Chapter Forty-Two Violet
Chapter Forty-Two
Violet
It was the quiet that convinced me to stay.
Castina was a seaside town, barely a town at all with its one thin artery of a street, a few cafés, a tiny library, and my favorite . . . a bookstore that smelled of old paper and incense.
Sweetwater had been picture perfect in the mountains, but beneath its postcard charm had lurked too much noise, too much darkness. I needed silence that didn’t echo back at me.
Six months. That was how long it had been since Grayson. Since the fire. Since I first sat across from Dr. Afonso and admitted what I’d buried because I knew I couldn’t hold it anymore.
She called that progress. I called it survival.
I hadn’t expected therapy to help. I thought I’d go through the motions, let her tick boxes until she was convinced I wasn’t going to shatter. But somehow, little by little, I started to breathe again.
Now I was here, trying to build a new life that never stopped feeling like something was missing.
Every morning, three days a week, I walked a few blocks to the community mental-health center where I worked part-time. Dr. Afonso had told me about the opening months ago, and though I didn’t have a degree yet, I was learning so much. Watching. Absorbing.
I stopped for coffee on the way, and for a second the smell and sound of the shop almost made me smile. I’d once worked in a place just like this. But just as quickly, guilt cut through. It reminded me of Harper.
There was still no trace of her. I asked every month, but the reply was always the same: We’ll contact you if anything changes.
I sipped my coffee and rounded the corner. Ahead, the weather-worn counseling building stood strong against the salt air, its sign faded gray but still legible:
Castina Counseling Services
Beneath it, a motto had been carved in smaller letters, meant to be hopeful: Even in the darkest storm, there’s always a light to help you find the shore.
Inside, the hallways smelled faintly of burned coffee and lemon floor polish.
My desk was tucked at the back, wedged between filing cabinets and a stubborn window that never stayed open.
The title on my badge—Med/Surg Specialist—sounded fancier than what I did: intake forms, scheduling, and answering phones in my best professional voice.
On breaks, I sometimes sat in on group sessions for trauma recovery. I listened to voices tremble, steady, then break again.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
“Morning, Violet.”
Dr. Afonso’s voice pulled me from my work. I looked up from my desk to see her leaning in the doorway, dark curls slipping loose from her clip. She was one of the supervising clinicians—sharp-eyed, kind without being soft.
“Good morning,” I said, my smile almost genuine.
She studied me a moment before nodding. “How are things going?”
I glanced out the window, then back at her.
“Good, actually.” My voice was softer than I had intended.
I’d opened up to her more than I expected to.
It was never the full story, never the worst of it, but she listened.
And when the weight pressed too heavy, she let me set it down for a while and do the listening.
After she left, my smile slipped. This life still felt foreign to me, like things borrowed from someone else that I pretended were mine.
By three, I was in the group room, notebook balanced on my knee. Six chairs in a circle. A pot of lukewarm coffee on the side table. And a fluorescent light that washed everyone pale.
Dr. Harris started gently, her voice steady as she asked for check-ins. One by one, they spoke in the shorthand of people who had lived through too much.
Night noises that snapped them awake, flashes of memory that tore through without warning, and guilt like a second skin they couldn’t shed.
I never spoke. I only listened. My pen scratched across the page, notes I knew I’d never look at again. It wasn’t about recording. It was a ritual. The repetition. A way to keep myself tethered to the reality.
When the session ended, I lingered, stacking chairs just to keep my hands busy.
Joel, one of the younger patients, paused beside me. His gaze was hesitant, but it was steady. “You never talk during the sessions.”
I forced a small smile. “Listening’s easier.”
He seemed to turn that over, weighing it. “Yeah . . . but do you ever feel like it never really leaves you?” His voice was awkward, but there was an honesty in it that pressed against my ribs.
I frowned lightly. “What do you mean?”
He swallowed, eyes on the floor. “Like it’s just there, under your skin. And no matter how hard you scratch, you can’t get to it.”
Something in me went still. His words lodged in me, sharp with recognition. For a moment I felt them more than I heard them.
The truth of it, how it lived inside my own body.
“Yeah,” I said finally, my voice low. “I know exactly what you mean.”
By the end of my shift, the air carried humidity and rain. I walked home the long way, down the boardwalk, my shoes scuffing against planks slick with mist. The sea was gray and endless, waves folding over one another in a rhythm that looked more violent than soothing.
I stopped and let myself stare at the current, my thoughts turning intrusive the way they sometimes did. What would happen if I just stepped forward? How long until the water swept me under? How long until it was quiet again?
