The key slid into the lock with more resistance than Clara remembered. Salt air had a way of aging things—wood, metal, memories.
The cottage door creaked open, and the scent of sea lavender and dust greeted her like an old friend reluctant to speak. It had been ten years since she last stood on this porch, barefoot and sunburned, listening to her grandmother hum while painting the skies on canvas. Ten years since the world was simpler and grief was just a word she hadn't yet learned to carry.
Clara stepped inside.
Time had slowed here. The faded floral curtains still danced lazily in the open window. Her grandmother's easel stood in the same corner, brush still in the jar, canvas half-finished—blue skies interrupted mid-stroke.
She crossed the living room, trailing her fingers along the edges of picture frames and books, letting them anchor her in something real. Her phone buzzed in her back pocket, but she ignored it. This was not a place for buzzing. This was a place for echoes.
A small, brass box sat atop the mantel. She hadn't noticed it before. Intricate carvings lined its edges—stars, feathers, waves—and a note rested beneath it in soft, looping script:
> "For Clara, when you're ready."
Her chest tightened. The box was warm, as if it had been waiting for her. She didn't open it. Not yet.
Outside, the waves rolled in like a lullaby, steady and soft. And above them, the stars began to rise.
Clara had come back to forget.
But the stars, it seemed, remembered everything.
She set the box gently on the table by the window, the note still in her hand. "When you're ready." But what did that even mean? Ready to feel? Ready to forgive?
Clara sank into the old armchair by the hearth, its cushions worn to the shape of a woman who had sat there every morning with a cup of chamomile and the scent of turpentine in her hair. The silence wrapped around her like an old shawl—comforting, familiar, but heavy with things unsaid.
From outside, the distant cry of gulls mingled with the hush of waves brushing the shore. Somewhere in that space between sound and silence, Clara thought she heard her name—not spoken aloud, but carried in the wind like memory.
She stood abruptly, needing motion to escape the weight of stillness. Her suitcase still sat by the door, unopened. But her feet moved not toward it, but to the back door—the one that led to the cliffs.
The path was overgrown now, wildflowers claiming what had once been a narrow trail carved by years of barefoot summers. She followed it without thought, muscle memory guiding her over roots and stones until the sea opened up before her like a secret.
And there, standing near the edge, silhouetted by the fading light, was a man.
He was facing the water, hands in his pockets, unaware of her approach. The breeze played with the collar of his jacket, and as she stepped closer, the sound of his voice—low, reverent—reached her.
"Still the best view on the entire coast."
He turned.
Eyes the color of storm-tossed sea met hers, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. Then his brow furrowed, a flicker of recognition.
"Clara?"
She nodded, surprised he remembered. "Elias."