Chapter 2: Ash and Lavender
1676 Words
The studio smelled like drying oil paint and salt. A storm had passed in the night, leaving the morning air heavy and wet. Clara sat at the edge of her narrow bed, staring at the letter on the nightstand like it had teeth.
She hadn’t slept. Not really. Just closed her eyes long enough to dream of water and screaming and Ethan’s face flashing in and out like a broken film reel.
The letter was still folded, pale cream and soft around the edges from being handled so much. She reached for it again, not to read it — she already knew every word — but because holding it made the memories feel real, like someone else had finally admitted there’d been a lie. And once a lie had a c***k in it, it shattered fast.
> Clara,
You’ve lived in silence long enough. What happened to Ethan wasn’t an accident. And what you remember was never the truth.
Come home.
—A.
No return address. Just that single letter: A.
She stood, dragging the oversized sweater off the back of the chair and slipping it on. The room was cluttered — paintbrushes in jars, canvases leaning against every wall, the floor scattered with loose sketches, color palettes, and discarded half-finished projects. She hadn’t painted anything finished in months. Every time she tried, her hands started shaking halfway through. Something always felt… wrong. Like the story she was trying to paint didn’t match what was hiding underneath.
Clara moved to the window and stared at the fog rolling off the water. Her studio was perched on the upper floor of an old building near the docks, and from here she could just make out the lighthouse on the far cliff — a broken spire of memory silhouetted against the sky.
She used to love that lighthouse.
Used to sketch it with Ethan on warm afternoons while he raced up and down the dunes, daring her to keep up.
But now when she saw it, all she could think about was the last time they were there.
Or rather, the last time he was there.
Clara didn’t hear the knock at first.
It was gentle, like someone unsure if they were welcome. When it came again — louder this time — she jolted slightly, pulled from her daze. She crossed the room barefoot, her steps nearly silent on the wood floor.
When she opened the door, Daniel stood there with his usual half-smile, holding two cups of coffee and a brown paper bag that was already beginning to show spots of grease.
“Morning,” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She blinked, rubbed at her face. “That obvious?”
“Only to someone who knows what it’s like.”
He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, set the coffee and bag on her cluttered table, and began clearing space with practiced ease.
Clara watched him for a moment, unsure how someone like him — so full of steadiness — always seemed to show up right before she fell apart.
“I brought food,” he said, glancing up. “I figured you’d forget to eat.”
“I didn’t forget,” she murmured. “I just couldn’t.”
He paused, his eyes locking with hers. “Want to talk about it?”
She hesitated. “You ever feel like something you buried just... crawled its way back out?”
Daniel didn’t flinch. “Yes.”
She nodded toward the folded letter on the desk. “Another one came.”
He sat down slowly. “Same paper?”
“Same handwriting. Same... everything.”
Daniel leaned forward. “You’re sure it’s not someone trying to manipulate you? Stir things up?”
“I don’t think anyone even knows enough about what happened to stir anything up,” she said. “Nobody talked about it. Ever.”
He stayed quiet a beat.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked softly.
Clara’s breath caught. “That place isn’t home.”
“No,” he said, “but it’s where your answers are.”
She looked at him. “What if the answers are worse than the lies?”
Daniel didn’t look away. “Then at least they’re real.”
---
They ate in silence — or, at least, he did. She picked at the corner of her muffin, unable to taste anything. Her stomach was knotted too tightly.
After breakfast, she opened her sketchbook. The pages were thick with unfinished drawings — impressions of faces, the same lighthouse over and over, Ethan’s eyes from memory, drawn again and again in graphite until the page was almost worn through.
Daniel stood beside her, watching.
“You draw him often.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“Maybe you do.”
She closed the sketchbook. “What if I’ve remembered it all wrong? What if I didn’t just lose him — what if I left him?”
Daniel crouched beside her and met her gaze. “You didn’t leave him, Clara.”
