Come to the Cove
written by: Peter Rehn
It was the seal that started it all.
No, not the animal, the wax seal, red and cracked, pressed onto a yellowing letter buried under an expired passport and a broken locket at the back of my drawer.
Unmistakably hers.
I should have thrown it out. I didn’t.
Instead, I broke the seal with trembling fingers and unfolded the letter. Her handwriting poured out, looping and ornate, stubbornly elegant against the yellowing paper:
“If you ever miss me, come to the cove.”
“Low tide. Midnight.”
She always loved her drama, I thought.
So I went.
I took the old path we used to walk hand in hand, pretending we were still young. Across lush green fields, through the soft dunes, down to the water’s edge. Left, then over the menacing rocks.
Tonight, the rocks shimmered under the moon, silvered and slick, a thousand tiny mirrors. The sea whispered in a language I once knew by heart.
I waited, watching the tide shrink back like a breath held too long.
I didn’t expect her to come.
But then I heard the laughter. Hers. Clear as a bell cracked open by memory.
She emerged barefoot from the dark, her white dress clinging to her like mist. Just as she was the night she vanished, seven years ago.
“You came,” she said, smiling that sideways smile that had made me fall for her all those years ago.
“I thought you were dead,” I muttered.
“I was,” she said, shrugging, “but you wouldn’t let me go.”
I should have run. I didn’t.
We sat on the rocks.
I told her everything:
How I’d dreamt of her face in every puddle.
How I’d written poems I never shared.
How I’d tried to move on and failed spectacularly.
She listened, her fingers tracing lazy circles on my wrist.
I told her I kept all her letters. Even the last one. Especially the last one.
“Oh, darling,” she said, her eyes like black polished stone. “You never learned to wipe out what needs wiping.”
“You mean forget you?”
“I mean live.”
She leaned in, her velvet lips brushing mine. A taste of salt and sadness clinging to my cracked lips.
I held on to the taste, foolishly trying to keep her.
The tide turned. She began to fade.
“Don’t go,” I said.
“I was never really here,” she replied, voice fading with the waves. “But you can be. You should be.”
Then she was gone.
I sat there on the rock, wet and trembling, with the letter crumpled in my hand. And despite everything, I smiled. Because I remembered every darling line she ever wrote, and I would never, ever kill them.
But when I got home, I fed the letter to the fire.
Watched it blacken, curl, and slowly vanish.
Finally, I wiped her out of my life.
- Come to the Cove - January 27, 2026
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