For a moment, I hesitated.
Then I decided to try once more.
Oreo walked beside me as I approached him.
This would be the fifth time I had attempted to speak with him. The previous times, he had either nodded, grunted, or simply walked away.
“Hi!” I said, hoping for at least a small response.
Instead, he crossed his arms against his body and narrowed his blue eyes at me.
I cleared my throat. “I just came to apologize.”
His jaw tightened as he spoke. “Why would you do that?”
It was the first time I had ever heard his voice.
It was deep, mellifluous, and carried a noticeable Australian accent.
“Because I took your hangout spot away,” I said with a small smile. “But don’t worry. The restaurant will be up and running before you know it.”
Without saying another word, he stood up and walked into his house.
I remained standing there, staring at the closed door.Well.The fifth time was definitely not the charm.
11
COLE
Two weeks had passed since the restaurant had been closed.
I had turned my porch into my new drinking spot just to pass the time. I did not like being inside the house anymore because the memories there clawed at me constantly, leaving me exhausted and isolated. Every room held something I had once loved. Every corner carried an echo of laughter that no longer existed. The walls themselves seemed to remember Eva and Chloe, and some days that felt unbearable.
The neighbours never greeted me, even when they saw me sitting there. The children did not come anywhere near the house either. They stayed away from me, even though they were the same children who once played with my daughter in this very yard. I felt like a ghost haunting my own street. It bothered me more than I wanted to admit that no one had ever come by to check on me. Still, I shrugged the thought away because it had already been two years. Maybe that was how grief worked for everyone else. Maybe after enough time passed, they assumed a man either healed or disappeared quietly into whatever was left of himself.
Taking another sip of my beer, I remembered Jack’s words from the day he returned my cheque.
“She didn’t want your money after all, Cole. I think you’re wrong about her and her intentions.”
I had thought the money would prove me right about Jiya, but that plan had completely backfired. She did seem different. Many people had approached me over the years, trying to buy the restaurant from me, but no one had ever offered to co-own it until she appeared.
A couple of days earlier, I had passed out on my front porch chair. When I woke up, I noticed a blanket covering me. Later that day, Jiya came by with food to check on me. I told her to go away and threw the blanket onto the floor. She quietly picked it up and walked back to her house, leaving the food on the shoe rack by my door.
I had not meant to be rude or cruel toward her, but she stirred emotions in me that I did not want to face. The sight of her son beside her, and now the thought of her unborn child, somehow made me feel even more miserable. There was something painfully whole about them, even in their brokenness, and being near that kind of fragile life scraped against everything dead inside me.
I had moved to Cowichan Bay five years ago. Back then, I had been a happy man with my wife and a new baby on the way. We chose this village because Eva did not want to raise our children in the city. She dreamed of owning and running a restaurant here.
My family had a successful construction business, so I had the funds to turn her dream into reality. When the restaurant first opened, it quickly became a success, with locals filling the tables and tourists drawn to its cozy charm.
Now, everything felt like a distant memory.
As I stared at the picture of my wife and daughter, memories surged through me. My chest tightened until I could barely breathe. Rage burned through me like a fire I could not put out. I grabbed the photo frame and smashed it against the ground.
The sound of shattering glass echoed through the room.
Something inside me snapped wider after that. I grabbed the table and flipped it over, sending everything crashing to the floor. I rolled up the sleeves of my two-day-old shirt and slammed the cupboards open and shut. Pieces of glass scattered across the room as I kicked the furniture and punched the wall. When I looked down, my knuckles were bleeding.
The physical pain meant nothing compared to the anguish inside my chest.