She stared at him, eyes rimmed red. “How would you know?”
“Because I know guilt when I see it. And I know it’s a liar.”
That afternoon, Clara pulled out the box she kept beneath her cot.
It was weathered — cedar, handmade, the latch worn smooth by years of opening and closing. Inside were the fragments she’d never been able to throw away. A faded comic book with Ethan’s doodles in the margins. His old scout badge. A broken wristwatch that had stopped at 4:17.
The time he fell.
At least, according to the coroner’s report.
She didn’t remember that time clearly. Her memory of that day — of that moment — had always been fogged. She remembered screaming. Running. Falling herself, scraping her knees. Then darkness. And later, people. Police. Her mother’s frantic cries. The hollow way her father paced the porch, not saying a word.
She pulled out a small cassette recorder next.
It still worked.
Ethan had used it when they were kids — narrating fake radio shows or interviews with their stuffed animals. She pressed play, and static filled the air before his small voice broke through, high-pitched and excited.
> “Okay, this is Ethan and Clara’s Secret Detective Agency. We’re on the trail of something weird in the woods behind the house…”
She smiled despite the ache in her chest.
The recording continued, full of muffled laughter, wind, and rustling leaves. Then his voice grew serious.
> “I saw Dad meeting someone. Near the lighthouse. He doesn’t know I saw. I think it’s a secret. Like… a real one. Maybe it’s a mission.”
Clara sat up straight.
She rewound it.
Played it again.
> “…Dad meeting someone… near the lighthouse…”
Her heart raced.
She didn’t remember this.
How had she never heard this part?
She let the tape roll, but it ended shortly after — just giggling and a loud thump where he must’ve dropped the recorder.
The silence after was loud.
Clara sat very still.
Her father had been distant before Ethan died. Always traveling. Always “working.” But she’d never thought it strange — not then. Now, though, the shadows of suspicion began to stretch long.
Was that what the letter meant? That Ethan knew something?
Was that why he died?
---
Later, Clara stood in front of the mirror.
The face looking back at her was pale, drawn. Her dark hair hung in soft waves around her shoulders, her eyes too large for her face. She touched the old scar on her left wrist — from the branch she’d fallen on that day. One of the few physical reminders.
She packed slowly.
Not just clothes — but the cassette, the photos, the letter. Her old journal. And the sketch Ethan had drawn her the week before he died: a lopsided picture of the two of them standing in front of the lighthouse. It had once made her laugh. Now, it made her stomach twist.
The hardest thing to pack was her courage.
But in the end, she did.
Clara zipped her suitcase and stood still for a moment. Her studio had never looked so small.
Daniel arrived just before she left. He didn’t say much — just helped her load the bag into her car and stood quietly beside her.
“You sure?” he asked, his voice low.
“No,” she admitted. “But I need to go anyway.”
He nodded.
Before she got in the car, he handed her something — a folded slip of paper with his number on it, again, even though she already had it.
“Just in case,” he said.
Clara held his gaze. “You’re the only one who believes me.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said softly. “I believe in you.”
She drove off before she could cry.
The road home was familiar but strange. Trees leaned over the narrow highway like they were listening. The signs grew fewer. The fog thickened.
And then, after an hour, she saw it:
Fairhaven.
The same crooked town sign.
The same old ghosts waiting.
Clara parked just outside the house she once called home.
The windows were dark. The porch light flickered like it always used to.
She sat in the car for a long time, heart heavy, hands still on the wheel. The air smelled like pine and wet earth — and something older. Something familiar.
When she finally stepped out, gravel crunched beneath her boots. She looked up at the house, at the rusted wind chimes Ethan used to run beneath, and whispered:
“I’m here.”
The front door opened.
Her mother stood in the frame, thin and gray, backlit by a hallway lamp.
Their eyes met — full of silence and things unsaid.
“Clara,” Anna said softly. “You came back.”
Clara nodded.
“I had to.”
- Writer
