The Ritual

Every night at nine, Mara set the second place.

She did it even when she ate standing at the counter, even when the sink was full and the radio was still murmuring to itself. She took the blue plate from the cupboard—the one with the chipped rim—and set it across from her. She folded the napkin into a neat rectangle. She put the fork on the left, the knife on the right, blade facing in, as if someone had taught her manners she was determined not to forget.

At 9:01, she lit the candle.

This was the part people noticed, if they noticed anything at all. The candle was tall and white and unscented. It burned with a steady, patient flame. Mara liked that about it. She liked that it did not rush.

She sat down when the flame steadied. She did not speak yet. She waited.

The apartment held its breath with her. The refrigerator clicked off. The clock in the hallway advanced its hands. The city outside thinned to a hum, the sound of distance and wheels. At 9:03, she smiled at the empty chair.

“Hi,” she said.

She ate then. Slowly, so she would not finish first. She cut her food into reasonable pieces. She chewed, swallowed, sipped water. She did not look at her phone. She did not let herself drift.

When she finished, she pushed her plate aside and reached for the blue one. It was always clean. She could not remember washing it.

“Tell me something,” she said, and closed her eyes.

At first, the ritual had been easier.

It had been an anniversary, the first one after the accident. They had eaten takeout on the floor and laughed at the way the cartons bled grease onto the cardboard. They had lit a candle because the power had flickered, because it felt romantic to make light out of nothing. When the candle guttered, Mara had cupped her hands around it, and Eli—Eli had said her name the way he always did, stretching it like he had all the time in the world.

The accident came later. Or earlier. Time did strange things around that night, folding and unfolding like fabric.

After the funeral, Mara could not sit at the table. She ate standing, ate in bed, ate not at all. She left one place empty because it felt wrong to take it away, and then because taking it away felt like a second loss, and then because leaving it became a kind of promise.

The first night she spoke to the empty chair, she startled herself. She had asked a question—Did you like the soup?—and in the pause that followed, she had felt something like pressure, like the air thickening. She had laughed, a brittle sound, and told herself grief did this to people. It made them ridiculous.

But then she had heard it.

Not a voice, exactly. A warmth, a certainty. A sense of being answered without words. She had gone to bed with her heart hammering and her hands shaking, and in the morning she had woken with a calm she did not recognize.

That night, she set the second place again.

At 9:04, she opened her eyes. The candle burned lower now, wax bending into itself.

“I went to the market today,” she said. “They had those pears you like. The soft ones. I bought two.”

The pressure came, gentle as a palm between her shoulder blades. Her breath hitched. She let it.

“I know,” she said. “I know you’d say they were too ripe. You always did.”

She smiled because the warmth seemed to swell at that, like approval. Like pleasure.

Every night, the ritual repeated. The same hour. The same plate. The same candle. She spoke and waited and listened with parts of herself she had not known she possessed. The warmth learned her. It came faster. It lingered.

She began to notice the costs.

She forgot small things at first. Where she had put her keys. The name of the barista who had known her order for years. She burned a pot of rice and stood staring at it, unable to remember why the smell made her sad.

She stopped going out after dark because she did not want to miss nine. She told friends she was tired. She told her sister she needed time. The apartment learned the rhythm of her alone-ness and made room for it.

One night, she came home late anyway. The bus had broken down. The city had snarled. She set the plate at nine-twelve, her hands clumsy, her heart pounding with something like fear.

The warmth did not come.

She lit the candle. She sat. She stared at the empty chair until her eyes burned.

“I’m here,” she said, and hated the way it sounded like begging.

The clock advanced. 9:15. 9:16.

When the pressure finally arrived, it was sharp. It pressed too hard. It left her dizzy.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered, and felt, absurdly, scolded.

After that, the ritual tightened. She did not deviate. She did not test it. She did not tell anyone what she felt at the table, because saying it aloud made it feel fragile, like a secret that could be taken.

The warmth began to want things.

At first, it was little. More stories. More memories. It responded best when she spoke of the beginning: the way they had met in the rain, the coffee shop with the chipped mugs, the first time he had kissed her and laughed because he had knocked his teeth against hers. The warmth pulsed, greedy and pleased.

“Do you remember,” she said, night after night, and sometimes she could not tell if she meant him or herself.

Then it wanted names.

“Say it,” the warmth seemed to insist, a pressure at her throat.

“Eli,” she said, and the candle flame leapt.

The next morning, she woke with the taste of the word still on her tongue and could not, for a terrifying minute, remember her own.

On the night she realized what the ritual consumed, she tried to stop.

She did not set the plate. She did not light the candle. She sat on the couch and held her breath through nine o’clock and into nine-thirty and then ten, her hands locked together so hard her knuckles went white.

The apartment grew cold.

The pressure came anyway, not warm now but insistent, filling the room like a tide. It pushed her back into the table. It guided her hands to the cupboard. It took the blue plate and set it down.

“Please,” she said, because love had taught her that word early. “Please.”

The candle lit itself.

She sat. She shook. The warmth gathered, and with it a terrible tenderness, the sense of being known completely.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The answer was simple. It always had been.

Her.

Not her body. Not her life. Her remembering.

So she bargains, now. Every night, she feeds it something small. A street name. A childhood pet. The lyrics to a song she loved once. She keeps the important things close, locked away behind the habit of setting the plate, lighting the candle, sitting down at nine.

“Tell me something,” she says, and closes her eyes.

The ritual persists. The flame burns. The warmth listens.

Across from her, the blue plate remains empty, and full.