Coral took one look at the brochure’s cover and blanched. A trio of laughing, smiling girls sat on a porch swing. A green lawn made up the background. In the distance, a few horses grazed and rolling hills finished off the lush landscape.
“Is this a joke?” She shoved the brochure back the way it came. Those places were all the same. She’d never been to one, but she had a good enough idea. She wouldn’t argue, but she wouldn’t jump up and down either.
“It’s for the best, dear.” Her grandmother slid the brochure toward Coral again. “Please. They can help you heal. You’ve hardly talked about River’s suicide since it happened. You don’t take your medication consistently. I’ve spoken with the program director on the phone. She sounds—”
“Nice?”
“Real.”
Real. Right. No such thing.
“It’s for the best,” her grandmother said again.
The best. Right. Okay. Fine. Whatever. She didn’t have much of a choice, did she?
Perhaps the best thing would be for me to slip into the nothing for good.
The thought sank deeper and deeper into her mind until it anchored to her heart. She would stay through the early winter until her grandmother moved. And then . . . ?
Then she would embrace the nothing. For good.
“After Christmas.” Her grandmother rose on shaky knees. “We’ll make the transition over winter break, okay?”
Solace smoothed Coral’s expression as she imagined the feeling of nothing. She longed for it. The release crept near her fingertips.
She held on to the hope she would finally, finally be free.
She didn’t want to feel.
She didn’t want to be.
She didn’t want to wake from the Abyss any longer.
Coral only wanted to go back, to be one with the sea once more. The season would soon change, and the colors would fall from the trees like so many broken tears. Soon those colors would fade to winter’s gray and vanish as if they never were at all.
Those colors would become nothing.
Coral would become nothing.
Nothing but a color washed up and out and away.
The Disease had finally won.
Coral became as sea foam.
And sea foam could not survive when Red Tide came.
I sit back and take three grounding breaths, focusing on each inhale through my nose. Each exhale through my mouth.
Reliving real and raw memories—emotions—from my past stirs old anxieties, setting every nerve on fire. I close my eyes. This is now. Here. The memories may be triggering, a word Jake so often uses, but they are only memories.
They happened. The feelings tied to them are valid.
But they don’t have to define who I am now. Today. They are only a part of me. If anything, they make me stronger.
I close the laptop.
Tuck them away.
And save them for another chapter.
I sip at my rose-colored tea and take a bite of scone, watching as the locals walk up and down the sidewalk beyond the booth’s window. To look at them, you’d think they live the happiest, most glorious carefree lives.
But maybe that man in the green ball cap with the almost painted-on smile is suicidal.
Maybe that young woman with her designer bag and eyes glued to her phone suffers from anxiety, depression, or even PTSD.
That’s the thing about mental illness. It has many faces. And most of them look pretty normal. You’d never know the person is slowly dying inside.
Another sip of tea warms my throat as the bell above the shop door tinkles. My pulse forgets its rhythm when a mess of black hair appears in the corner of my vision. I turn. Can’t seem to recall my name.
“I heard you were in town.” Merrick sits without an invitation.
I find my words and hide my delight behind one hand. “Mee-Maw or Nikki?”
“Both.” He shrugs, resting an elbow on the table. “Nikki texted me yesterday. Said she’d be bringing you with her on her weekly Grim visit. Your grandmother called me this morning.”
I laugh, shake my head, and scoot to the right to give him room. I haven’t seen him since the funeral. Even so, his nearness feels easy. Natural. A breath of air I didn’t know I needed because I’ve been under for so long.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Because I know you.” He pops a bite of scone in his mouth, again without invitation. “You can’t resist a good cup of tea and the finest scones in town.”
“True.” Once, I believed I wanted nothing else but to be alone. To live inside that nothing my character saw as an ever-looming Abyss.
Now I see alone is not the answer. It wasn’t for my sister. Or for Hope.
“What are you working on?” He eyes the laptop, dipping half a scone into the cream, then swallowing the piece whole. “I have to say I’m shocked to see you without your tattered old notebook and pen.”
“I’m a little shocked too, to tell you the truth. Jake—my therapist—gave it to me.” I run a hand over the shiny apple on the laptop’s closed cover. “I promised her I’d use it, so I’m kind of stuck now.”
He chuckles. A sound that soothes my ache for him to scoot closer. “I remember Jake. I met her the one time I visited Maya at Fathoms.”
My eyes widen. Merrick? At Fathoms? When?
He seems to catch the question in my eyes. His own stare exudes meaning. Understanding. Pain. Hope?
And I know. The same day I chose to end it, he was there. Did I sense his nearness in my dreams? Is it possible I imagined him with me in the cave because he almost was? Had I stayed at the ranch house that night, instead of running away, would we have crossed paths?
Too many what-ifs.
The air falls silent between us. I sense he’s waiting for me to say something, anything. But what? Do I ask how he’s doing? Is it too soon to talk about his sister?
Am I finally ready to talk about mine?
“Read anything good lately?” He breaks the silence after finishing off my plate and flagging down the waitress for a refill.
The question feels loaded. The opposite of small talk.
I look down, deciding how best to answer. Is it me, or is he closing the gap between us? I swear he’s a few inches closer than he was a minute ago.
But he’ll never be close enough. Not until I let him in. “Have you read anything good?”
He tilts his head, studying my face with eyes the color of raven’s wings. “I’d like to.”
Don’t freak out. This is happening. This is happening now. One step closer.
I open the laptop again, find an early chapter—the only one I’ve never edited or rewritten or revised.
Merrick peers at the heading. “Red Tide?”
I nod. He knows what happened. He was there. But to see it from my perspective—from Coral’s eyes—makes him a true and permanent part of my world.
“Read it to me?” He leans back and clasps his hands behind his head.
Fear races across my pounding heart, begging me to put this whole thing in reverse. When I swallow and begin the first line, my words catch in my throat.
But then Merrick closes his eyes and I know he’s taking in every syllable. Not judging. Simply waiting. For me.
Always for me.
I clear my throat. I read of my oldest sister and Red Tide—suicide. Of how she slit her wrists in the ocean on our annual family vacation to the West Coast that January. Our tradition. Our escape.
My father couldn’t bear to be anywhere near our home on the anniversary of my mother’s death—my birthday.