I. Camera
Evan learned early that the sea did not answer questions. It only returned them, reshaped. As a photographer, he saw the world in frames of light and shadow, but the sea refused to be composed. It was a subject in constant, chaotic motion, a canvas of liquid silver under the moon or bruised purple under a storm, forever resisting a definitive capture. He could photograph the waves, but not the pull of the tide. He could capture the glint of sun on its surface, but not the crushing weight of its depths. It was the ultimate authentic subject, and it was indifferent to his lens.
He had been searching for his mother for eight years, a period so long it had become the silent, long-exposure photograph of his life. The search was an inherited act, like the curve of his spine or the way his breath caught before sleep. It had trained his artist’s eye for absence. In crowds, he didn’t see people; he saw a collage of faces, his gaze automatically scanning for her features, composing and discarding portraits of strangers in an instant. Some days, hope was a sharp, blinding light; he believed she was still alive, folded somewhere along the coast, a story waiting for its final frame. On other days, despair was a vast, empty shadow. He told himself she had dissolved into salt and myth, and that the search was only a habit he no longer knew how to set down, a darkroom process he repeated endlessly, hoping for a different image to emerge.
This pursuit of the genuine left him feeling isolated, a spectator who could see the strings but couldn't bring himself to join the puppet show. It was why his best work was always of things that couldn't lie: peeling paint on a forgotten boat, the un-selfconscious exhaustion on a fisherman’s face, the raw, untamable sea.
The necklace lay heavy against his chest, a constant, tangible anchor to an intangible past. It was not made for a boy. The cord was too coarse, the shell too old, smoothed by years that did not belong to him. She had pressed it into his palm the morning she left, her fingers closing around his with a firmness that frightened him more than her leaving ever would. “Keep this,” she had said, her voice a low murmur against the morning tide. “Even when you forget me.” He had not understood then, the weight of the command. He still wasn’t sure he did. The shell was a memento mori, a piece of a life he could no longer prove was real, its smooth, cool surface a stark contrast to the grainy, fading photograph of her face in his mind.
At night, Evan dreamed of seawater, a lighthouse and people he never met but feels as though he knows them.
The water rose without waves, stood upright like a wall of liquid glass, a lens that distorted the world behind it. Sometimes a woman stood within it, her face always half-hidden in a blur of motion, her voice swallowed by a sound like a shutter clicking open and closed. Other times, he dreamed of a shoreline he did not recognize, where the sand was black like developed film and the sky pressed down, too close, as if it wanted to listen. He would wake with the taste of salt on his tongue and the certainty that something had been said to him, something important, something he had failed to carry back from the depths. Was that what the dreams were? Messages misdelivered, images lost in the transfer from one world to the next?
There were moments—quiet, dangerous moments—when he considered giving up. Letting the search loosen its grip. He would imagine a life where the past did not tug at him like an undertow, a life of simple acceptance.
He could wake without his eyes scanning every face for echoes of her. But the thought felt like a betrayal, not just of her, but of himself. This ache, this constant search for an un-captured truth, was the very thing that fueled his art. To stop searching would be to go blind, to lose the only way of seeing he had ever known.
Why am I holding on to this nightmarish pain? Is it worth it?
The conflict was a rip current inside him. He remembered the day Joseph pulled him from the water. The panic first, the sudden, thoughtless violence of the sea turning on him. The world became a blur of churning grey and white, a frantic, out-of-focus shot. By the time Joseph’s strong hands dragged him onto the shore, coughing and shaking, she was gone. The question had never left him, burned into his memory like an afterimage on a retina. Why did I see you then? Why not before? Why not after?
The necklace had burned against his skin that day, hot as if freshly pulled from the sun. He had almost torn it off, afraid of what it meant—afraid that it meant something at all. Was it an act of love, or of preparation? When she took it off and gave it to him—This is yours from now on, dear Evan.
He did not know if he was meant to find her. He did not know if the dreams were memories, warnings, or simply the sea playing tricks. All he knew was this: The woman turned away. The shore dissolved and the lighthouse disappeared. Only the necklace remained.
So Evan stayed because the search had become his art, his vision, and his very self. He was the photographer of his own haunting, and he had not yet learned how to put the camera down.
He lay on the studio couch and called Joseph.
“Can you do me a favor? I can’t make it to the café.”
A pause. “Uh-huh. Then don’t forget you owe me lunch. Also, no I forgot my wallet nonsense.”
“Okay,” Evan said, smiling despite himself.
He set the phone aside. The blue book remained where it was.
Evan rolled onto his side, facing the wall.
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II. Lilac
Across town, Joseph unfolded the flaps of a cardboard box in his grandmother's attic. They folded back like tired wings. A sigh escaped him, a soft puff of air that barely disturbed the dust motes dancing in the slanted afternoon light of the attic. He had promised to clear a few things for Jaafar’s garage, a simple enough task on paper. Evan sounded sick on the phone, Now he is also working at the cafe this evening.
“Grannie,” he muttered, the words a low rumble meant only for himself and the ghosts in the room, “you could’ve just said hoarder and saved us both the effort.”
