Archive of Our Own

Ten years. Three months. Fourteen days.

I know this because I've counted every single one.

The morning light filters through my apartment window in weak, apologetic streams, illuminating dust motes that drift like lost souls through stale air. I watch them from my bed, unmoving, wondering if this is what existing feels like when you've already stopped living. My body is warm beneath the covers, my heart beats its steady rhythm, my lungs expand and contract without conscious thought, all these biological processes continuing their ancient dance while the person inhabiting this flesh disappeared somewhere around year three.

Or maybe it was year five.

I don't recognize myself anymore. Not in my laughter, not in my silence. Somewhere between surviving and pretending, I became a stranger to my own soul.

The alarm on my phone chirps insistently. I silence it with a mechanical swipe, the motion so practiced it requires no thought. Another thing I've learned to do without being present: existing in the motions of life while being fundamentally absent from it.

Today is the funeral.

Today, I bury a woman who might still be breathing.

The irony would be funny if I still remembered how to laugh.

I rise from the bed. Mewnich's side is still perfectly made, sheets tucked with hospital corners the way she always insisted, despite my chaotic sprawl. I haven't slept on her half in ten years. Some nights I reach across the divide in my sleep, my hand searching for warmth that hasn't existed in a decade. I always wake when my fingers meet cold cotton instead of her skin.

The apartment is proof of the life we built together. Her coffee mug still sits on the kitchen counter, the one with the chipped handle and faded university logo. I wash it every week and return it to its exact position, a ritual of maintenance for a shrine no one visits but me. Her running shoes wait by the door, laces still tied in the specific double-knot she favored. Her moisturizer stands sentry on the bathroom counter, the bottle three-quarters full, slowly separating into oil and water because no one has shaken it in ten years.

I keep everything exactly as it was the morning of March 17th, 2016. The morning she kissed my forehead while I pretended to still be asleep, whispered "love you, Junie-bug" against my temple, and walked out the door into oblivion.

The police classified her as a missing person within forty-eight hours. Critical first forty-eight hours, they said, as if I didn't know, as if I wasn't already tearing apart every street, every alley, every possibility with my bare hands and fraying sanity. Her car was found abandoned at a grocery store, a lot three miles from our apartment, keys still in the ignition, her phone on the passenger seat with 3% battery and a text to me that simply said "grabbing milk, need anything else?"

I still have that text. I've never deleted it. Sometimes I read it until the words lose meaning, until they become abstract symbols on a screen, until the pain becomes so familiar it almost feels like comfort.

The investigation went cold within six months. No evidence of foul play. No ransom demands. No body. No blood. No witnesses. Just a woman who existed completely and utterly until she didn't.

I pour coffee into a travel mug–not Mewnich's mug, never that one and taste nothing. Everything has tasted like ash for years. I keep myself constantly engaged: learning new things, staying busy, filling my mind with endless tasks, all to heal myself. But I'm really just tired of the world, and all this doing is how I distract myself and avoid the hollow inside me, how I conceal what's already dead inside me.

I've learned three languages in ten years. I took up pottery, abandoned it, tried watercolor painting, coding, and classical guitar. I can solve a Rubik's Cube in under two minutes. I've read 723 books—yes, I counted. I've memorized the periodic table, learned to bake sourdough, studied astronomy, and taken online courses in everything from ancient philosophy to quantum mechanics.

I didn't fit into the world, so I learned how it worked.

None of it matters. None of it fills the space.

My phone buzzes. Earn.

Are you really going through with this?

I stare at the message. Earn has been asking me this in various forms for three months since I finally, finally agreed that it was time. Those eight years were long enough. That the probability of Mewnich walking back through that door was so infinitesimally small that I was essentially worshipping a mathematical impossibility.

Yes, I type back. Funeral is at 2 pm. Are you still coming?

The reply is immediate: Of course. I'll be there. June... I'm proud of you.

Proud. The word sits strange in my chest. What is there to be proud of? That I've finally accepted defeat? That I'm admitting the person I love most in this world is probably decomposed somewhere, her bones picked clean by time and elements and creatures that don't understand they're desecrating something sacred?

I set the phone down and move to the closet. The black dress I bought last week still has the tags on. I've never owned a funeral dress before, both my parents are alive, and my grandparents passed away when I was too young to attend their services. This dress exists for one purpose only: to bury the love of my life when there's no body to bury it.

