She steps carefully onto the old wooden deck. Each board cries out with every movement. Moving slowly but consciously her tired body makes it to the railing. Looking down to the motionless water below, the image of his pale face just below the surface appears. Her mind quickly tries to force it out but the memory is stuck fast.
Though the air is still, it is brutally cold and stings her bare arms and face. But there is only numbness and blank eyes staring out at the dark hills across the lake. Pinpricks of light from the distant houses mock her silently with their warm and pleasant glow. In the sky the stars are dim. The constellations fade into the blackness space. Without the lights of the city, it is dark, too dark. The moon casts a cold light over her surroundings. A greyscale landscape. In the light, the place she once called home is dark and menacing. One window on the second floor is lit while the others stay eerily black.
Below her, the monotone grey of the cement decks glows through the dark. A lone piece of police tape snakes across the rough terrain, its ends drowning in the dark water. Recollections of the day’s events stray through her mind and an involuntary shudder racks her body. The movement rustles the paper in her hands. The note. She hadn’t realized it was still there. He had left it for her in the disintegrating birdhouse on the maple tree. Peeling paint on rotting wood that used to be vibrant. Now it’s only sad and pathetic. Peering inside the hole, the useless and strange items, collected inside the small enclosure, stare back at her.
She turns her attention back to the note. Unfolding it carefully her eyes scan the handwritten scribbles. “Dear Lauren...” she stops, knowing what it says. He is lost, he is sorry, he is gone. Her hands shakily fold the note back up and move toward the birdhouse. In front of the crude opening they stop, hesitating. Instead, the water below calls to her and she descends the neck-breaking staircase to the lakeside. The stairs are falling to pieces as her feet edge across each makeshift stair, afraid of a misstep. The rusted pipe railing digs and scrapes the hand that holds on for support.
At the bottom, the cold cement deck sends shivers up her spine. The rough surface scratches at her bare feet as they shuffle to the water. Sitting at the edge her legs hover above the eerily black liquid. It’s too cold for any contact. One hand holds the note and the other a rock from the rubble under the deck. She wraps the note around the rock and then slips the hair-tie from her wrist around both. In one quick movement the rock and note sink into the water, the darkness consuming its form, meeting the same fate as him. Fresh tears that had refused to emerge before are now on the verge. The curved banks of the small bay feel as though they are coming in too close. She rises and turns around to head back into the house, and for one brief moment his silhouette forms inside the frame of the lit window.
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