The Return

Years after silencing the woman who betrayed him, Eric returns to the site of her watery grave.

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I remember that night clearly — the smell, most of all.

It wasn’t the sea. Not really. Not the salt or brine or the usual tang of winter’s tide. No, what lingered under the Shawl Canal Bridge was the stench of decay. It clung to everything. It got in your teeth, your hair. Even your thoughts began to rot if you stood too long in it.

Eric had returned after five years, but I think part of him never really left. Some part stayed down there, soaked into the wet concrete and fish-scaled steel. He stood on that crumbling fishing platform again, waves boiling beneath him, spray whipping up into his face, and stared down into the abyss where she still slept.

Julia.

He’d murmured her name like a prayer—or a curse. I don’t know if he loved her. I don’t think he even knew anymore.

I remember watching him drop a pebble into the dark. It vanished like everything else in that place. And then he smiled — white teeth glinting like bones in a grave — and whispered something into the wind. Something I wish I hadn’t heard.

“Darkness is my gift for you, my love.”