The fabric whispers against my skin as I pull it on, cool and impersonal. I look at myself in the mirror and see a stranger: a thirty-four-year-old woman with shadows permanently carved beneath her eyes, skin pale from too many hours indoors, hair that used to be lustrous and is now just... there. Existing. Like me.

Mewnich used to say I was beautiful. She'd trace my features with her fingertips like she was memorizing a map, like she was afraid of forgetting the geography of my face. "You're so beautiful, June bug," she'd whisper, and I'd believe her because when Mewnich said something, it became true through sheer force of her conviction.

I wonder if she knew she'd be the one to forget.

The funeral home smells like lilies and lies.

I arrived two hours early because sitting at home felt like drowning, and at least here I can drown while being productive. The event coordinator, a soft-spoken woman named Patricia with kind eyes and practiced sympathy, walks me through the arrangements with gentle efficiency.

"The flowers are lovely," she says, gesturing to the elaborate displays flanking the empty casket.

Empty. God. The casket is empty.

"We've set up the photo boards as you requested," Patricia continues, leading me to the front of the room where three large poster boards display Mewnich's life in chronological snapshots. Baby Mewnich with a gap-toothed smile. Teenage Mewnich at graduation. University Mewnich at our first pride parade, rainbow paint on her cheeks, arm around my shoulders, both of us laughing as if we'd just discovered something revolutionary.

That photo was taken seven months before she disappeared.

I can still remember that day with crystalline clarity: the heat of the June sun, the press of bodies around us, the way Mewnich's hand fit perfectly in mine, the taste of the overpriced lemonade we shared, the way she'd pulled me close and kissed me in front of thousands of people without a single moment of hesitation. "I love you," she'd said against my lips, and the parade had moved around us like a river around stones, and for that moment the entire world had consisted of just her and me and this wild, defiant joy.

“June?” Patricia’s voice pulls me back.

“Are you alright?”

The word alright lands softly, like it expects a simple answer. Like, this is something that can be answered at all.
“Yes,” I say, because lying is easier than explaining. Because the truth is too big, too tangled to say out loud. No, I’m not alright. I haven’t been alright in ten years. Something in me broke back then and never healed. It has just learned how to move around the damage. I get up. I go to work. I talk to people. I smile. I do all the things a living person does, even though inside I feel hollow, like the important parts of me stopped working a long time ago.

I’ve learned how to survive without really living. How to follow the daily rituals. I know the steps by heart now. Get up. Go where I'm supposed to go. Speak when spoken to. Smile when it's required. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. I follow the routines of living even though I feel empty inside, like the part of me that mattered stopped working years ago. From the outside, I look fine. From the inside, I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for years.

“Would you like some time alone?”

Patricia asks, her voice gentle, careful.

It takes me a moment to understand the question. I realize then that I haven’t moved. I’ve been standing in front of Mewnich’s photos, staring without seeing. Several minutes must have passed. Maybe more. My body stayed still while my mind went somewhere far away.

My face feels damp. My eyes sting. I lift a hand and find tears on my cheeks, tears I don’t remember starting. They must have been falling quietly, without me noticing.

I wipe my face quickly, embarrassed, even though there’s nothing left in me to protect.

“Yes,” I say, my voice small. Then, after a pause, “Please.”

Patricia nods. She doesn’t ask anything else. She lets me have the space and leaves with a whisper of fabric and a soft click of the door.

I'm alone with the ghost of Mewnich.

The empty casket sits at the front of the room, polished mahogany gleaming under soft lighting, a theatrical prop in this absurdist play. I approach it slowly, my heels clicking against hardwood, each step feeling like a betrayal. Inside, we've placed some of Mewnich's belongings: her favorite book, her university ring, concert tickets from the last show we attended together, and a letter I wrote to her that I could never bring myself to read aloud.

I run my fingers along the casket's edge, the wood smooth and cool.

"I'm so sorry," I whisper to the emptiness. "I'm so sorry I couldn't wait forever."

But that's not true, is it? I did wait forever. Ten years is forever when you're living in suspended animation, when every day is identical to the last, when you've constructed your entire existence around the possibility however microscopic, that she might come home.

