air I couldn’t reach. My throat locked around each breath like it was trying to hold me together and failing.
The weight of my grief—of knowing I would never feel her hand on my back again, never hear her voice, never be gathered into that kind of safety—hit me like a fist to the sternum.
My hand still clutched the doorknob. It shook so hard it rattled. The metal felt like it burned now, like my skin was rejecting it, like my body was begging me not to go any further.
I couldn’t step inside.
My memories were too loud. They roared like a crashing tide, drowning out everything else. I shut the door like it was an open wound. Turned. And ran, my feet moving without thought.
Downstairs, I skidded to a stop in the kitchen.
Her coffee mug still sat on the counter.
Lipstick smudged the rim, faded pink, like she’d just stepped out to answer the phone and would be back any second.
Like my world hadn’t split in half. I grabbed it.
The ceramic was warmer than I expected, as if it still held the ghost of her hands. That was what broke me.
The mug didn’t shatter as I hurled it at the floor. It hit the wooden planks giving a dull, hollow thunk then bounced, rolled, and tipped onto its side. It wobbled there for a second before settling.
Intact.
Mocking me.
Even her fucking mug refused to break.
My knees buckled. I hit the floor hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Pain flared up my shins and into my hips, but I barely felt it. My arms locked around my ribs like I could keep myself from coming apart if I held on tight enough.
Rocking.
Rocking.
Like a child clawing back from a nightmare. No tears came. Just an unbearable pressure. Hot and brutal behind my eyes. In my chest. In my throat. Like my bones were trying to scream but had forgotten how.
“I can’t breathe in here.”
I couldn’t take it. The walls breathed. Remembered. Whispered her name in every crack and corner. Her absence was louder than anything in my head.
“She’s everywhere… and yet she’s not even here,” I bit out through clenched teeth.
An inhuman sound clawed up my throat, but I swallowed it down before it could breach my lips. I lurched to my feet and slammed the back door open so hard it rattled on the hinges.
Cold air slapped my face. My sneakers hit wet earth, slipping in the mud as I bolted across the yard. Long grass lashed my ankles, sharp and cold. My lungs burned as I pushed myself too fast, too soon, but I didn’t slow. Didn’t look back.
My old swing set creaked as I passed it, rusted chains swaying with no one in them, a hollow, lonely sound that followed me like a question I couldn’t answer.
The cliffs rose ahead, sharp, brutal, waiting for me like they always did. Salvation or punishment. I didn’t know which they offered anymore.
By the time I reached the edge, my legs gave out. I collapsed where grass gave way to jagged rock and the world fell open beneath me. Black water churned below, salt spray stung my face and coated my lips.
Stormlight fractured the sky. The ocean roared. And I stayed. Because maybe here—on the edge of everything—I could still feel her. Maybe her voice lived in the wind, tangled with salt. Maybe the ocean remembered what I couldn’t.
I dug my fingers into the damp ground, nails scraping stone and soil, just to keep myself anchored to something solid.
She used to say the ocean brought her peace. That it knew how to hold her pain and helped her heal.
But she was wrong.
The ocean didn’t give anything back. It only took. It took her laugh. Her breath. Her voice. It took the space she filled.
It took my future and left me with silence, carving me out until all that remained was ache rattling inside fragile bones.
My skin didn’t fit right. It felt too tight, too thin, like I’d been shoved into someone else’s body and told to survive in it.
Every breath scraped my throat raw, loud and jagged in the empty space behind my eyes.
I kicked off my shoes and flung them behind me.
Gravel bit into my soles with sharp, precise pain that reminded me I still existed.
Cold gnawed at my feet, climbed my calves, and sank into every exposed inch of skin.
My shirt clung damply to my shoulders while the rest of it snapped and whipped in the wind, slapping my ribs like punishment.
Below, the waves battered the cliff face again and again, like relentless fists pounding on a door that would never open.
“Where are you, Mom?” The words tore out of me. “Come back. Please… just come back.” My voice split, raw and ruined, the kind of sound that hurt my ribs as I made it.
Nothing answered. No whisper from beyond. No signs appeared in the endless dark sky. Just the ocean’s relentless crash and the hollow hush after, like the world had stopped listening long ago. Maybe it never listened at all.
My toes curled over the edge as I stepped forward. The drop yawned open beneath me. Black and endless. The call of the void. The horizon was gone, swallowed by the oncoming storm.
That’s when a thought came—not loud or violently—just a whisper sliding up my spine:What if I just stopped trying? What if I let go? It didn’t scare me. That was the worst part. It felt almost peaceful. Soft. Quiet, like falling asleep wrapped in her cardigan.
I didn’t move. Didn’t fall. Just stood there and let the wind ravage my clothes and the waves tear at my thoughts, and wondered if that still counted as being alive.
It was strange how the brain could make things feel real without ever proving they were. It trusted nerves over logic. Breath over reason. Sensation over truth.
That’s when I felt it. It wasn’t a sound or a touch. Just the weight of a presence—like something warm and steady settling between my shoulder blades, like a gaze pressing there, gentle but impossible to ignore.
The fine hairs along my arms lifted. My shoulders tensed, then softened, as if my body had decided on its own that it was safe.
Someone was behind me.
Watching over me.
Not in a way that made me feel hunted or followed, but in a way that made me feel held. Protected. I didn’t turn around. Didn’t dare breathe too deeply in case the spell broke.
I just let myself believe it. That someone had followed me into the dark just to be near, someone who saw me unravel and didn’t look away, someone who didn’t need me to be fixed or quiet or okay.
My chest ached around that thought. The soft, bruising kind that spread under my ribs and into my throat.
How badly I wanted it to be true. My heart twisted painfully around that impossible hope.
How carefully I held that feeling, like a small flame cupped in shaking hands, afraid that even a single movement might snuff it out.
I imagined it was her. Still watching over me.
Still loving me. Or maybe it was nothing.
Just a shape I made from loneliness to keep the silence company.
My eyes fell closed, and I let the wind speak. Let the ocean roar. Let the idea of being seen hold me together. I stayed for hours.Because as long as I could pretend someone stood there with me…
I wasn’t completely lost.
Not yet.