THE LOVE, THE SMILE AND THE GHOST
PROLOGUE
I heard this once: “Love is not foolishness. Love is not blind. Love is seeing a person for who they are; it’s being yourself around them. It’s being unapologetically unfiltered.”
It got me thinking about my late mother. She loved my father so much that even though she knew the danger that awaited her from a union with him, she was willing to risk it all to be by his side.
I also loved, even when the clear signs that the person I loved was wrong flashed before my eyes. I was foolish in love, but one mistake—one painful mistake that made me feel like the whole world was against me—saved me. It all started on the day before I turned twenty-one.
The Love, the Smile, and the Ghost
The darkness tasted like ash and salt.
Avery thrashed against the silk sheets, a choked gasp trapped in her throat. The dream wasn’t a memory; it was a physical affliction, a poison that had clung to her since childhood. She felt the hollow ache of the grand, empty mansion around her, but her mind was back in that sun-drenched, sterile ward, rooted to the spot by a familiar, crushing sorrow.
She was five again.
IN THE DREAM.
A low, guttural noise—half-sob, half-roar—echoed from behind the closed VIP door. Avery stood rigid, clutching the tall hand of her father, Seth Aster.
“Angel? Your mummy wants to see us,” he whispered, his voice dangerously smooth, like glass rubbed over stone.
The moment the door swung open, Avery escaped the tension of his grip and ran.
Her mother, Amari, lay against the pillows. Despite the transparent tubes and the thin, unnatural pallor of her skin, her beauty remained a blinding force. The sickness was rare and untreatable, a consequence of a love her world did not approve of, and it was slowly stealing her life.
Avery collapsed into her mother’s weak embrace. “Mummy, I missed you so much. When are you coming home? It feels empty and lonely without you. Please don’t leave me. I want you to see me grow up and meet my prince charming.”
Amari’s smile was gentle, a small, tired miracle. She caressed Avery’s hair, her fingers feather light.
“My dear Avery, you have to be strong,” Amari murmured, the effort visible in the trembling of her jaw. “Mummy is going on a long journey.”
Amari forced herself, despite the excruciating pain, to smile at her daughter. “My journey here with your dad and you has come to an end... but it was a faithful journey because I met your daddy, and I had you. I will go ahead to prepare a beautiful castle with gardens, and all those mythical creatures we read about. Then, when you and Daddy are old and grey and wrinkled, you will come meet me. We will live there together happily ever after.”
Avery, still young and clueless, didn’t understand what her mother was talking about. She thought her mummy was traveling to another city without her and her dad. She snuggled into her mother’s arms, crying.
“I don’t want you to leave Daddy and I behind. Can’t we come with you?”
Tears trailed down Amari’s face uncontrollably.
Seth stood in the doorway, a human man whose strength was measured in the sheer force of his love and the terrible, focused pain in his hazel eyes. He was watching his world end, powerless against the strange, internal deterioration of his wife.
“Avery,” he ground out, his throat tight with a pain that defied tears. “Give your mother and me some time to talk.”
Avery left, the faint, sweet scent of Amari already thin in the air.
As the door closed, Seth was instantly at the bedside. “Amari! How can you tell our daughter such hurtful things? Why do you want to leave me? I will follow you to the depths of hell if you leave me.”
A flicker of fear—the first strong emotion in weeks—crossed Amari’s face. She lifted a hand, quickly covering his mouth.
“Never say that, Seth,” she whispered, tears finally tracing clean lines down her cheeks. “Who will watch over Avery? You must watch over our daughter, and when the time is right, we will meet again.”
She smiled again, her aqua-green eyes glittering, gazing into the face of the man who had been her dream—and her doom.
“When I am gone, you are free to love and marry again, Seth. But never neglect our daughter. Discipline her. Let her grow into the respectable young woman she needs to be.”
Seth broke. He buried his face in her neck, clinging to the last remnants of her life, restraining nothing.
Avery rushed back, alerted by the raw, shattering sound of her father’s grief. “Daddy? Why are you crying? Mummy, why are you lying so still?”
Seth lifted his head. He shook Amari, but the smile remained—unchanging, perfect, and terrifyingly permanent.
In the ensuing chaos—the urgent press of the emergency button, the rush of doctors, the jarring crack of the defibrillator shouting “Clear!“—Seth snatched Avery up, his movements swift and brutal.
“Mummy don’t go! Mummy don’t leave us!” Avery screamed, kicking and struggling against the iron grip of her father’s grief. He strode down the hall, heedless of her flailing.
She fought for release, desperate to return to the room, desperate to wake her mother. She fought until the moment her small, five-year-old body finally slipped, hitting the cold marble floor with a jolt that sent blinding pain up her spine.
Avery gasped, sitting bolt upright in her princess-style bed. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and the quiet of the mansion felt suffocating. Her hand went instinctively to the base of her spine.
“Thank goodness,” she breathed, the sound frail in the silence.
She looked around the massive, quiet room. The elegant, sterile luxury Seth had built felt less like a home and more like a mausoleum now.
I am a grown woman now, Mother, she thought, wiping a bead of cold sweat from her temple. And I still haven’t figured out how to live in the world you left behind.
