And I thought of the way Elliot hadn’t finished his tea the night before. The way his hands had hovered over the mug like he wasn’t sure what to do with warmth anymore. The way he’d smiled when I asked if he was okay — a soft, polite thing that didn’t reach his eyes.
I’d told myself it was just grief. That it was normal. That it would pass.
I wasn’t so sure anymore
I wanted to punch David. Wanted to shake him until hefeltsomething. But what would be the point? He’d already disappeared. Long before Natalie’s body was buried in the ground, he was already gone.
“You don’t deserve him,” I said coldly. He didn’t respond. “You don’t deserveeitherof them.”
David turned away, walking slowly, as if his bones couldn’t hold him up anymore. I followed him like a seething shadow, ready to go to war with him. “You’ve got my number if anything comes up,” he muttered as an afterthought over his shoulder, just before slipping into his office and slamming the door shut in my face.
I stared at the grain in the wood, shaking with the effort it took to keep my fist from breaking through it. But I didn’t knock. Didn’t scream. Didn’t beg.
There was no point because he’d made his mind up. Even though it was wrong. I knew nothing I could say would make him change his mind. I just hoped one day he saw this for the devastating mistake it was and realized everything it had cost him.
Frustrated, I stormed down the hallway, through the kitchen, and out into the yard, the screen door crashing shut behind me. My chest was tight, lungs working harder than they should’ve, like breathing was a task I hadn’t mastered yet. I needed out. Needed air. Needed something that didn’t remind me of him, or a memory, or the ghosts we’d never buried properly.
I took the dirt path that curved through the field behind the house, damp with morning mist, until it broke into the clearing that led to the cliffs.
The wind hit me like a warning. Cold. Brutal. Familiar.
The ocean roared below, waves crashing against jagged rocks like they were trying to claw their way back into the past. It was the kind of sound you felt in your bones—violent and endless. A grief that never stopped howling.
This was where Elliot came when it got too loud in his head. I’d seen him here before, screaming into the void like it might scream back, like the ocean might swallow all the pain he couldn’t carry anymore.
I stood where he’d stood the night of her funeral. Toes on the edge. The horizon a smear of gray and salt. Endless and haunting.
“Natalie,” I whispered, my voice breaking as the wind tore it from my throat like it didn’t belong to me. “I don’t know what to do.”
The ocean answered with silence, crashing relentlessly against the rocks below like it was trying to drown out my desperation. My nails sunk into the palms of my hands, my knuckles whitening under the strain, like I could wring something out of the sky—some sign, some ghost of her.
“I thought I could help them—him,” I said, the words brittle. “I thought maybe I could stop whatever’s coming. But it’s all unraveling. I don’t know what to do.”
The ocean didn’t shift into her face. The clouds didn’t part. The horizon didn’t split open with revelation. Just the same relentless gray. Just the same endless ache.
“I can’t keep watching him fall apart,” I choked. “But I can’t walk away either.” I dragged a hand down my face, feeling the grit of salt on my skin, the cold already stiffening my fingers. My knees ached from standing too long in one place. My body knew I was here, even if my head felt somewhere else entirely.
Because hewon’tlet me. Because Iwon’tlet myself. Because somewhere in the pieces of him, I think I found a part of myself.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the old letter—the one I’d carried like a curse, Natalie’s last gift, the one I’d never dared open. The envelope felt fragile in my hands, edges bent and stained with time. I’d traced her handwriting so many times I could see it even with my eyes closed. Still sealed. Still waiting.
My fingers trembled as I tore the flap. The sound was sharp, a sudden crack in the quiet, like ripping something open inside me. I exhaled shakily, the paper fluttering, ink smudged where my grip had faltered. Natalie’s voice echoed through my head, impossible to ignore, almost accusing.
I’m grateful that you love me enough to be the bigger, stronger man and walk away. Because of you, I get tospend my life with my boys without having to watch them suffer.
I laughed, bitter and hollow. “He’s suffering now, Natalie,” I hissed, the words scraping raw at the back of my throat. “They both are. You just didn’t live long enough to see it.”
Then my eyes fell on the next line, and everything inside me went silent.
Please don’t hate me.
My throat closed. My chest tightened, twisting like something had been driven into the center of it. “As if I ever could,” I whispered, barely audible. Tears stung, blurring the words as they ran across the paper. And then I read the line that shattered the last of my composure:
But I’m going to ask one thing of you, even though I know I shouldn’t. Look after Elliot. One day he’ll need you. And I know David won’t be what he needs.
I stared. Again. And again. As if reading it faster might change the weight it carried. She had known. Always. About the fault lines in her son, about the darkness simmering just beneath the surface, the ache he carried like a secret. And she had handed that storm to me like a gift I wasn’t sure I deserved.
I whispered to the wind, voice broken. “You should’ve told me more… warned me.”