The questions rose sharp and familiar, but I remembered what Dr. Afonso had told me—catch the thought, name it, and don’t let it grow teeth. Intrusive thoughts. That was all it was. Just noise.
I pressed my fingers against the railing, focused on the ridges in the wood, the salt clinging to the air. My senses brought me back. “What’s real, Violet?” I asked myself, then answered my own question. “The ocean. The rain. My heartbeat.” It steadied me enough to ground myself once more.
My apartment sat above a thrift store run by an eccentric older woman in chunky sweaters who seemed to collect more donations than she sold. Dust motes drifted in the air as if they belonged there, and the shop smelled of old fabric and cedar. And I loved it.
A note was taped to my front door in the landlord’s scrawl. The heater’s still busted. Sorry.
Inside, the space was small but mine. A beachy aesthetic I hadn’t chosen but liked anyway. Everything came furnished, which meant nothing matched, but the crooked seaside charm was enough. There was a love seat sunken like it carried the weight of every stranger who’d ever sat there.
The first thing I did was water my lone plant.
Dr. Afonso had suggested it. It’s a living thing to watch grow, something to remind you that not everything withers under neglect.
Her words played through my head. Its leaves drooped slightly, but they were still green.
Still alive. I gave it a nice long drink.
Most days it felt like a test. Keep this alive, and maybe you can keep yourself alive, too.
My textbooks were spread across the kitchen table. Foundations of Trauma Therapy. Counseling Ethics. The Body Remembers. They were titles that felt like heavy promises. I ran my hand across the covers, grounding myself in their solidity.
The titles felt heavier than the textbooks themselves. I opened the earmarked page and traced my finger over the passage I had underlined. Healing is not the absence of pain, but integrating it into our lives.
Integration. A word that sounded so clinical. But my life was anything but neat. What I had was coexistence, a fragile truce between the woman who still saw herself among flames and smoke to a woman now answering phones in a counseling center.
I sat down and opened my notebook to write all the things Dr. Afonso suggested for weekly reflections. My pen hovered before finally scrawling words that felt jagged and insufficient.
Grounding worked today at the boardwalk. Named the intrusive thoughts and didn’t follow them.
I tapped my pen on the paper before continuing.
That’s progress even if it still feels foreign to me.
I exhaled as I closed the notebook.
I set the kettle on the stove and let the hiss of steam fill the apartment. Rituals. Everything in my life was routine, as if order could matter. But it was the little things . . . like the sound of boiling water, and the weight and warmth of a mug in my hand. It made me feel almost normal.
They tethered me to the present when the past tried to pull me under.
I lit the small candle on the counter, its faint cotton scent drifting through the room, switched on the dented space heater the landlord had dropped off, and curled onto the couch with one of the library books balanced in my lap.
I skimmed the pages without absorbing them, my eyes sliding over lines until the words blurred. After an hour, I shut the book, flicked on the television, and curled up beneath a thick blanket, letting myself zone out.
I could ground myself all day. Go to therapy. Take notes. Sit in on group sessions. But when the silence settled, when it was just me, the memories of Grayson crept back. They pressed at the edges, waiting for the next quiet moment to slip through.
Sometimes it wasn’t the fire I remembered.
It was him. The way his laugh had filled me with this warm and reckless feeling, like he made the sound only for me.
I closed my eyes and imagined the weight of his body stretched across mine, and the rough scrape of his stubble against my skin when he kissed me like he couldn’t get enough.
His hands had always been firm, certain, splayed wide over my hips like he was anchoring me in place as he thrust in and out of me.
I remembered the heat of his breath against my neck, and the gruff sound he’d make when he sank deeper into me, the kind of sound that made me think he was losing control.
Grayson had looked at me like I was the only thing in a world that had already taken so much from both of us.
Those were the moments that undid me, when the chaos in my head went quiet beneath the weight of him. His mouth on my skin, his hands holding me like he’d never let go . . . those were the times I felt safe, wanted, and loved in a way I’d never believed I could be.
The memory of that closeness still burned hot in my body, but the reality that followed was cold and painful. It was cruel how the same images that once gave me joy now gutted me, reminding me I’d never feel him again. The intimacy and the loss were welded together, inseparable.
Tomorrow would be the same. And the day after that. It wasn’t much of a life, not yet. But it was forward motion, a slow crawl toward something like living.
This was the life I had, and I would make the most of it. For now, that had to be enough.