The Shape of Her Shadow

The first time I saw her, she wasn’t there. It was a Tuesday, the kind of gray afternoon that smudges the edges of everything—trees, houses, my own hands. I was walking the dirt path behind the old mill, where the river mutters to itself and the air smells like damp stone. I’d been coming here since I was a kid, when Mom would drag me along to sketch the willows. She’d sit for hours, pencil scratching, humming songs she never taught me, while I tossed pebbles into the current, counting ripples until the sun dipped low. That was before she got sick, before the hospital visits, before the house turned quiet and I learned to cook for one. Before I started seeing things that couldn’t be.

She was standing by the water, just past the bend where the path dips into shadow. Not Mom, but someone else—a woman, maybe my age, maybe older, her outline soft like a watercolor left in the rain. She wore a dress, pale as bone, and her hair moved like it was caught in a breeze I couldn’t feel. I stopped, boots sinking into the mud, heart tripping over itself. She didn’t look at me, just stared at the river, her hands folded like she was praying or waiting or both. Her stillness made the world feel smaller, like it was just her, the water, and me.

“Hey,” I called, voice cracking like I was thirteen again, sneaking cigarettes behind the mill. She didn’t turn. I stepped closer, and the air grew heavy, like pushing through fog. My breath caught, sharp and cold, and when I blinked, she was gone. No splash, no footprints, just the river’s endless murmur and the willows swaying like they knew something I didn’t.

I told myself it was nothing. A trick of the light, a daydream born from too many nights alone in that creaking house, where Mom’s absence hung like damp laundry. But when I got home, the kitchen smelled like lavender and something sharper, like cut grass after a storm. It wasn’t my soap, wasn’t anything I owned. I checked every room, every closet, even the attic where Mom’s sketchbooks gathered dust, their pages yellowed like old skin. Nothing. Just me and the scent, curling into my lungs like it belonged there, like it had always been there.

The next day, I went back to the river. I didn’t plan to, but my feet knew the way, pulling me past the sagging mill, its bricks stained green with moss, and down the overgrown path where nettles snagged my jeans. She was there again, same spot, same pale dress, her back to me. This time, she moved—slow, like she was underwater, bending to touch the river’s surface. Her fingers didn’t break the water, didn’t ripple it. I watched, frozen, as she straightened and turned her head, just enough for me to see the curve of her cheek. Not Mom, but familiar, like a face I’d drawn from memory and gotten wrong.

“Who are you?” I whispered. The words felt like stones, sinking into the silence. She didn’t answer, just faded, her outline dissolving into the mist rising off the water. I stood there until my legs ached, until the sky bruised purple, waiting for something—anything—to make sense. The river kept moving, indifferent, and I felt like I was drowning in it, in the weight of her not being there.

That night, I dreamed of her. She was in the house, standing in the hallway, her shadow stretching long and thin across the floorboards. She didn’t speak, but her eyes held mine, gray as the river, heavy with something I couldn’t name—grief, maybe, or a question I was too scared to ask. When I woke, the room was cold, and the mirror on my dresser was fogged, like someone had breathed on it. I wiped it clean, but my reflection looked wrong—too sharp, too still, like I was the one who wasn’t there. I sat on the edge of my bed, hands shaking, and wrote her name in the dust on the nightstand. Not a real name, just “Her,” because that’s all she was.

I started seeing her everywhere. In the grocery store, her shadow slipped between the aisles, gone when I turned. At the diner, her reflection flickered in the window, sipping coffee I couldn’t smell. She was never close enough to touch, never solid enough to hold, but she was real in the way grief is real—sharp, heavy, always there. I stopped sleeping, started writing instead, scribbling in Mom’s old sketchbooks. Words about her, the woman by the river, about the way she made the world feel thinner, like I could slip through it if I reached too far. The pages filled with fragments—her dress, her silence, the way the air changed when she appeared. I didn’t know why I wrote, only that it kept her close, made her matter.

