" Sometimes, ghosts aren't in empty houses, but in the liveliest corners of memory. They wait, silent, until we decide to meet them again."
She no longer expected to find anything new in her routine. Jane, however, kept drinking her coffee, stretching slowly with the morning breeze. The alarm clock had been relentless as always, but she had grown accustomed to its cruelty. There were days, like today, when something in the air made her hesitate, as if a familiar shadow walked beside her, unseen.
As she skimmed through the newspaper, the headline caught her. It was about something ancient, apparently found, something buried and rediscovered. And, for a moment, Jane felt as if she were unearthing something within herself, something she had chosen to forget. But she quickly pushed the thought aside. Archaeology was nothing more than an echo of what the world no longer wanted to remember, of what had been left behind.
She got into the taxi that would take her to the school where she taught, the constant rattling blending with the sound of the pages of the book in her hands. She opened it but didn't read. Her mind, restless, drifted back to a time when life seemed full of promises, of encounters that felt as if they could change everything. To those days when she'd cross paths with people who made the rest of the world seem faded. People like Madison.
Sometimes, she saw a girl in the café, her brown hair tied in a loosely braided ponytail and a familiar smile. For a second, she swore it was her. But then reality settled with its weight: that smile wasn't the same, that gaze wasn't looking for her. Madison wouldn't sit across from her at that table again, wouldn't give her that smile that always made her feel like everything would be alright.
Madison... Always present in the small things that pulled her back. There was no need to summon her, because she came back whenever she wanted—in the dark nights, in the cold coffee, in the pages she never finished reading.