Earn says I've been living in purgatory. She's right. This is what purgatory feels like: not hell, because hell would at least be definitive, but this endless gray space of not-knowing, this torture of hope that refuses to die even when logic has long since accepted the inevitable.

I sink into one of the chairs in the front row, the one reserved for the closest family. I am her closest family member. We never got married, we were planning to, had picked a date, had started looking at venues, but a piece of paper wouldn't have made me love her more than I already did. She was my person. My home. My future.

And now I'm burying her without a body.

The absurdity crashes over me. What if she's alive? What if she's out there somewhere, confused, hurt, trying to find her way back to me, and I'm here having a funeral? What if this is the ultimate betrayal?

My phone buzzes. I check it reflexively, some ancient part of my brain still harboring the fantasy that it's Mewnich, that she's texting me about milk again, that the last ten years have been a nightmare I'm finally waking from.

It's an unknown number. Probably spam. I almost dismissed it.

Almost.

Something makes me open the message.

Ms. Wanwimol? This is Detective Morrison from the National Missing Persons Database. Please call me immediately regarding Mewnich Nannaphas. It's urgent.

The world tilts.

My hands start shaking so violently that I nearly drop the phone. The funeral home spins around me, the walls contracting and expanding like lungs. I can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do anything except stare at those words: regarding Mewnich Nannaphas.

They found her.

Oh god, they found her body.

Today. They found her body today, the day of her funeral, because the universe has a sick sense of humor and this is the punchline to a ten-year-long joke.

I dial the number with trembling fingers, each ring an eternity.

"Morrison." The voice is crisp, professional.

"This is June Wanwimol," I manage, my voice barely above a whisper. "You sent me a message about Mewnich Nannaphas."

There's a pause. "Ms. Wanwimol. Thank you for calling back so quickly. I need you to sit down. Are you sitting down?"

I'm already sitting, but I feel like I'm falling. "Yes."

"Ms. Wanwimol, we've located Mewnich Nannaphas. She's alive."

The words don't make sense. They're in English, they're grammatically correct, but they might as well be in a language I've never encountered because my brain cannot parse their meaning.

"Wh-What!?"

"She's alive, Ms. Wanwimol. She was found three days ago in Asheville, North Carolina. We've confirmed her identity through dental records and fingerprints. She's at Asheville Regional Medical Center, currently undergoing evaluation."

Alive.

Alive.

Alive.

The word echoes in my skull, bouncing off the walls of my disbelief.

"That's... that's not possible." My voice sounds distant, like it's coming from underwater. "She's been missing for ten years. She can't just be... alive."

"I understand this is shocking," Detective Morrison says, and his voice is gentle now, which somehow makes it worse. "From what we've been able to piece together, she was involved in a serious accident shortly after she went missing. Hit-and-run. She sustained a severe traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for approximately four months. When she woke up, she had profound retrograde amnesia. She couldn't remember her name, her history, or anything from her life before the accident."

I can't speak. Can't process. The funeral home around me has become completely unreal, a stage set that's lost all meaning.

"She's been living under the name Sarah Mitchell for the past nine years," he continues. "Working as a library assistant in Asheville. A routine medical scan flagged some old injuries in her records, which triggered a match in our database. That's how we found her."

"Does she..." I have to stop, swallow against the boulder in my throat. "Does she remember me?"

The pause is answer enough.

"Ms. Wanwimol, she doesn't remember anything from before the accident. She has no memory of her life as Mewnich Nannaphas. She's built an entirely new life, a new identity. This is going to be very difficult for both of you."

I look at the empty casket. In the photos of a woman who apparently isn't dead. At the flowers and the guest book and all the trappings of a funeral that doesn't need to happen.

"Ms.Wanwimol? Are you still there?"

"I have to go," I hear myself say. "I have to cancel her funeral."

I hang up before he can respond.

For a long moment, I sit in perfect silence, staring at nothing. Then I laugh. It starts as a small sound, almost a cough, but it grows and grows until I'm doubled over, laughing so hard tears stream down my face, laughing at the cosmic absurdity of it all, laughing because if I don't laugh I'll shatter into pieces that can never be reassembled.

Mewnich is alive.

She's alive and she doesn't remember me.

She's alive, and I'm a stranger to her.

She's alive, and the person I loved is still gone.

The laughter turns to sobs somewhere in the middle, until I can't tell which is which, until I'm just a broken creature making animal sounds in an empty room surrounded by flowers for a dead woman who's breathing.