I told my friend Cal about her over beers at the Rusty Anchor. The bar was dim, smelling of stale hops and fried onions, and Cal leaned back, scratching his beard. “You’re seeing ghosts, man,” he said, half-laughing. “Or you’re losing it.” His eyes were careful, though, like he was measuring how far gone I was. I didn’t tell him about the lavender, or the way my hands shook when I passed the mill. I didn’t tell him I’d started talking to her in my head, asking what she wanted, why she followed me. Cal wouldn’t get it. He hadn’t lost anyone, hadn’t felt the world shift under his feet.

One night, I found one of Mom’s sketches tucked in the back of a book—a woman by the river, her dress pale, her hair loose. The lines were rough, smudged, like Mom had drawn it in a hurry, maybe when the painkillers made her hands unsteady. My chest tightened. I didn’t remember her drawing this, didn’t remember anyone like the woman I saw. But there she was, in pencil and paper, real as the ache in my throat. I traced the lines, wondering if Mom had seen her too, if this was her way of leaving me a clue, a tether to something I couldn’t grasp.

I started going to the river every day, at dawn, at dusk, whenever I could. The mill became my church, the path my ritual. She was always there, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, always just out of reach. One morning, the air sharp with frost, she was by the water, her feet bare on the bank. I could see her breath, or maybe it was mine, clouding the space between us. “What do you want?” I asked, louder now, desperate. My voice echoed, but she didn’t flinch. She reached out, her hand hovering over mine, not touching, just close enough to make my skin hum. I felt it—the weight of her, the pull, like gravity from a star I couldn’t see.

I don’t know how long I stood there, reaching back, my fingers trembling in the space where she wasn’t. The river kept moving, the willows kept whispering, but she was gone again, leaving only the feeling of her, heavy as a hand on my shoulder. I sat on the bank, mud soaking my jeans, and cried for the first time since Mom’s funeral. Not for her, not for the woman, but for the space they both left behind, the shape of something I could never hold. I thought of Mom’s last days, her voice soft as she talked about the river, how it carried things away but never let them go. I hadn’t understood then, but I felt it now, the way absence could be heavier than presence.

Back home, I spread Mom’s sketchbooks across the kitchen table, flipping through pages of willows, rivers, and faces I didn’t know. Some were hers, self-portraits from before I was born, her eyes bright, her smile unguarded. Others were strangers, or maybe no one, just shapes she’d pulled from her mind. I found another sketch of the woman, this one clearer, her face half-turned, like she was listening to something far away. I wrote in the margins, words spilling out—about Mom, about the river, about the woman who wasn’t there but changed everything. I wrote about how she made me notice the quiet, the way the house creaked like it was breathing, the way my own shadow looked different now, longer, like it carried her too.

One night, I took the sketchbooks to the river. The moon was high, turning the water silver, and she was there, standing where the path met the bank. I didn’t call out this time, didn’t ask who she was. I just sat, the sketchbooks heavy in my lap, and watched her. She moved closer than she ever had, her outline sharp against the moonlight, and for a moment, I thought I saw Mom in her face—not her features, but her quiet, the way she used to look at me when she thought I wasn’t watching. I opened a sketchbook, tore out the drawing of her, and let it go. The paper caught the current, floated for a moment, then sank.

She didn’t fade this time. She stayed, her eyes on the river, until the sky lightened and the birds started calling. When she finally vanished, the air felt different—lighter, but not empty. I went home, the lavender scent gone, the house just a house again. But I kept writing, kept reaching for her in the pages, because she was real in the way that matters. She was the weight of what I’d lost, the shape of what I still carried. Not Mom, not a ghost, but something else—a reminder that even what’s gone can hold you, can pull you back to the world when you’re ready.

I still see her sometimes, in the corner of my eye, in the quiet moments when the world feels too still. She’s not real, not in the way I am, not in the way the river is. But she matters. She’s the question I can’t ask, the reaching that never stops. I keep Mom’s sketch on my desk, folded at the edges, and I write to her—the woman, the shadow, the almost. I write to keep her close, to make her real, even if she’s not. Because sometimes, the things we can’t touch are the ones that hold us tightest.