Prologue: The Bridge Between
There’s this moment just before morning when the world holds its breath.
The sky is too dark to be called morning, but too pale to still belong to night. The silence in those minutes is heavier than midnight. It’s as if everything pauses, waiting for something to change. Something to give in. That’s when I feel closest to him.
That’s when I hear him most clearly.
Aiden.
People say when someone dies, they’re just… gone. The last breath, the last heartbeat, and they fade from this world like the last spark of a dying fire. But they’re wrong. The dead don’t leave. They linger. In the air, in the static between radio stations, in the pause between heartbeats. And sometimes, if you’re unlucky, they follow you home.
I didn’t believe that until Aiden died.
Now, I don’t know what I believe.
The bridge looms ahead like a skeleton, ribs of rusted steel clawing toward the fogged-out sky. Even from a distance, I can feel it the way it pulls at me. My stomach knots like it always does when I’m near this place. The spot where the world stopped. Where he fell. Where I lost him.
Where he chose to leave.
I tell myself that every time: choose. Like it makes any difference.
My boots scuff against the gravel as I force myself forward. I shouldn’t be here. I know that. Therapy says don’t retrace trauma. My best friend Lily says I need to stop haunting myself. But what do they know? Grief isn’t linear. It’s a circle. I keep ending up back here.
At the bridge.
I reach the midpoint. The place where the railing is still scratched, where people still leave flowers and candles like offerings to a god that never answers. I hate the flowers. They wilt too fast. I hate the candles. They don’t burn long enough.
I stare at the spot where the metal buckles slightly. The place where he stood.
And jumped.
That’s what they ruled, in the end. An accident, at first. Slippery metal. Rain-soaked night. But I know better. I know Aiden. Or I thought I did. Now I’m not sure of anything.
I reach into my coat pocket and pull out my phone. The screen glows harshly in the foggy darkness. No new messages.
Except the one I can’t explain.
From an unknown number, received at exactly 3:17 AM two nights ago.
Four words.
What if you knew?
I don’t know why it terrifies me more than any nightmare. I don’t know why I keep rereading it like it holds a secret I’m too stupid to understand.
I type back again, for the hundredth time, even though no reply ever comes.
Knew what? Please. What do you mean?
Message failed to send.
I lower the phone and close my eyes. My heart beats too fast. My breath fogs the air in shaky bursts. And then, somewhere deep in the silence, I hear it.
His voice.
“Mira?”
I freeze.
The world tilts. The gravel crunches behind me, soft footsteps in the darkness. My throat clamps shut. My hands tremble so violently that the phone slips and hits the concrete with a crack.
“Mira.”
I spin around, but no one’s there. The bridge stretches empty in both directions. Only the thick morning fog moves, coiling like smoke around the metal beams. But I know that voice. I’d know it anywhere. Even after death.
Aiden.
My knees buckle. I drop, scraping skin against stone, but I barely feel it.
Tears blur my vision. I whisper into the nothingness.
“Aiden?”
But the silence answers back.