Patricia opens the door, alarmed. "June? What happened?"

I look up at her, my face soaked, my makeup destroyed, my black funeral dress suddenly the most ridiculous garment I've ever worn.

"I need to cancel the funeral," I say, and my voice is eerily calm now, shock settling over me like snow. "She's not dead. They found her. She's alive."

Patricia's hand flies to her mouth. "Oh my god. That's wonderful! That's a miracle!"

Is it? Is it wonderful? Is it a miracle?

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

Earn arrives twenty minutes later.

I called her from the funeral home bathroom, where I'd locked myself in a stall and pressed my forehead against the cool metal door, trying to anchor myself to something real while the world dissolved around me.

She finds me there, still in my funeral dress, sitting on the closed toilet lid, staring at the wall.

"June." She kneels in front of me, her hands on my knees, her face tight with concern and something else–something that might be fear. "Tell me everything."

So I do. I tell her about the detective's call, about the accident and the coma and the amnesia. About Mewnich living as someone else, somewhere else, with no memory of the life we built together. About how she's been breathing and working and existing for nine years while I've been here, frozen, waiting for a ghost.

Earn listens without interrupting, her grip on my knees tightening with each detail.

"Fuck," she breathes when I finish. "June, I... fuck."

Loneliness was never about the absence of people, I think distantly. It's about the absence of being understood. And right now, looking at Earn's stricken face, I feel more alone than I have in ten years because no one–not even my best friend who's witnessed every moment of my decade-long vigil–can understand what this feels like.

"What are you going to do?" Earn asks finally.

"I'm going to see her." The words come out flat, decided. "I'm flying to Asheville. Tonight, if I can get a flight."

"June–"

"I have to see her, Earn."

"She doesn't remember you."

"I know."

"She's been living a completely different life."

"I know."

"She might not want to know you."

I meet Earn's eyes, and what she sees in my face makes her flinch.

"I know," I say again. "But I've spent ten years not knowing if she was alive or dead. I've spent ten years in hell, Earn. And now I know she's alive, and I have to see her. I have to see with my own eyes that she's real. That she's breathing. Even if she doesn't remember me. Even if I'm nothing to her. I have to see her."

Earn is quiet for a long moment. Then she pulls me into a fierce hug, her arms tight around me, and I let myself be held.

"Okay," she whispers against my hair. "Okay. I'll drive you to the airport. I'll help you pack. Whatever you need."

What I need is for the last ten years to have been different. What I need is for Mewnich to have never walked out that door. What I need is for this to be a nightmare I can wake up from.

But what I'll take is a flight to North Carolina and a chance to look into the eyes of the woman I love and see nothing looking back at me.

At least then I'll know.

At least then I'll have certainty.

Even if certainty destroys me.

The flight to Asheville is five hours and forty-three minutes.

I spend it staring out the window at clouds that look like they're not moving at all. Time has lost all meaning. Five hours could be five minutes or five years.

I've changed out of the funeral dress into jeans and a sweater–Mewnich's sweater, one I found in my closet that still holds the faintest scent of her laundry detergent. I buried my face in it before I put it on, breathing in this ghost of her.

Sarah Mitchell.

The name feels wrong in my mouth, like speaking a curse. That's not her name. Her name is Mewnich Nannaphas, and she loves thunderstorms and terrible puns, and she takes her coffee with too much sugar. She hates olives but loves olive oil. She can't whistle. She has a scar on her left knee from a childhood bicycle accident.

But maybe Sarah Mitchell is someone else. Maybe Sarah Mitchell loves olives and can whistle and has never attempted a backflip in her life.

Maybe Mewnich Nannaphas died in that hit-and-run after all, and someone else woke up in her body.

The thought makes me want to claw my way out of my own skin.

Detective Morrison has arranged for me to meet her at the hospital tomorrow morning. Tonight, I have a hotel room near Asheville Regional Medical Center. A generic chain hotel with beige walls and landscape paintings that could be anywhere.

Earn texts me throughout the flight.

Landed yet?

You okay?

June, please respond so I know you're alive.

I send back: I'm okay. Will text when I land.

It's a lie. I haven't been okay in ten years.

