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Written: 12-27-2021
book title: The Waters Edge
Ship: none
type: description, one chapter
cover: [not found]

book description:

Karl Jacobs learns how to cope with death, and learns to love again.

book intro: Sitting by the water is normal right? Especially for someone with such memories tied to the vast amount of saltwater. Growing up in a home that referred to the ocean as 'Lanna' was normal for him, y'know. He had been sitting out there for nearly an hour now, no music, no thoughts, just the water nipping his toes and the birds waking up. The beach was empty, it normally was this early in the morning. The sun had just come up anyway, it hadn't been hard to sneak out of the house at night, no lights had been on the previous night.

He stared out at the water as the sun started to stretch its rosy fingers into the sky, a beautiful sight really, for anyone who wasn't afraid of the ocean. Ironic really, even after what had...happened. His mom had chosen to move the both of them across from the ocean, of course, it wasn't the same one, the incident happened on a higher place along the coast but he knew the area name didn't matter, the salt was still there.

He sat there for about ten more minutes before realizing that he should go home. So Karl stood up from the sand and salt and glared at the ocean a moment later. A memory grazed through the field of his mind.

"You know, I don't hate you. I know you think I do but I had to do a lot of things to keep him away from you and mom it just made me so angry all the time. I couldn't let you guys ever see that. I love you so much ok? Never, never forget that. I'm so sorry I couldn't be the ideal brother, I really am and maybe one day I'll be able to make it up to you."

"Don't talk like that please you- you can't talk like that right now- you aren't going anywhere it- it's ok."

"No don't lie to me, I know I'm not gonna make it, and that's- that's ok. Come here."

So Karl got down on his knees close to his brother's body leaning up against the palm tree.

"Don't forget about me ok? Don-" He started to cough violently, the urge of death on his body remained, unrelenting. "Don't keep yourself from the world because I'm gone, move on it's ok. Take care of mom, don't let this hold her back... I love you, Karl Make sure she knows I love her too. I'm sorry." Then he was gone. Kayden was gone, and he wasn't coming back.

Karl snapped out of the state of his mind, and kept walking home, it wasn't the first time he had relived that memory, nor would it be the last anytime soon. Karl finally reached the back porch of his house, typing in the key code next to the door and walking inside was the easy part, sneaking around his mother was a bit harder. The back door led into a little room connected to the living room, there was a bar that separated the kitchen and living room and Karl was crouching to walk behind it so that his mother wouldn't see him, he had been at the beach for a while and she didn't need to know about it.

Once he made it to the stairs he quickly ran up them with an almost concerning amount of precision, not hitting a single creaking stair. Though when Karl got upstairs he realized that his mother had never been in the kitchen in the first place. She was actually in the upstairs hallway, standing in the doorway of Kayden's old room. Karl audibly gasped to see her standing there. She heard him and turned to face her youngest son. Karl saw that her hand was over her mouth and her other one was across her stomach holding her side. She had light tears rolling down her cheeks, Karl stood there stunned for a moment. She just looked at him.

She took her hand off her mouth and wiped her tears sadly smiling, Karl was confused as to why she had opened his door, she never went in there.

"This makes four years Karl, I think we should finally clean the room." This stunned Karl even more.

"I-I don't know just, just let me get through the first day of school ok? We can talk when I get home." She nodded and reached to close the door, once it was closed she walked over to Karl. She grabbed his shoulders and just looked at him, studying his features for a moment. Then she ran her thumb along his cheek and smiled, before lightly hugging him and then going downstairs.