I didn’t see Alex again for some time after Elizabeth passed. Truth be told, I didn’t see anyone or anything. There were only sounds of life and blurred images all around me. I was stuck in some kind of tunnel – a tunnel that was leading me on a path to an unknown destination. I couldn’t see where I was travelling, because all I could ever see, awake or asleep, was her.

The next few months felt like they didn’t happen. Every second was forever etched in my mind and there wasn’t a moment that went by where I didn’t try to think of things I could have done differently. There were so many words I should have said to her, so many things I could have said, but time and reason had collided head on. Both were shattered on that cool April evening.

Life after Elizabeth meant picking those two things back up with trembling hands and somehow finding a way to piece them back together until they made sense again. I had no reason left in me, and I had no clue what our time on this earth meant to any of us.

My limbs moved of their own accord, but I was otherwise lifeless and immune to everything. Spring and summer passed me by without significance. I even turned sixteen along the way, but all of it was irrelevant without her. After the burial, nothing seemed to hold my attention. Every night I would fall asleep to the vision of her being lowered into the ground. Every morning I would wake to the sound of my own scream clawing its way out of my throat as I dug away at the earth and tried to free her.

Friends came and went from the house. I made the right noises when I needed to, but otherwise, I was just waiting. Waiting until the sun shone again.

By autumn of that year, routine was the main thing keeping me going. School became something to look forward to, simply because it kept my brain active without me having to get creative at all. I sat in the middle of the bus every morning, and I sat in the same spot on the way home. My friends always congregated more towards the back, never once questioning my need to be free from all the laughter that they had every right to enjoy. That didn’t mean that I missed the way Sammy would squeeze my shoulder twice a day as she walked by my seat. It didn’t mean I missed the way that she would glance down and smile, wink or even whisper a really bad joke in my ear. It just meant that they respected my wishes. They knew I needed time. They knew I was lost in a place I hadn’t even realised I’d begun to wander into.

It was a Wednesday when the routine of just another day was altered. The leaves on the trees were falling hard and fast now. Every street the bus drove down was lined with an array of golds, browns, mustards and oranges. I hadn’t been sitting for long when I felt the wheels slow and heard the engine grind to a slow chug instead of the usual heavy, endless whirring sound from behind me. We didn’t normally stop here and my brows knitted together slightly as I stared out of the window and straight onto what I knew to be Dr. and Mrs. Williams’ house across the road. Theirs was one of the biggest homes in our village, and everyone who lived within a mile of here had, at some point, been on the receiving end of Dr. Williams’ treatment and unwavering kindness.

The disturbance to the routine didn’t seem to bother anyone else on the bus, and before Elizabeth’s death, it wouldn’t have disturbed me either, but I relied on this routine. The people at the back kept on laughing, squealing and shouting. The people at the front had their heads down as they studied the open textbooks in their laps. And everyone in the middle carried on with their business, mindless to the fact that the door had released a heavy sigh on its opening, and someone new was stepping on board.

As soon as I lifted my head, the first thing I saw was the sun shining brightly from behind him.

Alex.

Our eyes met instantly, but only briefly. There was enough time for me to register the hazel that rivalled my old favourite, purple. There was enough time for me to slowly blink a couple of times, too, but before either one of us had a chance to bring even a hint of a smile to our faces, I turned away to stare back out into nothing. I didn’t want to see him trying to hide the pity that I had no doubt would be there when I looked at him again. I didn’t want him to see the sadness I was holding back, either.

It was better to turn away from everything the world had to offer than to risk seeing anything that would break my heart all over again. So I raised my chin and squinted against the bright blue sky, tilting my head to one side as I pretended to focus on something imaginary that had caught my attention until he passed.

The same thing happened every day after that for what felt like weeks but was actually months. Before I registered the calendar on our kitchen wall, it was drawing close to Christmas, and everything we’d once looked forward to was now tainted with a darkness that Elizabeth would have cursed us all for had she still been around.

I tried to be enthusiastic when asked what I’d like as gifts. I even helped decorate the house the way I knew she would have liked it to be, but as with everything, the biggest part of me was still stuck in that tunnel, and everything around me was nothing more than echoes and hallucinations.

We had two weeks left of school when my father burst into the house heavily laden with gifts, trying to shake off the rain that had soaked him through. His old, navy, worn trilby hat sat tilted to one side as he held the door open with his foot and dropped several wrapped boxes to the floor with a thud. The sheer noise had me jumping on the spot as I made my way down the hall towards him, my blonde hair up in a messy bun as my cream, oversized jumper fell off one shoulder with no grace at all.

“Christ, it’s getting cold out there,” he huffed out as a shudder ran through him.

“That’s why we prefer to keep all the doors closed. It helps keep the ice out,” I reminded him quietly, circling a spoon in the hot chocolate I’d had to remake four times already. My father looked up before he glanced behind him and rolled his eyes.

“Just a minute.”

“Hypothermia can happen in a minute, Pops.”

“Anything can happen in a minute, baby girl,” he replied quietly.