The plane touches down at 11:47 PM. I collect my carry-on and find my way to the rental car counter. The drive to the hotel is a blur of dark roads and unfamiliar street signs. Mewnich is somewhere in this city. Breathing. Existing. Maybe sleeping right now in a bed I've never seen, in an apartment I've never visited, dreaming dreams I'm not part of.

The hotel room is exactly as depressing as expected. I drop my bag and sit on the edge of the bed, staring at my hands.

Tomorrow, I'll see her.

Tomorrow, everything ends.

I don't sleep. Can't sleep. I lie in the dark, watching the minutes tick by on the digital clock. At 3 AM, I give up and take a shower. At 4 AM, I'm dressed and pacing. At 5 AM, I go down to the lobby and drink burned coffee while CNN plays mutely on a wall-mounted TV.

At 6 AM, my phone rings.

Detective Morrison. "Ms. Wanwimol, just confirming our meeting at 9 AM. I'll meet you in the hospital lobby."

"I'll be there."

"Ms. Wanwimol... June. I want to prepare you. Sarah–Ms. Mitchell–she's nervous about this meeting. She's agreed to it, but she's overwhelmed. Finding out she has an entire life she doesn't remember is traumatic for her."

Traumatic for her. Right. Of course.

"I understand."

"She's requested that the meeting be brief. Just an initial introduction. She's not ready for anything extensive."

"Okay."

"And June? There might not be any recognition. Any Wanwimol. Her doctors say the chances of seeing you triggering her memories are extremely slim."

"I know."

Do I know? Have I really accepted that I'm about to look into the eyes of the woman I love and see nothing?

Asheville Regional Medical Center is a sprawling complex.

I arrive at 8:45 AM, too early, unable to wait for one more minute. The lobby bustles with morning activity: doctors with coffee, nurses changing shifts, visitors clutching flowers and worried expressions.

I stand near the information desk, hands shoved in my pockets to hide their shaking, and wait.

Detective Morrison arrives at precisely 9 AM. He's younger than I expected, maybe early forties, with kind eyes and salt-and-pepper hair.

"Ms. Wanwimol. Thank you for coming."

As if I had a choice.

"She's in a conference room on the third floor," he says, gesturing toward the elevators. "I should warn you again–she's very apprehensive. She's asked that I remain in the room."

"That's fine."

We ride the elevator in silence. I watch the floor numbers light up: 1... 2... 3. Each number is a countdown to the end of my world.

The conference room is small: oval table, plastic chairs, fluorescent lighting that makes everything look slightly jaundiced. And there, sitting on the far side of the table, hands folded in front of her, is Mewnich.

Except it's not Mewnich.

It is and it isn't.

She has Mewnich's face–a little older, a few more lines around the eyes, but unmistakably her. The same almond-shaped eyes, the same small nose, the same full lips I've kissed a thousand times. Her hair is different: shorter, styled differently, with highlights Mewnich never had. She's wearing clothes Mewnich would never have chosen: a cardigan that's too conservative, jeans that are too plain.

But it's her body. Her hands. Her posture.

My heart stops, restarts, stops again.

She looks up when I enter, and her expression is polite, cautious, completely blank.

There's no recognition. No Wanwimol. Nothing.

She looks at me the way you'd look at a stranger on a bus.

"Hi," she says, and even her voice is different–not the pitch or tone, but the cadence, the energy. "You must be June."

You must be June.

Not "June-bug." Not "baby." Not "love of my life."

You must be June.

Like I'm someone she's been told about. A character in a story.

"Hi," I manage, and I'm proud of how steady my voice is. "Thank you for meeting with me."

"Of course." She gestures to the chair across from her, and I sit, my movements wooden. "Detective Morrison explained the situation. I'm... I'm sorry. I know this must be really strange for you."

Strange. Yes. Strange is one word for it.

She's apologizing to me. She's sorry for me.

"It's okay," I lied. "I'm just glad you're safe. That you're alive."

She nods, her hands still folded on the table. "I don't remember you," she says, and there's genuine regret in her voice, which somehow makes it worse. "I don't remember anything from before the accident. They've shown me photos, documents, all this evidence of a life I apparently lived, but it's like looking at someone else's memories. I don't feel any connection to it."

To it. To our life together. To me.

"I understand."

