Grief has a weight to it—wet wool soaked through, heavy in places you didn’t know you could carry. I pretend for a second she might be ahead, just out of view, dancing through the surf with her slip trailing behind her, laughing like I haven’t buried her ashes and left what remains of her in a graveyard not far from here.
I round the bend where the cliffs rise sharp and gray, and I almost don’t notice her—curled near a driftwood log, knees tucked in, chin resting on them.
“Brittany?”
She startles. Blinks. Wipes her face with the sleeve of an oversized cream sweater.
“Oh.” Her voice cracks. “Hi.”
She stands slowly, like she’s been there a long time, legsstiff and unsure. I haven’t seen her since the funeral. She looks thinner. Pale. Hair in a messy knot.
I step closer, cautious. “You okay?”
She gives a small, pitiful laugh, but her eyes brim again. “Not really.”
“Yeah. Me neither.” I look down at the sand, then back at her. “You don’t look good.”
She flinches slightly, like I’ve slapped her. Then her mouth twists into something between a smile and a grimace. “Thanks, Calum. Always knew how to charm a girl.”
I snort quietly. It’s the first sound that’s almost human to come out of me in days.
“I meant…” I rub the back of my neck. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
She nods. Bites her lip. “I’m sorry. I should’ve come by sooner. I just—I couldn’t. I kept thinking about it, about you. About her.”
Her. Annabel.
My lungs tighten.
“I keep imagining the moment all was lost–wondering if we could have done something differently,” she sobs. “I took the semester off,” Brittany adds softly. “My dad’s furious. Says I’m throwing away my future, but…” She looks out at the water. “This is the only place that feels like anything right now. Like healing, maybe. I don’t know.”
I follow her gaze. The tide is rolling in, eating the beach inch by inch.
“I get that,” I say. “I can’t leave. I don’t sleep anywhere else now. I just stay at the cottage. Waiting for nothing.”
She wipes her cheeks again, but her hands tremble.
I notice how much she’s shaking and for the first time, I wonder if she’s cold or if it’s something else. Something deeper.
“You were close,” I murmur, though I already know the answer. “You and Annabel.”
“We grew up like sisters,” she says, voice thick. “She was everything I wasn’t. Brave. Loud. Beautiful. She made people notice her.”
I glance at Brittany—her soft features, her barely-there freckles, the way she crumples in on herself. A shadow to Annabel’s spotlight.
“You were beautiful too,” I say quietly. “You still are.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, startled.
And then she shakes her head, almost violently, as if she can’t accept anything kind.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” she whispers.
Her voice catches, and she looks like she wants to say something else—wants to spill it, whatever it is—but swallows it down. She wraps her arms around herself and stares out at the water again like it might speak for her.
I don’t press. I can’t.
My grief is a stormcloud and I can barely see past the edges of it. I haven’t slept in days. Haven’t eaten. My head is pounding.
