I woke the next day as one does from a deep dream, unsure of the time or day or year, where I was or who I was, a fragment of my fictional world still lingering in the forefront of my mind. I had slept through the whole day and night, waking in the early morning while it was still dark and quiet, the rest of the world still asleep, making it feel even more like I was still dreaming. 

A sliver of cold blue came in from the window, slightly brighter than the darkness around me, illuminating a plate with a sandwich, wrapped in plastic, an offering from my grandmother left sometime during my sleep. My stomach growled violently as I remembered how long it had been since I ate.

I sat up and I reached out a tired arm to unwrap the sandwich, taking a bite and curbing the rolling ache in my stomach, even though I had no appetite whatsoever. My belly growled in relief, but my nausea wasn’t so easily dealt with since it sat deep in my throat and was not there because of my hunger. The dull ache in my chest poked at my lungs and made it hard to breathe.

It was cold out from under the blanket, and as my arms prickled with a violent chill I strongly considered rolling over and going back to sleep. The bed was warm, the mattress soft, and it didn’t hurt so much to be asleep.

I scolded myself for my weakness. Sleep was a cruel mistress to me, making me forget the pain, just to make it far worse again once I returned to reality. I had been doing such a good job resisting its draw, was I really going to let myself break now? 

Involuntarily, I reached for the blanket and slipped it over my shoulders. My hands working on their own, against me, to coerce me back into the bed and banish the pain away again for a few more hours. Because it wasn’t just about Jack leaving. It was about my grandmother’s money, and my grandfather’s state, neither dead nor alive, and my mother’s callous actions, both personal and legal. The sleep would take all the worries away.

I shifted to lay back down, but as I did, that sliver of blue light reached past me to the violet on my bedside table, its petals facing me, staring me down. I half expected it to shake its little face in disappointment. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” I’d lost what little sanity I had left, I was sure. Jack took it with each one of the echoing steps of his heavy boots walking away. Nonetheless, the flower’s perceived scolding got me to take that last step out of bed.

“Happy?” I asked it, grabbing the glass of water on my night table and taking a drink, then giving a bit to the plant as well. 

***

I tried my best to get myself out of my room and doing something every day, because I didn’t want my grandmother to worry about me. Her concern wasn’t productive to anyone, and she had her own problems to deal with, which were only being added to now with my mother’s insensitivity. 

I was familiar with dealing with my problems on my own anyway. I only had to wait a few weeks, then I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this pain ever again. Eighteen years old was just the start for a lot of people, but I felt like I had already dealt with a lifetime of dysfunction. What is someone to do when their body is still very much alive, but their soul is aching to move on? 

It was growing harder and harder for me to hide my troublingly emotionless behavior around my grandmother though. At first, I was setting easy goals for myself, like making sure I ate regularly. I spent time in the house, I started fires to warm the den, and I pretended to read or draw so she wouldn’t get suspicious. 

She sensed something though, probably because it had been almost two weeks since Jack showed his face last, and I hadn’t set foot out of the house since. I knew Jack had been a positive influence on me and it hadn’t went unnoticed. I noticed it myself after all; the soreness in my cheeks from smiling and the ache in my chest from my wild, lively heart pounding out a reminder of its existence to me. 

I decided I needed to commit a little more to my facade. That didn’t mean I had to actually find the effort to mend my wounded heart. I’d lost the strength to do that a long time ago, and I wasn’t sure it was even possible anymore. I could pretend though, it was simple enough, especially if I got myself out of the house and away from her prying eyes for a few hours, where I could be alone with my dark thoughts.

I dismissed myself after breakfast one morning, taking my journal under my sweater and throwing on my jacket, some gloves, and a scarf. The chill of the approaching winter was setting in quickly, and I had no warm hand to hold onto mine any longer, so I thought it best to bundle up. 

I didn’t have a location in mind, so I ended up wandering, unintentionally finding my feet leading me to all the places we frequented. I wasn’t sure what I expected. Jack had become so ingrained into my life so quickly that his sudden disappearance left me feeling a bit like he had died, and now there was a ghost haunting me. It was as though I expected he would one day emerge from around a corner or appear behind me out of nowhere like he always did. 

Once I circled the property, I headed back, passing the garden on the way. I picked up my pace, intending to pass it as quickly as possible because my heart was not ready to face those particularly painful memories. 

In the deep, gray, dead silence of the property, a crow’s call assaulted my senses and I stopped, searching for the sound. The bird, sitting on the wrought iron gate of the garden a few yards away, ruffled its feathers, almost as if to catch my attention. With my eyes on him, he cawed again, then adjusted his footing and spread his wings, lifting off into the sky. 

Something twisted in my gut, dread and curiosity braiding together into an emotion that I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with. Regardless, my feet turned, taking me over to the garden despite the anxiety grabbing hold of my lungs. 

I wrapped a hand around the cold metal of the gate and yanked it open, feeling a moment of hopefulness. That feeling didn’t last long. Unfortunately, the garden felt as dead as the rest of the property with Jack no longer there. Something about him brought to life the otherwise haunted sleepiness of the area, the garden included.

I wrapped my scarf tighter around myself, defending my ears against a cold wind, and mosied through the garden, feeling a sadness drop in my stomach at how abandoned it felt now. The dead plants around me were foreboding, like this garden was no longer a place of life. Instead, it was a graveyard.

I shuffled myself over to the berry bushes, the sound of my shoes overwhelming against the absolute silence around me, even in the soft dirt. Unconsciously my eyes scoured through the branches and dying leaves, almost giving up until I found a single berry buried deep in the back of the bush.

I dug for it, stuck my fingers with thorns, but the sting was barely noticeable past the sudden palpitations of my heart at the sight of the berry. As I got a hold of it, I tossed it in my mouth before even inspecting it. 

The bitter bite of the squishy berry hit my tongue, and I grimaced hard and spit it out. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting; there was no logic behind my actions. Just brief, emotional possession that I regretted immediately. What would it have meant anyway, if the berry was still ripe? What would have changed? 

I didn’t want to return to the spot we had spent the night, knowing the violets would be dried up and dead already from how quickly the cold seeped in. I knew it would hurt to see it, but the pain in my chest was destructive and wanted to drag me down, and I was weak to it. It tugged on my heart strings until I strayed away from the berries and wandered towards the other side of the wall of crawling plants. 

I was prepared for pain; I was always prepared for pain. It was happiness I never expected, and it was happiness that hurt the most sometimes. Which was why I found myself unable to catch a breath when I saw the violets, still alive and well, despite the terrible cold making even my bones wither. 

It wasn’t until later that night, after I’d spent hours in the company of his violets, feeling a brief ghost of what it was like being there with him days before, that I even questioned the impossibility of their survival. Watching my own violet on my bedside table, I laid awake for hours, searching my logic for an explanation which never revealed itself to me.