"I've built a life here," she continues, looking at me earnestly, trying to make me understand. "I have friends, a job I love, a routine. I'm happy. And I know that's probably hard for you to hear, but I need you to know that I'm not... I'm not the person you remember. That person is gone."

That person is gone.

The words land like bullets.

"I know you probably came here hoping for something," she says gently. "Hoping that seeing you would trigger my memories, or that we could somehow reconnect, but I don't think that's possible. I'm sorry. I'm really, truly sorry."

I should say something. I should tell her it's okay, that I understand. But my throat has closed, and my eyes are burning, and if I speak, I'll shatter into a million pieces right here in this fluorescent-lit conference room.

She's looking at me with pity. The woman I love is looking at me with pity.

"Do you have any questions?" she asks, and she's being so kind, so gentle, like she's talking to a wounded animal.

Do I have questions? I have ten years of questions. I have a million questions.

I want to ask if she still takes her coffee with too much sugar. If she still hums when she's concentrating. If she still gets a small crease between her eyebrows when she's worried. I want to ask if her body remembers me even if her mind doesn't. If somewhere in her muscle memory, there's an echo of how we fit together. I want to ask if she dreams of me and wakes up sad without knowing why.

But those questions are for Mewnich.

And Mewnich is dead.

But I don't ask any of them.

Instead, I ask: "Are you happy?"

She seems surprised. "Yes," she says after a moment. "Yes, I am."

And there it is. The truth that destroys me.

She's happy without me. She's happy having forgotten me. Her life is better in my absence.

I stand up abruptly, the chair scraping against linoleum. "Thank you for meeting with me," I say, and my voice is hollow now. "I'm glad you're safe. I'm glad you're happy."

"June–" She stands too, looking uncertain. "I really am sorry."

"Don't be," I say, and I mean it. "I'm glad you're alive. That's all I ever wanted. To know you were alive."

It's not a lie, but it's not the whole truth either. I wanted her alive and remembering me. I wanted her alive and coming home.

But miracles don't work that way, apparently.

Detective Morrison walks me back to the lobby. I don't remember the elevator ride, don't remember the walk through the halls, don't remember anything except the feeling of being hollowed out, scraped clean.

"Ms. Wanwimol," Morrison says as we reach the exit. "I'm truly sorry. I know this isn't the reunion you hoped for."

I look at him, and something in my face makes him step back.

"I spent ten years waiting," I hear myself say. "Ten years in hell. Not knowing if she was alive or dead. Not able to grieve, not able to move on. Just... suspended. And today I found out that while I was destroying myself waiting for her, she was happy. She was living a whole new life, completely free of me, completely unburdened by the decade I spent in agony."

"June–"

"She got to forget," I continued, and my voice is rising now, cracking. "She was at the mercy of amnesia. And I got to remember everything. Every moment, every touch, every word. I got to carry all of it alone while she got to be reborn."

I'm crying now, hot tears streaming down my face.

"I got her back alive," I say, and I'm laughing and crying at the same time. "I got the miracle. She's breathing. She's safe. She's happy. And I realize now that this is worse than death. Because at least death is final. At least with death, I could grieve. But this? How do I grieve someone who's still alive? How do I mourn someone who's standing right in front of me with a stranger's eyes?"

Morrison doesn't have an answer.

I walk out into cold November air and keep walking, no destination in mind, just movement for the sake of not stopping.

My phone rings. Earn. I let it go to voicemail.

It rings again. And again.

Finally, I answer.

"June? Thank god. How did it go? Did you see her?"

"She doesn't remember me," I say flatly. "She's happy. She has a new life. She doesn't want anything to do with her old one."

Earn is quiet. Then: "I'm so sorry, June."

"Everyone's sorry," I say, bitter. "She's sorry. The detective is sorry. You're sorry. Everyone's so fucking sorry, but it doesn't change anything. It doesn't give me back the ten years I lost. It doesn't make her remember me."

"Come home," Earn says gently. "There's nothing left for you there."

Home. What does that even mean anymore?

"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, I'll come home."

I hang up and check my phone for flights. There's one leaving at 6 PM. I booked it without thinking.

The airport is crowded with Thanksgiving travelers.

I sit at my gate, surrounded by families and couples and people who have somewhere to go, someone to go to. I have a ticket back to a city that isn't home, to an apartment full of ghosts, to a life that no longer has meaning.

