Smile of the Dead
The diamond on my finger feels colder than usual. Like a dead star. I roll it against my skin until it burns
Los Angeles stretches beneath my window. Glittering, loud, alive and I hate it for being all those things. Five years should’ve been enough time for the city to swallow me whole, to make the grief fade into something soft. It hasn’t. It just made it sharper.
I catch my reflection in the glass. Same girl, same bones, just hollower. I press my hand against the window and imagine the whole thing shattering. It doesn’t. It never does.
Mishka, my Borzoi, rests his head on my foot, the only thing in this house that still feels warm. My house smells like lilies and glass cleaner like a museum. My life is a museum.
Sometimes, I still hear him. Leo. I can almost feel the ghost of his thumb tracing the place on my finger where this ring now lives. That night, he whispered about our future like it was something he could hold in his hands. He never got to. Neither did I.
I used to imagine Orion’s laugh would sound like his father's bright, reckless, unbreakable. Now I only hear silence. A single, awful silence that has lasted five years.
The chime of the doorbell slices through it.
Only one person shows up uninvited.
Faye stands on the marble steps like she’s bracing for a storm. Her hair is in that tight bun she loves, but her face… her face is wrong. Too tight. Too pale.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I say, stepping aside.
“Worse.”
She doesn’t sit. She paces, her heels hammering against the floor like a countdown clock.
My stomach knots. “Faye. What happened?”
“You should’ve been at the fundraiser last night,” she says, sharp enough to cut.
“You know why I wasn’t.” My fingers brush the emerald at my throat, my little ritual of defense.
“I know.” Her voice softens for half a second. Then hardens. “Celeste… they introduced someone. A new benefactor. Big deal. Big money. Beverly Hills clinic, state of the art. Everyone was applauding like it was the next be thing.”
The knot in my stomach twists into something colder.
Faye reaches into her briefcase and tosses a glossy magazine on the table. I don’t want to look. My body already knows what’s waiting there.
But I do.
Dr. Damian Valerius smiles up at me from the page. A smile I know too well. A smile I trusted once.
The room shrinks around me. The air tastes like metal.
I hear the beeping first. Then the fluorescent lights. Then the weight of my baby in my arms, so warm, so alive. Orion.
I can still feel his tiny fingers around mine. They told me it was just for tests. They took him from me, and Valerius came back alone. He told me my son never took a breath, as if saying it calmly could make it true.
Leo didn’t believe him. He shouted, demanded answers until they threw him out.
Two days later, Leo’s car was wrapped around a tree.
Dr. Valerius disappeared.
Until now.
Faye’s still talking, spitting words about galas and champagne toasts, but I can barely hear her. All I hear is my heartbeat, loud and steady, like it’s waking up after five years of being dead.
I look down at the magazine one more time. He’s aged. Silver at the temples now, a little more distinguished, but the smile hasn’t changed.
Faye sees the look in my eyes when I raise my head. Her mouth snaps shut.
It isn’t grief in my chest anymore. Not really. It’s something colder, heavier. Something that feels like purpose.
The wind screams outside, hot and angry, rattling the windows like they want in. For once, I want to let them.
I twist the ring one last time. It doesn’t feel like a memory anymore. It feels like a promise.
Dr. Valerius is back.
And I am done drowning.
