Shadows between us

Absence between things

It had been three weeks since Jane left.

Three quiet, ordinary, unbearable weeks.

Her absence wasn’t loud — it didn’t scream. It lingered quietly in corners.

The garden looked duller without her hands tending to it. The tea tasted different. Even the sunlight in the kitchen felt colder, as if it had stopped trying.

Mom said Jane had gone back to her sister’s place, “needed some time away.” She said it gently, like the words might break if she pushed too hard.

I just nodded.

At first, I tried not to think about her. I threw myself into assignments, went out with Emma again, pretended things were fine.

Emma was trying too — smiling a bit too much, holding my hand like she was scared I’d disappear.

But I already had.

Sometimes she’d talk and I’d drift — my mind wandering back to that last morning, Jane’s quiet voice echoing:

“Caring for someone doesn’t always mean staying.”

It didn’t feel like a lesson then. It felt like punishment.

One evening, I came home early and found one of her mugs still in the cabinet — a pale blue one with a chip on the rim. I hadn’t noticed it before. I held it for a moment, running my thumb over the c***k, and a strange wave of guilt hit me.

I’d wanted her gone that morning — and now I couldn’t stop missing her.

I wondered if she thought of me too.

A week later, Mom mentioned she’d spoken to Jane over the phone. My heart jumped before I could hide it.

“She’s doing okay,” Mom said. “Still at her sister’s. Thinking of moving to the coast, maybe.”

“The coast?” I repeated, my throat dry.

“Yeah. She said she’s always loved the sea.”

I tried to smile. “That sounds… good.”

But all I could picture was her — standing near some window far away, wind in her hair, looking at waves that would never bring me back to her.

That night, I opened my phone and scrolled through old photos — not of her, but of the days she’d been around. The breakfast she’d cooked, the books she’d borrowed, the one blurry picture of the garden she’d taken on my phone by mistake.

I almost called her. Twice.

Then I remembered the way she’d looked at me before leaving — calm, certain, final.

So I didn’t.

Instead, I sat by the window until dawn, watching the sky lighten slowly, like the world forgiving itself for what it had lost.

Maybe that’s what healing was — not forgetting, but learning to live with what you ruined.

Still, some nights, I swore I could hear her voice in the quiet — soft, almost apologetic.

And when the first rain of the new season came, I didn’t close the window.

I let it in.

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