The thing about hope is that it's supposed to sustain you. It's supposed to keep you going when everything else has fallen apart.

But hope is also a cage.

I've been living in a cage of hope for ten years, believing that if I just waited long enough, if I just held on, she'd come back to me.

And she did come back.

Just not to me.

She came back to herself, to a new self, to Sarah Mitchell, who works at a library and has friends I've never met and probably has inside jokes I'll never understand.

She came back wrong.

Or maybe she came back right, and I'm the wrong one.

My flight is called. I board, find my seat, buckle my seatbelt. The woman next to me tries to make small talk, but I give one-word answers until she stops.

The plane takes off. The ground falls away. Asheville becomes light, and then darkness, and Mewnich–Sarah–stays behind, blissfully unaware that her old life is flying away from her.

I press my forehead against the window and watch clouds pass beneath us, and I think about all the things I could have said to her but didn't.

I could have told her about the morning she disappeared, how I pretended to be asleep when she kissed my forehead. If I'd known it was the last time, I would have opened my eyes. I would have pulled her close and memorized the moment.

I could have told her about the first year, how I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't function. How Earn had to move in because I couldn't be trusted to take care of myself. How I'd wake up convinced I heard her key in the door, and I'd run to check, and it would just be the building settling, and I'd collapse in the hallway and sob.

I could have told her about year three, when I finally accepted she was probably dead, but I couldn't let go of her things. How I'd stand in front of her closet and touch her clothes like they were religious artifacts.

I could have told her about year seven, when Earn staged an intervention and told me I needed to either accept Mewnich was gone or seek help because watching me destroy myself was destroying her, too.

I could have told her that I've been half-dead for ten years, that I've been a ghost haunting my own life.

But I didn't tell her any of those things.

Because she doesn't remember me, and telling her would just be dumping my grief on a stranger who happens to have my dead girlfriend's face.

So I said nothing.

I thanked her for her time and walked away, and now I'm thirty thousand feet in the air, flying back to nothing, back to nowhere.

The miracle I prayed for happened.

She's alive.

And I've never felt more dead.

The apartment greets me with its familiar, suffocating silence.

It's 11 PM when I unlock the door. Everything is exactly as I left it: her mug on the counter, her shoes by the door, her moisturizer on the bathroom counter. The shrine I've maintained for ten years.

But it's not a shrine anymore.

It's just stuff. Objects that belonged to someone who doesn't exist anymore.

I walk through the apartment like I'm seeing it for the first time. The photos on the walls–are they of Mewnich or of someone who looked like her but had a different soul?

I sit on the couch and stare at her coffee mug.

I've washed that mug every week for ten years. Keep it in its exact position. Treat it like a sacred object.

For what?

For a woman who doesn't remember drinking from it. For a love that no longer exists.

I stand up, walk to the kitchen, and pick up the mug. It's ceramic, cool against my palms, the chip in the handle smooth.

I should keep it. That's all I have left.

But that's the thing–it's not all I have left. I have ten years of memories. I have photographs and clothing and books and an entire apartment full of ghosts.

And none of it matters because the person those things belonged to is gone.

I throw the mug.

It shatters against the wall with a satisfying crack, ceramic exploding into pieces, and for a moment, I just stare at the destruction.

Then I start laughing.
It slips out of me before I understand what it is–a sharp, broken sound that doesn’t match anything I’m feeling, or maybe matches it too perfectly. It’s unhinged, a little manic, the laugh of someone whose mind has finally lost its grip on what’s reasonable. It startles me, that sound, as it came from someone else’s mouth. I hear it echo off the kitchen walls, thin and hysterical, and instead of stopping, it grows.

The laugh fractures. It turns jagged, hiccupping into gasps. My chest tightens, my stomach seizes, and suddenly I’m laughing and crying at the same time, the two emotions crashing into each other until neither makes sense anymore. Tears spill down my face, hot and uncontrollable, blurring everything. My knees give out. I don’t remember deciding to sink to the floor; one moment I’m standing, the next I’m there–on my knees, palms pressed against cold tile, shards of broken ceramic scattered around me like the aftermath of something violent.

I laugh until it hurts. Until the sound shreds my throat. Until the laughter collapses entirely and all that’s left is sobbing–deep, convulsive sobs that rip through my body like something is being torn out by force. I fold in on myself, arms wrapping around my middle as if I can hold my insides together. I can’t breathe. Every inhale stutters, every exhale comes out as a broken wail. The noises spilling out of me don’t sound human anymore. They’re raw, animal, stripped of language and restraint.

