Grief & Confusion
Jalia closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, hoping it would ground her. The sound of murmured condolences drifted around the room, each one piercing her like a tiny shard of glass. She was grateful for her friends Makeeba and Damira standing by her side, their arms warm and steady around her, but even their presence couldn’t keep her from feeling hollow and adrift.
Her parents were gone.
It had been a week since the accident. Len and Lina Wren, her steady, dependable, slightly quirky parents, gone in the flash of a truck barreling down a quiet neighborhood street. She hadn’t even been able to look at the wreckage; it felt too absurd, too wrong. A truck that size shouldn’t have even been on their quiet little street. It was as if fate itself had decided to rip her parents away without warning, leaving her with questions that no one else seemed to be asking.
“Jalia, are you okay?” Makeeba’s soft voice pulled her back.
She blinked and forced herself to nod, though the gesture felt as empty as the polite smiles she kept plastering on for distant relatives and her parents’ friends. Her throat was raw, her head pounding from the weight of tears she refused to let fall.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied, glancing over at Makeeba and Damira. Both of them looked at her with gentle, worried eyes, as if afraid that any sudden movement might shatter her.
Jalia wanted to say something, anything, to ease their concern, but something else had caught her attention, something strange and distracting. She blinked again, this time not at the haze of grief, but at the faintest whiff of a scent in the air. It was different from the usual mix of cologne, perfume, and stale coffee she’d been surrounded by all afternoon. This was sharper. Earthier. It reminded her of wet stone and smoke, the kind of smell that felt old, ancient even. And it was coming from somewhere in the room.
She tilted her head slightly, nostrils flaring as she tried to pin down where it was coming from. Her senses felt unusually heightened lately, a strange sensitivity that had sprung up after her parents’ death. At first, she’d chalked it up to grief, the way her nerves seemed raw and exposed, but this was different. More primal.
“Did you hear what I just said?” Damira’s voice broke into her thoughts, sounding slightly amused.
“Sorry, I ” She trailed off, her gaze wandering through the packed living room. Faces blurred together, but she kept scanning, searching. “I just, I thought I smelled something strange.”
“Uh, yeah, grief’s gonna do that to you,” Makeeba said, rolling her eyes in that gentle, teasing way she always did, trying to pull Jalia back to reality. “What, you think someone brought in some incense or something?”
“Not exactly,” Jalia murmured. She took a step away from her friends, half listening as Damira made a joke to cover the awkward silence, but her attention was locked on the strange scent. There, near the back of the room, by the framed photos and flickering candles, stood a man she’d never seen before.
He was tall, broad shouldered, with dark hair and a strong jaw that looked like it could’ve been carved from granite. He stood out in a way that was hard to describe, not because he was flashy or overdressed, but because something about him felt dangerous. It was the kind of presence you’d expect to feel in the woods at night when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as if something unseen is watching you.
Jalia’s breath caught. He was looking straight at her.
The room seemed to narrow, the soft hum of conversations fading into the background as his gaze held hers. A strange flutter took root in her chest, part curiosity, part something she couldn’t quite name. She didn’t know this man, had no reason to feel anything toward him, but the pull was undeniable, like a wire stretched taut between them.
Then, as quickly as he’d appeared, he looked away, turned, and slipped through the crowd.
Jalia blinked as if waking from a trance. Her feet were moving before she’d made the decision to follow him, slipping out from between Makeeba and Damira with a quick, “Be right back.”
“Jalia?” she heard Makeeba call after her, confused but she barely registered it.
The scent lingered, it was like a faint thread and she followed it through the sea of people. She pushed past an elderly aunt who patted her arm and a neighbor who offered a sad smile. The faces blurred; all she could focus on was the path that man had taken. But when she reached the back of the room, there was nothing. No man. No strange scent. Only the bare white wall of her father's old office and a sense of having lost something important.
She scanned the room, her heartbeat pounding in her ears. The man had vanished as if he’d been nothing more than a figment of her grief addled imagination.
“Jalia, what are you doing?” Damira’s voice was soft but insistent as she came up beside her, worry etched in her brow. “Are you okay?”
“I” Jalia trailed off, struggling to find the right words. How could she explain what she’d felt? She barely understood it herself. “I thought I saw someone.”
Damira glanced around, her expression skeptical. “Look, I know it’s a rough day, but maybe you’re just seeing things. Everyone in this room is either family or friends of your parents. Strangers don’t just show up to a repast, you know?”
Jalia bit her lip, nodding slowly, but the unease lingered. The scent, the intense gaze, the way he seemed to disappear without a trace it had all felt so real.
She forced herself to smile, nodding to reassure her friend. “You’re probably right,” she said, though a part of her didn’t believe it. Not entirely.
Still, she let herself be pulled back into the cluster of guests, though her mind remained restless, her senses were sharp. Since her parents’ deaths, there had been a strange awareness stirring inside her, like something sleeping just under her skin had begun to wake up.
And in that moment, surrounded by well wishers and condolence cards, she knew one thing for certain this was only the beginning.
