Page 3

EMMY

The wind dies as I roll down the last stretch of gravel, the tires crunching softly over rock and sand.

The road levels out near the shoreline, where the Atlantic breathes slow and steady against the east coast of Newfoundland.

Salt clings to the air, carried in on a breeze laced with seaweed and the faint, briny bite of low tide.

Gulls call overhead—sharp, mournful cries that rise and fall with the wind.

I’ve always loved the sea. Its vastness.

Its rhythm. The way it promises escape in every tide.

But lately, I find myself craving something else—something quieter.

Higher. The hills behind me call louder than the waves now.

Up where the trees hush the wind, where the air smells of spruce and smoke. Where he is.

You can keep doing that.

But it's what he said after that strikes even deeper.

If I see you out here alone again after sundown... we’re going to have a conversation.

He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t look angry.

But something about the way he said it—low, level, certain—made my pulse skip.

It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t quite a warning either.

It felt like a promise. Like a line drawn not to punish, but to protect.

And the part of me that always flinches. .. didn’t.

Not then.

I replay it like a favorite line from a book, as if the repetition might make it permanent. As if maybe, if I hear it enough, I’ll stop bracing for the moment when it’s taken back.

The Surron’s hum fades to a whisper as I coast into the driveway.

Gravel shifts beneath the tires, and then it’s just me. The silence here settles in slow and close, like fog over water—familiar, but no less disorienting.

Dad’s in the garage.

He doesn’t say anything when I walk past. Doesn’t glance up from the open hood of my brother’s car.

Just a dry, ugly breath of laughter through his nose—sharp enough to make my chest tighten, like my lungs forgot how to work for a second.

Like the sound itself has claws. Like it knows exactly where to dig.

Like my existence is a joke only he’s in on.

I don’t look at him. I don’t have to.

I still hear it.

His words from other days cling to me like oil. They coat everything, sink in where they’re not wanted:

You don’t have a chance.

Why are you even still here?

They don’t need to be said out loud to echo. Not anymore. They live in the air between us. In the way he doesn’t look at me. In the way he laughs like I’m a punchline.

My shoulders hunch. I move quieter. Smaller. Just a girl slipping around the edge of someone else’s temper. It’s a practiced art, this disappearing. This vanishing while still being in the room.

I tuck the bike into its corner of the garage. Out of the way. Like I’m hiding a part of myself I’m not allowed to show. Like if I make it small enough, quiet enough, it’ll stop being something for him to hate.

Inside, the air is warmer but no softer. Mom’s in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove. The smell of soup or stew clings to the walls, but it doesn’t make me feel safe. She doesn’t turn around.

Maybe she doesn’t see me.

Maybe she does.

I love her. I do. But sometimes she’s cruel in the way softness withheld can be.

In the way she doesn’t ask how I am. In the way her silence agrees with his.

Different from my brother’s pure disinterest in my life, and my sister’s invasive brand of concern—the kind that masquerades as love but feels more like surveillance and control from a distance.

I’m just past thirty and have been living with my parents for the last five years.

At first, it was supposed to be temporary.

Just to get on my feet, find a decent job that paid enough to move out.

I thought that would be the turning point.

But somewhere in the middle of trying to push forward, I realized I was dragging something behind me.

I decided to go back and finish what I’d left undone. The thing that’s haunted me for years. My degree.

English literature. Not the most useful, but God, it fulfilled me.

I abandoned it when things first fell apart, but it’s nearly finished now. Finally. But the months blurred into years. Rent kept going up. My savings never stretched far enough. One thing after another. A crisis. A delay. A reason to stay just a little longer.

It never quite worked out.

So I stayed.

Not because I wanted to.

Because I had nowhere else to go.

And I’m still trying to do something that looks like moving forward.

I climb the stairs without speaking. My hand closes around the bedroom doorknob like it’s the only thing still holding me up. Like if I let go, I’ll fall through the floor.

Luca and Cleo are waiting.

Luca bounces forward first, his long shepherd tail wagging hard enough to shake his whole body.

He makes this little huffing noise when he’s happy, like he’s trying to talk.

Cleo follows slower, like she’s reading the tremble in my hands before I even open the door.

A little black and white basket of nerves.

I shut the door. Twist the lock.

Lower myself to the floor.

Cleo presses her head against my chest. Luca curls into the space between my knees. My fingers twist into fur, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. One of those deep, broken things that lives in your chest when you’re always bracing for the next hit.

And sometimes, the worst bruises don’t leave marks at all.

“You guys don’t hurt like humans do,” I whisper. “You just stay.”

Cleo’s tail thumps once. Luca licks my hand.

I stay like that until the shaking in my limbs settles. Until my shoulders don’t feel like they’re about to crack under the weight of being invisible and too visible all at once.

Then I reach for my notebook. The leather is cool beneath my fingers, the corners softened by time and use. The page underneath has a slight tooth to it, steadying me with its quiet resistance—firm, textured, something real to anchor me when the rest of the world feels like too much.

The page is mostly blank. A half-written scene. A world I meant to build. One where the girls like me get chosen. Where the men don’t laugh or leave. Where kindness isn’t something you flinch from.

I don’t write.

I just rest my hand on the paper. Feel the coolness of it. The weight.

He said I could keep doing that.

Like I wasn’t a burden.

And for the first time in a long while… I want to believe it might be true.

I close my eyes.

And picture the ridge.

The trees.

The stillness of his voice.

The way he didn’t look away.

And I realize—I don’t even know his name.

But somehow, that makes it feel more like a story. The beginning of one. A first chapter I didn’t know I’d stepped into.

I imagine what it might feel like to return to that place—not as a trespasser, not as a ghost—but as someone expected. Someone welcome.

I imagine him stepping off that porch again. Raising his hand in that same quiet way, not to stop me. Just to say he sees me.

And I wonder if next time, I’ll stop before he asks. If I’ll stop because I want to be seen. Because some small, aching part of me wants to be wanted—not just tolerated, not just allowed.

If I’ll want to.