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Chapter 1

Eden

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

I’ve familiarized myself with the stages of grief so many times they’ve stopped meaning anything. Now, they’re just words on a scratched-out list in my notepad, because they don’t help, no matter how many times I write them down or try to dissect them. You’re told that they’re part of a journey—something you move through in a clean, straight line in an attempt to feel better.

But that’s straight-up bullshit.

They aren’t linear; they’re just things you wait for and circle, then wait for again. It’s a loop—a shit-soaked, metaphorical blocked drain full of never-ending disappointment and misery.

I think I speed-ran through denial in the hospital, lying in that creaky metal bed while someone placed his death certificate in my IV lined hands. The proof was right there—his forename, surname, date of death, cause of death—inked and official. There wasn’t much room left to pretend after that.

Anger showed up a few weeks later, loud and real ugly—in the form of snapping at a cashier when all she did was ask how I was, then immediately going home to down three boxes of wine. I’ve circled back to that one at least four times now.

Depression has been my default for years. Way before any of this. It’s been jammed right up in the space between my brain and my skull like some irritating, low-grade fever that was always going to be there, grief or no grief.

Acceptance? That’s an outright, hard, no. I think that’s just the stage that exists to make you feel better—as if telling people there’s a nice end in sight gives them something to focus on rather than whatever current phase they’re in. So I know that one’s never coming.

And if I had to guess—like really pin a stage on myself right now—I’d say this is bargaining.

I glance down at the twelve candles lined up on my coffee table and wince internally.

Yeah. Definitely bargaining.

The flames gutter and sway on the coffee table, wax tunneling down their sides, little halos of light breathing in and out against the storm-dark glass. I watch them for a second, sucking in a shaky lungful of air, trying to gather myself.

I’ve always wanted to believe in this sort of thing. Rituals with intention, working with cause and effect, using the things Mother Earth gives us to get back in touch with what was given to her after death. It makes more sense to me than half the other things I’ve tried—therapy, prayer, CBT worksheets I never finished, and binge eating ice-cream over the sink while hoping for the best.

So here I am—giving whatever this is a try—hunched over a mass-produced spell kit I bought weeks ago from a stranger online with a moon-phase logo, lighting candles while a thunderstorm crawls across the city, crying on and off, letting those damn stages of grief wallop me into decisions I would have laughed at a year ago, all while trying to convince myself that I haven’t gone completely insane.

Because yes—I am fully aware of how it sounds. It does sound insane. It’s desperate, it’s unhealthy, it’s borderline pathetic. But I just don’t care anymore.

If five minutes of him breathing in the same room as me meant carving out every vein in my body and handing them over one by one, I’d do it without blinking. Compared to that, this feels… tiny. A drop in the ocean. A ridiculous little offering tossed at the feet of something that will probably never answer.

I don’t even know what I’m actually expecting from this. A transparent specter floating over the coffee table? A physical body, heart beating and lungs filling, ready to go and brew up some tea again? Maybe just a voice in the dark saying “It’s okay, Eden, I’m here.”

I pull up a photo from a beach trip two summers ago and run my thumb over the pixels of his face, a digital ghost under glass.

One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days of this silence. He was my almost-forever, and now he’s just a collection of data and a jar of ash.

He was… a lot. Infuriating in a way that sometimes made me want to throttle him—like when he insisted on carrying our neighbor’s shopping up three flights because he decided ‘she looked like she needed a break.’ He’d spilled oranges all over the stairwell and spent fifteen minutes apologizing on a loop, his voice getting higher and tighter until I took the bags just to make him stop. He was allergic to stillness too—constantly tapping rhythms on the counters, humming off-key melodies into his tea, narrating every trivial thought because silence seemed to make him itchy.

And God, I miss the noise, and the way his presence took up so much space, leaving so little for anything else. The relentless, earnest way he moved through the world. It was a strange mix of chaos and kindness that weaved together so tightly I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.

A loud thump vibrates through the floorboards behind me, and I twist, just in time to see the fifteen-pound bundle of cream and black fur launch itself off the couch, making a tactical beeline for the coffee table.

“Not tonight, Vesper, for the love of God,” I mutter, my hand darting out to scoop her up and haul her into my lap, burying my fingers into her coat.

She isn’t mine. Technically, she’s still Matthew’s. But the lines of ownership had blurred years ago, lost somewhere between the chipped mugs and the shared lease. We shared everything. And that’s the problem—without him here to claim his half, the whole place feels fucking empty.

One minute he was dancing around the kitchen, watching trash TV. And the next… he was gone. A slam of metal, a scream, and then a body in a furnace, being turned to bone-dust and ash, destined to spend eternity in porcelain on the mantlepiece. A cruel ending for a man who never stood still.

A flash of lightning turns the walls a bruised purple, exposing the layer of dust on the bookshelves before plunging everything back into the flickering, amber glow of the ritual candles.

Hot, salty tears rim my waterline as I stare at his face on my phone, then down to the silver blade that looks far too sharp for my shaky hands.

Vesper lets out a soft purr and presses her face into the crook of my neck, the little vibrations keeping me anchored to the floor.