But it wasn’t hoarding, not really. It was curated. Each item in this box was a ticket to a specific moment in time. The air that rose from it confirmed as much—a faint, layered scent of old paper, of dry and settled dust, and something else beneath it all. A familiar, nostalgic perfume that felt less like a smell and more like a memory, a phantom trace of his grandmother that was almost a form of time travel.
His hand dipped inside, fingers brushing against brittle paper until they closed around a small, dense stack. He lifted it into the light and a quiet laugh escaped his lips.
Old comics, their edges softened and frayed with countless readings. Some still bore the Lilac Municipal Library stamp on the inside cover, the purple ink half-faded, pressed into coffee-yellowed pages. He carefully flipped one open, the spine crackling in protest.
Property of the Lilac Municipal Library.
“Well,” he said, his voice hushed in the quiet of the attic, “so much for returning those.”
The image surfaced instantly, sharp and clear. His grandmother, standing behind the tall wooden counter, her glasses perched on her nose. He could almost hear her voice, a blend of exasperation and affection.
“Jo, stop right there! You’ll give me a heart attack climbing on those shelves.”
He had been an impossibly energetic kid, a whirlwind of scraped knees and reckless ideas. He worried her constantly with his silly antics, treating the quiet sanctuary of the library like his personal playground. She’d worked there forever, it seemed, first with his aunt Ezzie. They’d started as volunteers, shelving books long before it was officially their responsibility. It was Mr. Jaafar who helped Nana secure the lease, and over time, the quiet municipal building slowly, surely, became our library.
A genuine smile touched Joseph’s lips. He stacked the comics neatly to one side, a small monument to overdue fines and childhood afternoons, and reached back into the box.
His fingers closed around something small, plastic, and smooth. He drew it out.
A small red toy car. Its paint was chipped away on the hood and fenders, revealing the grey plastic beneath. One of its back wheels was stubbornly, permanently crooked.
He turned it over and over in his palm, the worn object feeling impossibly familiar against his skin.
Oh, you survived.
He remembered this car. He remembered racing it across the polished linoleum floors of the library, the tiny wheels humming a high-pitched tune. His grandmother had been at the counter, locked in a quiet but firm argument with a patron about a missing, and apparently very important, old blue book. He’d been oblivious, lost in his own world, sending the little red car on daring missions under tables and around the legs of reading chairs.
He set the car down beside the comics, his movements slower this time, more deliberate. Each object was a new anchor to the past, pulling him deeper.
At the bottom of the box, beneath a layer of neatly folded silk scarves and a scattering of old, brittle receipts, he found them: a small bundle of carefully kept papers, tied with a faded ribbon.
As he lifted the bundle, one sheet, folded and fragile, slipped free. It fluttered through the air like a dry leaf, landing softly against his knee.
Joseph frowned, picking it up. The paper was thin, almost translucent with age.
It had been torn cleanly down the middle, a violent, decisive rip. But then it had been taped back together, the pieces slightly misaligned, the tape yellow and cracked. It was as if the person who repaired it hadn't been entirely sure they should have.
He unfolded it. On one side of the tear, a name was written in elegant, looping cursive: Nana. On the other side, in a different, bolder hand: Ezra.
Between them, straddling the taped-together seam, was a small, simply drawn heart.
Joseph stared. His breath caught in his throat.
Huh.
His aunt’s name looked different here. Foreign. This wasn't the "Aunt Ezzie" he knew, the woman people so often mistook for his mother. This was "Ezra." A name with hard edges and a weight he didn't recognize.
Nana, could it be? No way… haha.
A short, disbelieving laugh escaped him, but it held no humor. He held the paper in his hand for a long moment, the fragile artifact feeling impossibly heavy. He wasn't ready to question it. Not yet.
He carefully folded the paper along its old creases and slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans, the strange weight of it pressing against him. He closed the flaps of the cardboard box, shutting away the ghosts for now.
That afternoon, the roar of his motorcycle was a welcome noise, cutting through the quiet turmoil in his head. He rode to Jaafar’s garage, the cool air a balm. The garage smelled of oil and metal and sawdust, a grounding, honest scent.
He found Jaafar wiping his hands on a rag, a warm smile appearing on his face when he saw Joseph.
“Just wanted to let you know,” Joseph said, pulling off his helmet, “Evan’s still sick. Can’t make it in for a few more days. So, I’ll be covering his shifts at the cafe, part-time, if that’s alright.”
Jaafar nodded, a grateful look on his face. "That's a big help, Joseph. Thanks. Tell Evan to get some rest."
A beat of silence passed. The practicalities were done. The questions, however, were not. They pushed against the wall Joseph had built, and the paper in his pocket felt like a burning coal. He couldn't hold it in.
"Actually, Jaafar," Joseph began, his voice hesitant. "Can I ask you something? About my aunt Ezzie,"
Jaafar’s brow furrowed. "Your mom? Of course, kid. What about her?"
"Well, was she close to someone when I was young?" Joseph asked, he could care less about correcting anyone who thought she was his mom.
"She wasn’t a talkative person, unlike your lovely grandma. But at some point, she was good friends with this woman... I can't recall her name. That woman unfortunately stopped coming. I remember them hanging out at my cafe. I never saw Ezzie smile like that before"
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