Stories she’d told about when I was a baby. How she used to drag me to doctors, begging them to believe something was wrong when I kept getting sick. How they called her hysterical. Said she was overreacting. That she had postnatal depression.
Until the day I stopped breathing, and they finally listened as I was rushed to the ER.
Where I was diagnosed with neutropenia. They said I had no immune system. Next to no white blood cells. No naturaldefenses to fight off diseases. It was the common cold that nearly killed me. They said it was a miracle I was still alive. For the next three years, I lived on antibiotics, all but wrapped in a bubble. Mom became my shield. My world. And now… Now she was gone.
I didn’t notice the office door swing open until I stumbled straight into Anthony’s chest.
Large hands caught my shoulders instantly, steady and sure, like his body had decided before his mind could. My breath punched out of me. My own trembling hands braced against him, fingers curling into the solid line of his ribs without permission.
Cedar. Sea salt. Smoke. The scent hit first, sharp and grounding, and something in my chestloosened. My pulse stuttered, then slowed, like it had finally found something to sync to. He was warm. Solid in a way nothing else seemed to be.
For one breathless second, my weight sagged forward, my forehead hovering just shy of his collarbone. My body leaned in before I could stop it. Before I could remember I was supposed to be holding myself together.
Then he pulled back like I’d burned him. His hands fell away and the sudden absence made my skin prickle, cold rushing in where his warmth had been. He clenched his fists once, hard, before shoving them into his pockets.
His beautiful face twisted, something pained flickering behind his dark brown eyes. The fine lines at their corners deepened like he was holding something back.
Even though it was wrong—wrong timing, wrong everything—my heart fluttered. A warmth I’d forgotten I was capable of feeling unfurled low in my chest, spreading through my veins like the first rays of sun after a storm. Not desire, not yet, but relief. That terrified me more than the grief ever had.
“How’re you holding up, El?” he asked, voice unreadable.
“Fine,” I lied like it was second nature.
He didn’t question it. Didn’t look closer at me even though I silently begged him with my eyes. That was the worst part. Not that he didn’t believe me, but that he just didn’t care enough to try and look deeper.
He turned on his heel and marched down the hallway. The front door slammed behind him. I stood there, unable to move, while his scent clung to my skin like an accusation.
When people asked how I was doing, I always said the same safe things. “I’m fine,” or “Like you’d expect.” No one wanted the truth. No one wanted to see me. Not even him.
As that truth settled in my bones, I let that fleeting warmth crystallize, frozen just like me.
Not long after, my dad shut the office door, shutting me out like I wasn’t even there. I picked my mug up off the floor, head hung with shame and embarrassment as I stumbled back to the kitchen.
There used to be a warmth in my dad, or maybe I was too naïve to see the truth. Maybe I’d always seen him through her rose-colored glasses. Now, though? He didn’t see me at all. We shared a house, but not a life.
Yesterday, I tried to talk to him. We sat at the table, two people separated by an ocean.
“Dad, I—” The words stuck like glass in my throat, sharp and bloody.
He looked up for the first time since her funeral, blinked once, and went back to stirring his coffee. Like I wasn’t even there.
That quiet dismissal shattered another part of me. Not loudly—silently. A single sorrowful tear trickled down my cheek. A death by neglect.
Shaking the memory away, I filled my thermos with coffee instead of using the chipped mug on the counter, the one thatstill held her lipstick stain in the glaze like a fingerprint. I shoved it back in the cupboard. The clang echoed in the quiet kitchen like an accusation. I ignored it.
Bag slung over my shoulder, I stepped out the back door and let it close behind me without looking back.
The cliffs were calling me again; they felt like my only refuge. The last place I felt tethered to her. There, it felt like if I breathed in deep enough, maybe I’d catch a ghost of her in the salt air, a memory wearing her perfume.
The narrow path through the wild grass hadn’t changed. It still held our footprints, even as the rest of the world seemed determined to forget her.
Every step felt like a liturgy—something holy and desperate—matching the slow rhythm of those mornings when she used to walk beside me. Now I walked it alone, reciting a prayer no one was listening to.
The ocean waited like the edge of the world. Calm for now. Patient even. I knew better. It could turn on you in seconds.
That was grief. One moment it was quiet. Bearable. The next, it surged, swallowing you whole, leaving your lungs burning and your knees scraped raw from fighting it. Just like the ocean, it pulled you under in silence and spat you out in pieces.
I sat at the cliff’s edge, legs dangling into the wind, the familiar chill biting through my jeans. The waves far below whispered stories I didn’t want to hear. My hands trembled as I pulled my notebook from my bag and cracked it open.
