Two weeks to find the courage to start over in a place where no one knew me.
Where maybe I could breathe again.
Spring melted into summer, and I began to heal.
Not all at once. Healing never works that way. But bit by bit, day by day, Rhode Island softened me.
After the meeting with that overworked, underpaid attorney—who managed to strong-arm the district into letting me finish the semester remotely—I packed up what was left of my life in Ohio and moved to the edge of the Atlantic.
Aunt Susan’s place wasn’t fancy. Nothing like the gray-shingled mansions and yacht clubs that dotted the Rhode Island coast. No—her little bungalow sat on top of a sloping hill that overlooked a jagged line of cliffs and sea-splashed rocks. It used to be my great-grandfather’s fishing shack, and in some ways, it still felt like it.
The place creaked when it rained. The ceilings were popcorn and the AC rattled through window units that hummed like bees in their hive. There was painted wood paneling in every room—white and soft blue—and the scent of sea salt seemed baked into the floorboards.
But the view? That was something else.
Out the back door and down a cracked stone path was the edge of everything. Ocean. Sky. A horizon so wide it felt like freedom. The kind of view that made Ohio feel like a bad dream I could finally wake up from.
No Snap streaks. No DM notifications. No Netflix.
Just wind and water and the quiet hush of beingleft alone.
My aunt never married. Said she never needed to. She had three cats—Milo, Clementine, and Lord Sandwich—and more plants than furniture. Her garden was a riot of wildflowers, daisies, herbs, and potted tomato plants she spoke to like children.
She didn’t ask too many questions.
She gave me space, and warm cinnamon toast in the mornings, and a secondhand beach cruiser with a woven basket and a bell that I swore I wouldn’t use—until I did.
“Consider this your clean slate,” she said one morning, plucking a weed with purpose. “Use it or lose it.”
So I used it.
I finished the semester on a beat-up laptop from the local library, Zooming into classes I barely looked at, turning in homework on time and keeping my camera off. I didn’t engage. I didn’t explain. I just checked the boxes.
And when school was done?
Ibreathed.
I spent my mornings helping in the garden, my afternoons biking along the coast, and my evenings curled up on the sun-faded couch, reading books from the pile she kept by the fireplace. The salty tang of the ocean hung in the air, mixing with the smell of percolating coffee and tomato vines.
I got tan.
My hair lightened.
My skin broke out from sunscreen and sea breeze and finally—finally—started to freckle across the bridge of my nose.
It felt like time had slowed down on purpose. To let me catch up. To let me remember who I wasbefore.
One evening, I sat on the porch, legs tucked beneath me, listening to the hum of cicadas and the pop of fireflies blinkingover the grass. Aunt Susan brought me a glass of lemonade and sat down beside me in her paint-splattered jeans.
“You ever think about changing your name?” she asked, half-joking.
“All the time,” I said.
She grinned. “Something mysterious and fresh. Like Zadie. Or Quinn.”
I smiled into the glass. “Jade kind of suits me now.”
“Why’s that?”
