Absolution in the Form of a Book

The book is barely alive in the sand. It’s about a centimetre away from each lap of the waves; close to its death, close to soaking the neat script and the remaining thousand dollars wedged between its pages. Inside there is a eulogy, an apology, and a written promise of a small inheritance with the instruction to ‘take care of yourself’. With love, of course.

What it eludes, very delicately, is the truth. A very important fact regarding how it was not just Saya’s partner's extended family who had passed and left an elusive book in their care. It was quite beautiful, because why should death be ugly. A message of hope, of promise in regard to life and moving on.

Saya, at the time, could only think of doing something very drastic in the dire circumstance of losing Emily. But Emily was immortal. Gentle and at the mercy of good karma and a lovely disposition. But somewhere there is a carousel stopping mid-ride, an ocean receding, or a fire burning in a fit of passion. And perhaps a hundred other words Saya cannot think of. A list of adjectives fit to describe something so bright and devastating. Ones that elude her.

Well, thinks Saya, staring out at the sea.

They live in a cottage not too far from the city, and it’s comfort feels miles away. The beach is their doorstep, but tonight it looks empty, and threatening. Emily is shuffling beside her, dragging her bare feet through the sand in a way that feels sickeningly real. It burns. It illuminates a hollow pit in her stomach. There’s nothing to burn, but it hurts.

“Could you stop,” Saya asks sharply, molars grinding together so firmly she thinks they might snap.

It’s just been them for years. Together through every hardship, happy even after squabbles over the TV remote, or arguments over who should make dinner.

The sand squeaks. A toe drags a particularly ragged bit of brown mud into a harsh line. Emily does not stop. She looks up, though. “Stop what?” Her foot sways back and forth, and she gives it a pointed look. “This?”

It’s not the movement. Or the pale foot. Or the waves that have been drawing up each second, dragging away the scribbles in the sand, and soaking the cuffs of Saya’s jeans.

“You’re not her.”

She hopes it offends her, a bit. A taste of her own medicine. For dangling a tantalising hope in front of her face.

“I am,” said Emily, “a little bit. I’m all you, of course. Because without you, I wouldn’t be here at all.”

Saya huffs a strained laugh. It lapses into something hysterical and Emily shoots her a pitying look.

“Always knew I was a bit crazy,” Saya says after a second, eyes burning against the sharp, salty breeze.

“Aren’t we all?” Emily responds drolly, and it’s so like her, so like the real one, the dead one, that Saya laughs again, and doesn’t stop until she’s crying.

“Oh, my dear.”

“You’ve gone,” Saya mutters bitterly, palm of her hand pressing against one eye. “Again.”

The waves are inching even closer to the book.

“My mistake,” Emily whispers softly. She kneels down, and she does not smell of anything. Saya wonders how she didn’t notice the lack of sunshine, the smell of love and paper and honey. A plump hand hovers over her shoulder, the ghost of a touch.

“Stay,” Saya says blankly, even though it’s wrong. It’s not the same. No matter how familiar the green eyes are. Or the freckles, littered across her skin like a thousand gentle kisses from the sun.

“Of course.”

Emily manoeuvres herself to sit cross legged in the sand, fingers digging into the ground. Saya can’t lean into her or brush back the hazard mess of curls on her head. She’s just there. A hallucination. Something she created in her grief. A reminder of how she is nothing without Emily.

“I’m so much like her,” Emily says after a second of silence, eyes fixed on the horizon- where the sky meets the sea- while she leans back into the wind, “because you didn’t let me go. Not completely.”

“You’re a figment of my imagination.” Saya mutters, and peers with one eye, the other still covered by her hand. Everything is blurry, but Emily is still, despite her wobbly outline, beautiful. She glows a bit, like she did when she was alive.

“Yes,” she says, and Saya subjects herself to underlining the falseness of the figure in front of her, no matter how cold the comfort. “But I’m so real, so convincing, because of how wholly you loved her. You knew her as she was. You filled the gaps so well you did not notice the intruder.”

“It’s not the same.”

“No,” says a ghost, with green eyes fading into white, “but you wanted her there, so she was.”

“She wasn’t there,” Saya says hotly, “not the real person who had a job, a partner-”

Soft shoulders shrug. “Good enough, I suppose?”

She stands and brushes the sand from her cream-coloured skirt. “Quite sweet, to spend the money on that garden- of course, I expect you to take care of it properly in her absence. Grape trees are tricky.”

“No,” says Saya, staggering up. She rips her hand away from her eye, brown and puffy, to level a glare at the back of the thing that was absolute and tall in the face of her fury. Her anger feels hot on her lips, a satisfying riot that begins in her feet and claws it's way up. “Not good enough. You were,” she garbled on the words for a second, and they cracked on her tongue, “nothing. A stupid- and this book that you’ve left. “She scoffs. “I’ll burn it with the garden.”

The buds were almost there, and the lavender was spreading among their bushes in a rush of violet. It was an oasis, and an empty graveyard. “What were you thinking? It would help? I would move on? I would be satisfied with an empty coffin?”

Emily laughs, and it’s swallowed almost completely by the wind. “You were never a good liar. You’re an even worse inheritor.”

The black book has wedged itself into the sand even more. It’s edges are soaked, and the black is a jaded midnight that squelches when Saya staggers to scoop it up. Emily’s message is still inside, and as Saya’s thumb flicks to the page, her lover touches the ocean delicately. She wades in elegantly, and Saya, with no consideration to the money left inside, because the coins spent feel like blood money now, tosses it as hard as she can.

Some money feels good to spend. It did on the day. It did when Emily’s ghost appeared idly, scanning over the plants and seeds with approval and a bright smile, because you’re meant to create a paradise with your partner. You’re meant to spend what coins you can scrape up on them. Twenty thousand dollars feels like a million when you’re transferring money to throw away on lavender and sunflowers and all those plants you’ve spent years not particularly caring about, but loving, and remembering.

Emily’s silhouette watches the ark of its fall, and the plop into a surface of foam.

“You could have come to me,” says Saya, desperately.

“I did.”

“Before. Before all of this mess.” Saya waves a hand, and her eyes hurt from the exhaustion of her melancholy. “Not after. You didn’t have to leave me.”

“I didn’t completely leave you,” says Emily, calmly.

“A book isn’t a replacement.”

“No,” Emily agrees easily, “and you don’t need it anymore. I’m trying- I was trying- to make amends. To ensure the mistakes I made weren’t copied by you. I want you to love. To live.”

The black book has floated back up to the surface. Brown eyes follow its path across the dark blue water. It has, quite frankly, ruined and saved her life. It provided money and echoes of love through words of a dead woman who saw the world as it was and lost a desire that burns heavily among the imagination of a book, of the flare of joy a good paycheck gives you.

“Leave it.”

Emily sinks further away, and her voice echoes across the empty stretch of beach. “Leave it.”

“I can’t.” Saya’s voice is wobbly, desperate and vulnerable like an adult who has bottled trauma for far too long.

“Money didn’t bring me back. Her notes didn’t bring her back. I know you’ve read them from front to back. I know you’ve got them engraved into your brain and you see them as soon as you close your eyes at night.”

For a long time, it was hard to understand why others thought she had recovered so well. Had taken the death of her partner like a champ, gone out the next day and come home with a small jungle.

Emily breaths in the salty air, and trudges back to land, turning away from Saya to begin walking. The sand remains flat and unmarred, wet and glimmering in the sunset.

“It wasn’t just your love that kept me here,” she calls back, and the skirt is now a faded brown, “it was hers, too.”