8
Fog rolls through the trees beyond our fence line, thickening as it reaches misty fingers towards the sky.
It smells of earth and promise, the gentle moisture feeding the land as the day crawls in.
Nights get cold within the gums – branches and leaves trapping the air beneath them, offering wildlife a sanctuary from the heat through the first half of the day before the sun breaks through the leaves and warms their homes again.
In the early morning the forest always felt older than the town that bordered it, older even than the houses slowly sinking into the soil beyond our fence.
The pines whispered when the wind slipped between them, their leaves hissing together with quiet secrets.
Francesca used to say the woods were alive in ways people never were, free in a way we could only wish.
We believed the trees knew things. That if we stayed long enough, if we listened hard enough, they might tell us where to go when the world felt too small.
We planned it quietly – our escape – fearful that if we spoke to loudly, something might notice and intervene.
We swore we would leave before we turned nineteen.
Before life could settle over us like suffocating dust.
She wanted the city, the bright lights, her brother.
And while I longed for something simpler, quieter – just she and I as we navigated our freedom – I agreed.
I would have followed her anywhere, should she have asked.
I’ve not returned to our secret place since winter.
Since Francesca went missing. I could say it’s because the sadness keeps me rooted here, that I can’t face the place she drew her last breath.
But I’m not certain it is that, at all. Truthfully, I think it’s more selfish – a fear woven with self-preservation.
Hesitancy anchors me to my home, that fear of what I might remember if I were to venture there again – that perhaps the reason I can’t remember the last few months the way I should, is because I’m blocking them out. Blocking out what really happened.
The memories stop sharply each time I try to draw them forth, like a book snapping shut, story incomplete.
I try to force them sometimes – late at night, when the house creaks and sleep refuses to come.
I close my eyes and walk the woods in my mind, step by step, searching for the moment everything went wrong.
But the path always dissolves into fog. Into darkness that steals my breath and pushes against my chest.
Francesca face filters into my thoughts. Her rueful smile and wonder filled eyes, the way she spun in circles where the sun cast ethereal beams through the trees.
She would sing her favourite hymns beneath the leaves, making something burn in the base of my spine. She was beautiful when the sunlight hit her cheeks – pure warmth and magic.
We often spent our afternoons curled up in the overgrowth, flowers kissing our cheeks as we spoke about leaving this place behind, about pathways and food and oceans we had never experienced.
Other times we said nothing at all. Silence never felt heavy with her.
It felt full of promise of what’s to come – a pause between hungry breaths.
I wonder if her death was quick. If she suffered.
I wonder whether she was afraid, or filled with regret.
I wonder what her final thoughts were when she realised the end had come.
Did she think of me then – of the quiet moments of our friendship, the small memories that stitched us together – wishing, as I do now, that we had been given more time?
I won’t ever know the answers. Not in this life, and not even when my own ends.
Francesca and I agreed – when death comes, there is nothing beyond it. No second place. No return. There was only this life. Only the time we were given together.
And now that time is complete.