"Saki...?" Her mother gasped softly as the door swung open. Saki stood there, expression utterly blank — the particular kind of blankness that came not from sadness but from sheer, unadorned boredom. For her mother, though, she was always a source of delight. It didn't matter whether she'd been gone five minutes or five hours. Every time that door opened, her mother's face arranged itself into the expression of someone reuniting with a child after years apart.
"Nah-uh, Mom. Nah-uh." Saki raised a hand before her mother could launch herself across the threshold. "You're not doing that. Nah-uh." Her mother tilted her head and mirrored the exact same blank expression back at her.
For Saki, that was nothing short of cruel. Was she seriously trying to out-deadpan her? "You know what — I absolutely adore having you here." She found her angle anyway. Grabbed Saki's cheeks, pulled the most insufferable puppy face known to mankind — Saki occasionally genuinely questioned her mother's age.
"Enough, Mom. Let me in already. I'm exhausted from cleaning your yard." She stepped inside, hauling the toolbox that had absorbed the full punishment of the afternoon heat alongside her. A real smile, though — she could give you that, unannounced and devastating.
"I made cookies. Want some?" her mother called from the kitchen. Saki surveyed the living room. "Not today, if they're the same as yesterday's." She said it without edge — simply, plainly. But her mother's hand stilled in midair, a bittersweet smile settling quietly across her face.
"Mom, should we go?" Her second daughter stepped out of her room, tugging the zip of her boot closed. A long, warm coat draped over her left arm. Her mother surfaced from wherever her thoughts had taken her and looked up. Sakhu wrapped a soft cloth over the basket of chocolate cookies and carried it to the car boot, unhurried. Her mother stayed quiet. Her mind kept circling back to the person who was no longer in that space.
She rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes.
And found herself somewhere else entirely.
"Mom, what kind of flowers do you love?" Saki asked, her hand folded warmly into her mother's. Her mom smiled and touched their foreheads together. "Whatever my sweetheart loves is what Mom loves~."
"Mom, you're supposed to have your own favorites." Saki narrowed her eyes. Her mother smiled genuinely. "You're my favorite, sweetheart." She pressed her palm gently to Saki's cheek. And Saki — that deadpan, unmovable Saki — cracked open into the most luminous laughter. Her mother watched her with eyes that spoke entirely in love.
"Tell me your favorite then. I'll buy them for you."
"Lavender. I love lavender. Bring some when you come by, Mom." Saki laughed. Softly. Sweetly.
For the last time her mother would ever hold that sound in her memory.
Her mother opened her eyes to a voice beside her. She turned her head slowly to find Sakhu watching her with quiet concern. "Mom... are you alright?" Sakhu asked.
Her mother nodded. "Did you bring lavender?" One question, and silence did the rest. She stepped out of the car and moved to the boot. She lifted it open — and stopped the moment she saw it. A lavender bouquet, carefully placed.
Her eyes softened.
Sakhu wrapped her arms around her from behind, chin resting on her shoulder. "I could never forget to bring them, Mom." she whispered. "Saki always loved them." her mother said, barely audible, fingertips grazing the petals.
The remaining two siblings arrived with their own lavenders and macaroons. Sakhu nodded toward their mother and they walked together to Saki's gravestone, wiping the dust away with quiet hands, arranging the cloth, laying down the cookies, the flowers, the macaroons. They clasped their hands and offered their prayers in silence.
What none of them knew — she had never really left.
Saki, whatever she was now, sat beside her gravestone, leaning against it, watching her mother with a smile.
"Oh, Sakhu. You should've bought her a decent cardigan at the very least. What exactly are you earning that enormous salary for?" Saki swatted Sakhu's knee — and Sakhu's eyes flew open. She looked around, startled. Saki stared at her own hand, stunned.
"I can touch her." She laughed, shaking her hand in the air as though testing the miracle of it. She crawled toward her mother, studying her face with unguarded curiosity. "You look so lovely, Mom~." She reached for her cheek —
Her hand passed straight through.
"Mom...?" She pulled back, something unraveling in her expression. She reached for Sakhu — contact. Her third sibling — nothing. Her fourth — nothing. Her mother — nothing, at all.
"I can't touch you." The word came out smaller than she intended. She rose slowly and walked out of the cemetery, eyes drifting upward to a sky that had already darkened to a bruise. Rain was coming.
---
It was already pouring — the kind that arrives without warning and means it. Yahya ran toward the bus stop with his coat held over his head, eyes scanning, thoroughly exhausted. Before he reached the shelter, he walked directly into a young woman. He looked around and snapped,
"Watch where you're going, woman." He pushed inside without sparing her a second.
She stood in the downpour, dress soaked through, eyes fixed on the man who had just walked away from her without a second thought. She didn't move. Didn't shelter herself. Just stared.
He shook out his coat and raked a hand through his damp hair. "This wretched rain. Does it have to come the one day I forget my car? For the love of—" He looked up. The same woman, still standing there, drenched. He scowled. "What are you doing out there? You want to fall ill?"
She looked around, startled, as though confirming he was actually addressing her. "Am I the one you mean?" she asked, pointing at herself. He nodded, already irritated.