Something inside me has split open. I can feel it, like a fault line finally giving way. I can’t tell where the sound is coming from anymore–my throat, my chest, my bones. It vibrates through me, rattles my ribs, shakes my teeth. It’s too raw for words, too ugly for dignity. I make sounds that feel ancient, older than speech, older than grief as I’ve ever known it. This isn’t sadness. This is something more primal–loss without a name, pain without shape.

I don’t know how long it's been going on.
Minutes stretch and dissolve. An hour passes. Or maybe several. Time stops behaving like time, loses its structure, its edges. The kitchen light hums overhead. The floor is cold against my skin. My face aches from crying, my head throbs, my body feels hollowed out, like everything vital has been scooped away and left somewhere I can never reach again.

At some point, there’s nothing left to give. The sobs fade into quiet, shuddering breaths. My throat burns. My eyes feel swollen shut. I just sit there, slumped on the floor, surrounded by broken pieces, staring at nothing.

That’s how Earn finds me.

I’d texted her earlier–just a few words, I’m home–and she came immediately. She always does.

“June.”

Her voice cracks when she says my name. She’s kneeling beside me, arms wrapping around me without hesitation, pulling me against her chest. I cling to her like she’s the only solid thing left in a world that’s dissolved into dust. My fingers knot into her shirt. I bury my face into her shoulder, and the tears come again, quieter this time but just as heavy.

“She’s gone,” I sob. The words scrape their way out of me. “She’s alive, and she’s gone and I don’t know how to survive this, Earn. I don’t know how to exist in a world where she’s breathing, but I’m nothing to her.”

Earn holds me tighter. I can feel her shaking too.

“I know,” she whispers, her voice thick, breaking as she cries with me. “I know, sweetie. I know.”

She doesn’t. She can’t. No one can truly know this particular kind of loss–the way it twists reality, the way it steals someone who still walks the same earth. But she’s here. She’s trying. And somehow, that attempt at understanding is enough to keep me from shattering completely.

We stayed there on the kitchen floor for a long time. Long enough for my sobs to quiet. Long enough for my breathing to slow and even out. Long enough for the pain to sink into a deep, aching exhaustion.

By the time I finally go still, there’s nothing left inside me except emptiness and fatigue. Earn doesn’t let go.

"Come on," Earn says gently, helping me to my feet. "Let's get you to bed."

She guides me to the bedroom, helps me out of my clothes, and tucks me in. She lies down beside me on top of the covers, and for the first time in ten years, someone is on Mewnich's side of the bed.

"Stay," I whisper.

"I'm not going anywhere," Earn promises.

I close my eyes, but all I can see is Mewnich's face with a stranger's eyes, looking at me like I'm someone she's been told about but doesn't actually know.

You must be June.

Tomorrow, I'll figure out how to live in a world where Mewnich is alive and dead simultaneously, where I'm a widow without being a widow, where I've lost everything while gaining the certainty I spent ten years desperate for.

Tomorrow, I'll start the impossible work of grieving someone who's still breathing.

Tomorrow, I'll try to remember who I was before I became defined by waiting.

But tonight, I just let Earn hold me while I fall apart, and I think about all the ways hope can destroy you, and I wonder if certainty is really better than not knowing.

I wonder if I would have preferred to spend the rest of my life waiting instead of knowing that she came home, just not to me.

I wonder if this is what closure feels like, or if I'll spend the rest of my life bleeding from a wound that can never heal because the person who caused it doesn't remember wielding the knife.

I wonder if Sarah Mitchell ever feels like something's missing.

Probably not.

She's happy, after all.

Maybe that's the real cruelty of it. Not that she forgot me, but that forgetting me made her happy. That I was so easy to lose. That her life improved in my absence. That she's proof you can cut away a whole person, a whole history, a whole love, and not just survive but thrive.

I thought I was necessary to her.

Turns out I was just weight she's better off without.

And I'm here, in an apartment full of ghosts, learning how to haunt my own life without the hope of ever being seen again.

The miracle I prayed for happened.

It's worse than anything I could have imagined.

I have to let her go.

And somehow, I have to figure out how to survive it.