A week later…
"Jessica. Have you been well?"
Kai stood on the shore with his hands in his pockets and spoke to the water as though it might answer him.
He had been coming here since the day he got back. Not once or twice, but again and again, whenever there was a gap in his diary and sometimes when there wasn't. Even after he had finally stood in front of the council and accepted the mantle he had spent three years running from, he had come straight here afterwards. To tell her. Because who else was he going to tell?
Everyone kept saying the same thing to him, in the same careful voice, as though they had all agreed on the wording beforehand. Move on, Kai. Accept it. She died in that accident. They said it kindly. They said it firmly. His mother had said it with tears in her eyes.
But they never found a body.
