Chapter 1
KAIRA
The air tasted like salt, fear, and grief lingering on the edges, engulfing me as the wind swept around me, playing with my hair, pushing it right and left as if it had a mind of its own.
My eyes zeroed in on the beach underneath the cliff I was standing on, the black sand looking almost ominous, dangerous somehow, but I wasn't afraid.
At least not anymore.
I could feel the soil underneath my bare feet, the cold ground touching my skin, but I knew I was missing something.
Something important. I could feel it just like this wind caressing my skin, this something lingering in the back of my mind.
Calling, begging, asking for me. But no matter how many times I closed my eyes, nothing ever came.
"I need you to remember," the whisper came, and as I turned around, there he was. The shadow. The man whose face I couldn't see. "I need you to remember," came louder now, and I had no doubt it was his voice flickering through my mind.
"What?" I yelled out. "What do I need to remember?" But the answer never came. He stood a couple of feet away from me, but it felt as if continents separated us, and I had no explanation for the grief pushing through my chest when I saw him.
A sharp pain cut through my middle and as I looked down, as my hands pressed against the spot, all I could see was crimson. Blood. So much blood.
"Please," he said again, and as my eyes looked toward him, the flickering of the shadows surrounding him revealed a pair of emerald green eyes. Haunted, stricken with grief. "Please."
Every atom in my body wanted to go to him. Every piece of my soul resisted against the pull the ocean had on me, begging me to get closer, to remove the grief from those eyes, but an invisible force held me in place, stopping me from moving forward.
"I'll find you," I said as the wind pushed against me, getting me closer to the edge of the cliff. "I'll find you in another life." And I plummeted, dropping into the dark abyss waiting for me under the cliff, waiting for—
"Fuck!" I bellowed as I jumped up in my bed, my entire body shaking from the nightmare I had. Or should I say, the nightmare I kept on having for months now. It always started the same, in the same place, with the same feelings, but tonight… Tonight something changed.
My hand pressed against my chest, feeling the thundering of my heart as I tried shaking off the tendrils of shadows following me from my nightmare, but just like every other time, there was no use trying to forget what I dreamed about.
There was no use trying to forget the shadowy silhouette that kept appearing every time I closed my eyes, because he seemed to follow me everywhere I went.
Tonight was the first time I saw his eyes and I had no idea why, but the mere thought of never seeing them again sent a tendril of panic through my body, confusing me even more. And those eyes… I saw those eyes once before, but where?
My therapist said it was normal to have nightmares about that night, but these nightmares had nothing to do with the accident.
They had nothing to do with the memories of the smell I couldn't get rid of no matter how hard I tried, because I was the only one there when the fire went out, when the drops of rain tried washing away the terror that still lived in my body.
I was the first one who saw their bodies.
I was the first one who felt the scent of charred flesh and the first one who saw the unrecognizable bodies of my family.
But just like every morning, I tried shaking off the memories from almost a year ago, focusing on my breathing, on being present, on being alive even though I didn't feel like I was.
My lungs worked, my heart pumped blood running through my veins, but there was something in the center of my being, a hole I would never be able to fill.
A hole left behind by the death of my entire family, leaving me alone to navigate this life.
There was not a right or wrong way to deal with grief, but I knew I wasn't dealing with it at all.
I was running away, fucking drowning in the sea of memories, lost between the past and the present.
And sometimes, the current was too strong to fight.
At some point it feels futile trying to get away from the strong waves, because you know the sun isn't shining on the other side.
You know the hole wouldn't get filled in just because you want to believe in it.
Some days are better, almost perfect, and on those days I often forget that in the span of a couple of hours my entire life changed, leaving me with this darkness living in the corners of the house I grew up in.
On other days, just like today, darkness wasn't staying in the corners.
It lived inside me, in my very bones, and if I wasn't careful I would get swept away again, leaving nothing of our family behind.
There were a thousand questions I had about that night, but none of those answers I so desperately looked for would ever bring them back.
I would never get to hear my sister's lilting laughter.
I would never feel my mom's arms around me, hugging me just a little tighter every time I left the house.
I would never stand on the back patio with my dad, complaining about the weather while my mom and my sister prepared dinner for all of us, because that's what we did.
We gathered whenever I was traveling closer for work, right here in this house, eating together, laughing, talking about our week, filling these rooms with happiness.
If only I had known that one day the memories of that happiness wouldn't be enough to keep me in this world. I didn't know my own happiness until I met my misery. I didn't know how lucky I was, and I would forever regret not being a better daughter and a better sister.
I should've told them how much I loved them.
I shouldn't have kept my emotions so close to my heart because I didn't know how to express them.
I didn't know how to hold them without thinking about the future they weren't a part of, but I always thought I would have years before the reality of the world without my mom and dad in it would come.
I tried protecting myself from heartbreak, foolishly thinking keeping that simple 'I love you' from them would somehow save them, because I always thought the Universe would try to play some wicked little game on us if it knew how much we cared about each other.
My mom told me I was simply superstitious, my dad laughed about it and Thalia hugged me more, loving me out loud even when I was incapable of loving her back in the same way. Now I would give anything just to see them one more time.
But instead of lingering on the memories I was left with, I pushed my blanket off of me, hating the fact that even through this grief, I could still feel the pain emanating from those green eyes I saw in my dream.
People say those we meet in our dreams, even though they seem like strangers, are actually people we have met throughout our life.
The first time he came to me was days after the accident, but unlike now, he didn't talk.
He didn't do anything but stand there, and even without the vision of his face, of his eyes, I knew he was looking at me.
I knew he was dragging his eyes all over me as if he were as shocked by me as I was by him.
I thought it was my brain's way of dealing with reality, putting me in these imaginary situations where I died instead of my family, but Thalia, my mom, and my dad were never in these dreams.
It would've been easier had I dreamed about them. At least then I would feel maybe even a little bit better about the fact I was the one dying and not them.
But they never came. Yet, he was always there, as if he were waiting for something.
My feet touched the cold floor, reminding me of an unpaid heating bill that was still laying on the coffee table down in the living room, along with the other bills I couldn't look at.
All of them were addressed to my parents' names up until a few months ago when the ownership of the house changed from them to me.
It was supposed to go both to me and Thalia, but without her…
Yeah, everything went to me. Their house, their money, the keys to their cabin in Oregon—everything.
And I didn't want one single thing. The worst part, the one that probably haunted me the most, was the fact that I practically got out of that terrible night with only a scar through my left eyebrow and a couple of bruises on my body.
Not a single broken bone.
Not a single burst vessel.
Just one scar that would remind me forever of what I had lost.
My hand lifted of its own volition, my fingers pressing against the scar running through my eyebrow, and I wished I could still feel the pain just like I did for weeks after the accident.
Pain grounded me, made me feel more alive than I was now, and without it, without a single thing that could remind me I was still alive, I stopped pretending I wanted to live.
Because I didn't. I didn't want to live if they weren't here.
I didn't want to breathe the same air that caused my father to skid off the road when he saw a deer in the last moment because the fog was so fucking thick.
But I knew my mother would want me to move forward.
She would want me to live my life, to cherish the memories and remember I was stronger than I thought, which was why I moved back to their house, hoping it would somehow propel me into action.