Chapter 27 Chapter 27
The days passed like waves, one folding quietly into the next. I picked up small jobs helping at the café, cleaning at the dive shop, and translating for tourists who couldn’t understand the locals’ quick accents. I liked keeping busy. Work made the world simple. I had more than enough money, but I needed to keep myself busy.
In the nights I sat outside on the porch, watching the water turn from blue to black. The stars here were bright, sharp enough to cut through thought. Sometimes I’d talk out loud, softly, just to hear my voice again. Most of the time it was to no one, but sometimes it was to my father. Sometimes to the girl I used to be.
The longer I stayed, the more I started to believe maybe I’d done it, maybe I’d outrun everything. But there was one thing I hadn’t done yet. Something that kept buzzing in the back of my mind no matter how I tried to ignore it.
I needed to let Detective Ryan know I was alive.
It was stupid. Dangerous. Reckless. Every part of me knew that. But I also knew he’d spent years looking out for me, chasing ghosts and false leads. He deserved to know I wasn’t one of them.
One night, after a long day cleaning the café, I sat at the small wooden table in my kitchen, phone glowing in the dark. The number was still saved under R. I stared at it for a long time before typing anything.
Alex is dead. The stalker did it. I’m free now. Safe. Please don’t try to find me. Thank you for everything.
The message looked cold, like something cut out of me. My thumb hovered over “send” for a long minute. I knew what it meant to risk. Trace. Possibility. But I also knew what it meant to keep silent forever. I hit send. The sound of the message whooshing away was louder than it should’ve been. My heart kicked hard against my ribs, once, twice, and then again. I locked the phone and turned it face down, staring at it like it might bite. Minutes passed. Then an hour. Nothing came back.
By midnight, I’d convinced myself that it was better this way. Maybe he’d changed his number, or maybe the message was never delivered. Maybe it didn’t matter. The words were out there, floating in the dark, and I couldn’t take them back. The next morning, I checked my phone again, half dreading, half hoping. No reply. That was fine. It had to be. I went for a walk down the beach, barefoot, the sand hot against my skin. The world here felt like it belonged to someone else, too calm for people like me. But I liked pretending. The fishermen waved when they saw me. Kids laughed near the dock. For once, I didn’t feel like a ghost drifting through someone else’s life.
Over the next few weeks, I built a routine. I painted the walls of the house pale yellow. I grew mint and basil in pots out back. I started swimming again early mornings, when the beach was empty. The water was cold enough to wake my bones but soft enough to make me forget everything for a few minutes.
I even made a few friends—real ones, not people I spoke to only because I needed something. There was a woman named Anika who owned a fruit stand, always humming old love songs. She talked too much but smiled easily. Then there was Tomas, who worked on the fishing boats. He teased everyone, even me, in the kind of way that didn’t feel dangerous.
I liked that. Being around people who didn’t carry edges. Some nights I’d sit with them on the beach, a fire crackling, rum passed around until the bottle was empty. They told stories about storms and ghosts, about the sea taking what it wanted. I didn’t share mine. I just listened. After a while, I realized I’d stopped flinching every time my phone buzzed. I still kept it off most of the time, but it wasn’t out of fear anymore, just habit. When I finally turned it on again one morning, there was one new message.
It was from a number I didn’t recognize. Just two words: Good girl.
I felt like the air was knocked out of me. My hands started shaking so hard I almost dropped the phone. I stared at the message, waiting for something else—another text, a call, anything. Nothing came. I deleted it immediately, cleared the history, and sat down hard on the floor. My heart wouldn’t slow down. Maybe it was spam. Maybe it wasn’t meant for me. Maybe it was nothing. But the voice in my head said otherwise. That night I didn’t sleep. I sat by the window, eyes on the dark horizon, every sound too loud, every shadow too deep. I thought about leaving again, but where was there left to go?
Morning came, and with it, reason. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe I’d imagined too much. The mind could play tricks when it had been scared too long. Still, I turned off the phone and locked it in a drawer. Days passed. But the fear never vanished. I kept working, kept smiling, and kept pretending everything was fine. People said trauma lived in the body; mine had made a permanent home there. But even with the fear, life still went on. The bakery opened at dawn, the fishermen shouted to one another across the bay, and kids played in the surf. The world didn’t pause for my paranoia.
I started painting. Nothing serious, just small canvases and colors that reminded me of warmth. Yellow for light, blue for distance, and red for the things I didn’t have words for. I sold a few to tourists. It felt strange taking money for something I made with my own hands Slowly, my days filled themselves. Morning coffee, market runs, and the smell of salt, fruit, and sweat. Laughter. Little pieces of a life stitched together by routine. And underneath it all was the fear.
One night, as the sun sank into the sea, I sat on the porch and watched the waves roll in. The shell necklace Lucia’s daughter had given me still hung around my neck. I turned it between my fingers, thinking of all the places it had seen. I didn’t know what would happen tomorrow, or if the past would ever stop chasing me. But for now, I was alive. And that was enough.
Two months had passed since the message. Two months of pretending that life had settled. My guard had slipped without me realizing it. The locks still clicked every night, but I didn’t check them twice anymore. I slept with the window open now, letting the ocean breeze in. It felt good to breathe without that constant weight pressing down. The locals had started treating me like one of their own. They called out, "Morning, Isa!" from boats and porches. I’d even laughed more lately—the kind of easy, startled laugh I hadn’t heard from myself in years.