"You. Exactly." He stepped back into the rain and pulled her under the shelter by the arm. "Have you lost your mind?" She didn't respond immediately. The situation had apparently overwhelmed her capacity for words. She glanced at his hand around hers, then at his face — his eyes focused on her, his mouth forming actual words directed at her.
"Can you see me?" she asked. He tilted his head, arms crossing over his chest. "What kind of question is that? Of course I can. You're talking as though you're a ghost." He scoffed and turned away. She smiled — something bright and sudden blooming in her chest. He pulled out his phone, scrolling for a cab.
"Where are you headed?" she asked. He didn't look up. "That's none of your concern, woman." He added, "And you shouldn't ask strangers about their destinations. It's invasive."
She tilted her head. "I disagree." He looked at her, eyes narrowing. "How do you disagree?"
"Because I was simply wondering if you might be my neighbor. A shared ride would be rather convenient." She smiled, wide and unself-conscious, while he wore the expression of a man counting to ten inside his own skull.
"That's called kindness." she said. "I call it an invitation to be trafficked. I'm not sharing a cab with a stranger." He stepped toward the arriving car without another glance. "120B, Eleven Street." The cab pulled away. He didn't look back. He didn't offer. But somewhere in the back of his chest, a small and entirely unwelcome wish surfaced — that she would get home safely.
The car stopped. He climbed out, nodded to the driver, and was halfway through the gate when a voice reached him.
"That must have been a comfortable ride." He spun around. "You — how are you here?" he yelped. She walked toward him with a light, unhurried step, hand extended.
"We never introduced ourselves. I'm Saki Kallistratos. And you?" He rolled his eyes, jaw tightening. "Do you have any idea who I am?" She tilted her head. "No, I don't." He gritted his teeth, pushed her hand aside. "I'm a friend of an officer. Yahya Cizar. If you continue this, I will have you filed for harassment."
"Lovely to meet you, Cizar~"
"HEY—" He shut his eyes, voice cracking. When he opened them, she was gone. No trace. No shadow. Nothing. He spun in place. "She disappeared?" he muttered. Then, louder, furious, head tipped back toward the sky — "If you were going to disappear, why follow me all the way here in the first place, woman?!"
He stormed inside and slammed the door.
In the distance, Saki stood and watched. She laughed softly — then let it fade into something quieter. Bittersweet. "I found someone who can actually see me. Who can speak to me, and touch me, and hear me." Her head dropped. "And he already despises me."
●●●
Yahya walked into a florist's shop. He moved through the displays slowly, eyes tracing the arrangements, the bouquets, the particular textures of color and fragrance that filled the room. He bent toward one variety, reached out and touched a petal gently — then inhaled.
He went still.
They smelled like her.
He straightened and walked further, searching instinctively for something that felt nothing like Saki Kallistratos.
"Do you like lavender too?" The voice arrived right beside his ear and he lurched sideways in shock. He looked — Saki. His astonishment collapsed immediately into irritation.
"Again? Why do you keep appearing everywhere I go?" His voice dropped, laced with exasperation. She narrowed her eyes slightly. "I'm not following you. I simply happened to stop here." A valiant attempt at an alibi, and a thoroughly unconvincing one.
He studied her. "Mind your own business. Stop inserting yourself into my private moments." Saki stared at him, genuinely amused. "That was rather rude, sir. I was only extending an offer of friendship."
She turned and walked out of the shop.
He blinked. Once. Twice. Something in his chest stirred — something he had no interest in examining. He exhaled heavily and turned around, only to find every customer in the shop watching him with deeply perplexed expressions.
To him, he'd been having a conversation. To every single one of them, he'd been arguing passionately with empty air.
Which, objectively, is bizarre. Genuinely bizarre. Here was a grown man — a detective, no less — gesticulating and whispering threats to approximately nothing. I was among those figurative audience members watching this unfold and experiencing considerable secondhand confusion.
What followed was arguably more dramatic. He ran out of the shop clutching the very lavender bouquet he had been complaining about not fifteen minutes ago. Into the streets of Paris. Running as though something vital depended on it, calling a name —
"Saki. Saki, wait."
She didn't turn.
His face communicated everything his voice didn't.
He called again, louder, with the conviction of a man who had decided that the entire city needed to be informed. "Saki Kallistratos." Every passerby turned to look at him as though personally searching for a Saki Kallistratos in their immediate vicinity.
He ran a little further. His hand stretched into the air, fingers curled as though holding something invisible. His eyes held an expression that didn't belong to the man who had snapped at a stranger in a bus shelter forty minutes ago.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you." Directed, with complete sincerity, at the open Parisian air.
I watched this as a writer watches something they didn't entirely plan for. That man had genuinely, earnestly apologized to a ghost.
"Remarkably quick self-awareness." Saki remarked. He didn't smile. He produced instead a particular expression that occupied the uncertain territory between a smile and something altogether more complicated. She, for her part, was quiet. Hollow in that way she sometimes was — a lantern with the flame turned low.
"For the record," he announced, to the air, "I have wasted fifteen perfectly good minutes attempting to apologize." He turned sharply and began walking away.
Then stopped.
Turned back.
"Don't follow me. I mean it, Saki." A warning, delivered to the atmosphere of a Paris street.
The atmosphere offered no reply.