Then I heard the heavy footsteps outside. Dad’s focus stayed behind him, while I adopted my usual look of confusion and waited to see who he’d brought along. When Alex jogged through the door, practically hidden behind a heavy load of parcels, I froze completely.

“I think this is everything, Mr. Vincent.” Alex dropped the gifts next to the others, shaking his hair out carefully before he bounced on his toes to fight off the obvious cold. “I shut the boot of your car, so you just need to lock up now. Saves you from going back out in the rain again.”

“You’re a good lad, son. Thank you.”

The cup in my hand suddenly felt like it was lined with grease. I tried desperately to cling on to it while my eyes stayed unblinking, completely lost in the movements Alex Law was making next to my father, as though he hadn’t even registered I was there.

When he did… when he eventually turned and our eyes locked the same way they did twice a day, he froze, too. He froze and stared. I stared and froze. We were two statues, suddenly mute and lost. It was like he’d somehow found a way into the tunnel I’d been stuck in for so long, and it was having the same haunting effect on him that it had always had on me.

“Natalie,” he whispered.

“Alex.” I nodded slowly, unable to look away.

Then there was the silence again – that same silence that always sucked all the moisture out of my mouth and left my throat feeling like it was being starved of life. I wanted to swallow so badly, but I couldn’t.

“Alex was just jogging by the house when he saw me getting all this stuff out of the car. He offered a helping hand, like the good lad that he is.” My dad spoke beside Alex, slapping him on the back while laughing a small, nervous laugh that I’d never heard my father use before. There was a possibility that Alex being here was bringing back the same memories for my father as it did for me.

The sudden contact made Alex’s body roll forward, but he caught himself and corrected his stance in just one step, blinking rapidly before he eventually looked away from me and back to my dad. The moment our stare was broken, I sucked in a sharp, painful breath.

“It was nothing,” Alex said, bringing a hand up to the back of his wet hair and scratching it awkwardly.

“You were jogging?” I blurted out.

“Yeah,” he answered, raising his brows as he looked back at me. “I was.”

“In the rain?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you do that often?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said do you do that often?”

“Run?”

“Yes.”

“Every day.”

“Past our house?” I asked quietly, my frown deepening even though I had no idea why.

“Yeah,” he answered, his voice so quiet he had to clear his throat and try again. “Yes, I run the same route every night.”

I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t. I was searching every bit of his face and trying to remember all his features. I was trying to remember if I’d ever noticed his small spattering of freckles before, or if this was the first time I’d seen them with any clarity. I was trying to remember if he’d blushed this way before, too, or if he’d always looked as handsome as he did right then.

“I didn’t know that,” I eventually whispered back.

Alex’s mouth pressed into a line before he smiled softly. I could see he was doing his own inspection of me, but what for, I wasn’t sure. I also didn’t care. I knew what I must have looked like to him. A broken shell of what was already a broken shell the first time he met me. “Well, now you do.”

“Now I do.”

Silence. Silence again. The awkwardness I brought to most situations was ever-present, tugging at me to move backwards, while also pushing at me to go forwards. That was why I always stayed in place the way I was doing. I was never entirely sure of where I was actually meant to go.

“I should get going.”

“Okay.” I nodded again, swallowing before I looked down into my cup and continued to stir at nothing in particular.

I could see Dad in my peripheral vision, shuffling out of his coat, and it wasn’t long before I heard Alex spin around and begin to walk back outside into the cold and rain. There was a part of me that knew I should thank him in some way, but then my father followed him to the threshold, and before I had a reason to go anywhere or do anything, he’d already done it for me.

“Thanks, Alex, son,” he shouted as Alex ran down the path away from our home. “Feel free to stop by any time.”

The open invitation he’d just offered had me pausing once again, and it was only when the door slapped shut against the frame and my father walked over to me that I finally allowed myself to look up. My dad was a simple man with simple interests. I had the same traits. He had ashy blonde hair and dark blue eyes that had obviously lived. His face never gave much away and he wasn’t big on words or speeches, but when I looked up into his gaze and saw a bizarre, never-before-seen twinkle in his eye, I couldn’t help but stare back and wait for him to say something. Pushing both hands into his trouser pockets, he rubbed his lips together carefully and tilted his head to one side.

“You’re smiling,” he said softly.

I wasn’t. Or at least, it didn’t feel like I was.

“So are you.”

He studied me some more, eventually lifting a hand out of his pocket to brush back some loose strands of my hair. It was a sign of affection I hadn’t come to expect from him for so long, but one that took me straight back to being the four-year-old girl he used to pick up from the ground whenever she fell and cradle in his arms.

“I guess I am.”

“What's going on, Dad?”

“Just... New beginnings,” he mouthed quietly.

“What does that mean?

“Nothing.” He smiled. “Nothing at all.”

Then he walked away, without any explanation as to what he meant.

But I knew. All of me knew. It was why I stayed in place, my eyes trained on the door. Who knows how long I stirred that hot chocolate for or when I allowed myself to turn away?

All I did know was this: The sun had just shone again and my skin had tingled for the first time since Elizabeth had gone.

And it had had nothing to do with the cold.