After she leaves the apartment, taking Coco with her, I go back into the bedroom and suddenly can’t breathe. The space feels smaller, the air heavy, and every breath is hard.
I just want some air and peace. Somewhere without grief, where my husband and I aren’t moving around each other like ghosts.
I don’t tell Gabriel I’m leaving face to face. Instead, I scribble a note and place it on the kitchen island.
Going into town for a bit. Be back soon. J
With my keys jingling in my hand and my bag over my shoulder, I slip out. I know where I need to be at this moment, the one place in town that has always felt like a sanctuary, where I felt closest to Sadie.
Twenty minutes later, I’m at the Saltspray Cove Public Library, known locally as the Pelican Room.
Sadie and I used to come here together whenever we were in town, especially if things felt tense at the apartment after an argument. This was where we could reconnect. When things got heated, sometimes just a few minutes or hours later, one of us would casually ask if the other wanted to go read for a bit. That was our way of saying: Can we make up?
At the library, we would sit at a table or on the comfy sofas and not say much, just reading next to each other. It was one of the few places where we didn’t argue.
Right now I can’t think of anywhere else to go, and maybe being in a place Sadie used to love will help me feel if she’s out there. If she’s really alive.
Just off the palm-lined avenue stands the proud building, its white-washed walls shining in the sun. Most of the buildingis made up of tall windows. Some let people on the street see straight through to the ocean on the other side.
It’s soothing to stand inside, surrounded by tall arched windows where sunlight pours in and makes the marble floors shine. Shelves stretch up to the ceiling, and some books can only be reached by climbing the rolling ladders on metal rails.
I’ve always been drawn to libraries; even as a kid. The scent of old paper, new paper, and faint coffee calms something restless inside my chest. This place feels like a pause button. It gives me the same peace I feel when walking into a chapel.
Instead of just sitting here, wallowing in my thoughts, I walk among the shelves and find a mystery novel and a book on generalized anxiety disorders in children. I scan the table of contents. Being a child psychologist, I’m familiar with most of the information, but the way other clinicians phrase things can be refreshing.
But after settling at a table overlooking the ocean, I find myself reaching for my phone instead of the books. My thumb moves automatically to the camp’s Instagram account. The screen fills with carefully curated images. But my scrolling is interrupted by a call from Gabriel.
I close my eyes briefly and answer.
“Sweetheart, are you okay? Where did you go?”
“I’m fine. I left a note. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Yeah, I saw it, but you didn’t exactly say where in the center you were going, so I was just wondering.”
“I’m at the library. Just needed to get out of the apartment for a bit.”
“Okay.” He pauses. “Enjoy yourself and I’ll see you soon. Maybe before we go back home, you and I can do something in town together. We haven’t had a date night in…a while.”
“That would be nice.” I allow a bittersweet smile to touch my lips as I remember our last date night, right here in town, before everything tainted it.
I tap the screen to end the call, but my thumb lingers for a second beforetaking me back to the camp’s Instagram profile.
When the images appear again on my screen, they are exactly as beautiful, polished, and serene as the ones in the brochures, some of which are displayed at the library welcome desk at this moment.
I stop when I come across a photo of teenagers sitting cross-legged in a circle underneath a cream pergola. Their eyes are closed, hands resting gently on their thighs.
Breathwork and mindfulness, the caption reads.
The next photo shows a group of pastel-colored boats lining the camp’s private cove. They look like they are staged for a magazine.
I move on to a group of girls jogging along the beach at sunrise with smiles on their faces, their hair floating in the breeze behind them.
The camp gives off a vibe of safety and serenity, the kind of place a parent would send their child hoping she might come back calmer, resilient and more connected to themselves. Exactly the reason why many wealthy families send their kids every year and make huge donations to keep the camp flourishing.
I’m not interested in any of the recent photos, so I keep scrolling and scrolling until I come across posts from six months ago, the ones posted the week Sadie arrived and ultimately disappeared.
There are photos of grinning teenagers standing on the dock wearing branded T-Shirts, or more mindfulness and yoga sessions on the beach. Many of them are of kids with equallybranded notebooks on their laps as they journal their thoughts in a room filled with greenery.
