The rain had been falling for three days straight.
Not the kind of rain that comes and goes in bursts, but the relentless, suffocating kind—the kind that seeps into your bones and makes the world feel like it's drowning. Daniel sat at the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long gone cold. Steam no longer rose from it. He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there. An hour? Three? Time had stopped meaning anything months ago.
Across from him, the other chair sat empty.
It was a simple wooden chair, the same as his, but it might as well have been a monument. He had set a coffee cup in front of it—her favorite, the chipped blue one she always claimed had the best "mouthfeel." He'd even poured the coffee just how she liked it: a splash of cream, no sugar. The liquid had cooled into a dark, oily pool, untouched.
His phone buzzed on the table. He didn't need to look to know who it was.
"Dan, please call me back. You can't just sit there forever."
His sister, Claire. She had been texting him daily since it happened. At first, it had been frantic—"Where are you?" "Answer me!" "I'm coming over."—but now, her messages had settled into a quiet, persistent rhythm. Like a metronome of grief.
He didn't answer.
Instead, he reached out and touched the rim of Lila's cup. There, on the edge, was the faintest imprint of her lips—cherry-red lipstick, the shade he'd bought her last Christmas. She'd laughed when she opened it, saying it was too bold for her, but she'd worn it anyway. "For you," she'd said, kissing him.
Now, the ghost of that kiss lingered on ceramic.
The apartment was too quiet. Before, there had always been noise—Lila humming while she cooked, the TV murmuring in the background, the sound of her turning the pages of a book in bed. Now, there was only the rain and the hollow ticking of the clock above the stove.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember the sound of her voice.
But memory was a cruel thing. The harder he grasped for it, the more it slipped away.