THE AURORA
Prologue
The heart, like the mind, has a memory. And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Chapter 1
October 8th, 2019
6:27 A.M.
The ocean is already awake, a presence as constant as the rhythm of my own heart. Through the west window, waves muscle their way up the dark sand, slow and steady. I stand in the kitchen and listen to the surf while I unseal the bag of French Roast, pinching the clip free and breathing in. Ritual is important. The precise grind, the measured weight, the bloom of water in the Chemex. At least that’s what I’ve convinced myself.
The kettle sings. I pour, the scalding water spiraling into the coffee grounds. Bubbles come next, a dark dance of energetic particles, reacting with the water’s heat. This observable science, this alchemy of heat and flavor, feels like console. Like I can channel the chaos of the universe into this small, glass beaker.
While I wait for the coffee to steep, I survey the rest of the house. My home is a minimalist’s dream. White walls, black windowsills, steel countertop, the occasional surge of blond wood. There’s nothing sentimental in sight except the driftwood clock I inherited with the place. Even that’s functional. I have worked hard to establish this perimeter, to exclude all objects with memory attached. In the eight years since I accepted the West Coast job, I have donated, sold, or incinerated nearly every artifact of my life prior, leaving me with nothing but the bare essentials. This is my sanctuary, my fortress of solitude, where my past can no longer haunt me.
The laptop, open and waiting in front of me, pings with the sound of an Outlook reminder: “Quarterly Business Review—1 hour.” On the screen are two PowerPoints, twin versions of the same deck, separated by six bullet points, a pie chart, and my own indecision. I alternate between them with the kind of sick fascination some reserve for scrolling photos of old lovers. One is labeled FINAL in all-caps, the other, quietly, “final.” Lowercase. I hate myself for the lapse in precision.
I pour the coffee and carry it to the table, moving with the careful economy of someone for whom objects can rebel at any moment. I have found that with sufficient planning, the day will not rupture. I set the mug on a square of cork and line up the handle with the edge of the table, then angle the chair so that, when I sit, my back faces the ocean. This is the one concession to comfort I allow myself, not to be observed by anything that cannot comprehend my grief.
There is a shelf above the table. Its single occupant is a picture frame, tastefully silver, its backing pressed tightly against the glass. The photograph is face-down, a refusal to meet the present. This is not a metaphor. I cannot bear to destroy it, and cannot yet forgive myself enough to look, so it waits, patient, as all old pain does. I pretend it is not there.
I check my watch. It tells me I have twenty-nine minutes before the call, so I begin the mental walkthrough of my day. Inbox, presentation, vendor invoice, code review, project proposal. I treat each item as a bunker to be cleared. The only variable is whether I’ll run along the beach before or after sunset.
My phone vibrates, but I ignore it. Most calls at this hour are from my assistant, or telemarketers. I have trained everyone who matters to email. A second vibration. I reach for the phone, thumb hovering over the glass as if it might burn me, and see a number I don’t recognize. But the area code is unforgettable, east of here, farther than I care to think about.
The kitchen recedes. The white walls dissolve, and I am in a different kitchen, twenty-eight-hundred miles away, sunlight slanting through a window so clean it looks like air. My grandmother’s hands, all tendon and ringless fingers, knead dough on the counter while I spread jam on toast.
I press the heel of my hand to my wrist. The skin there is paler than elsewhere, ridged with an almost-surgical line. The memory is involuntary, a reboot. I trace the scar, then tap “Ignore” on the phone and the number fades away.
Coffee is bitter. I prefer it that way. I return to the laptop, but the cursor has begun blinking in the FINAL deck’s title slide, a silent pulse. “Dylan Vaughn, Sr. Solution Architect, Westward Technologies.” I have a nearly pathological aversion to my own name in print. The other deck, the lowercase one, omits it. I debate, for the twentieth time, which version to send. I select all, drag to the desktop, and drop both files into the meeting folder. The decision is its own avoidance.
Outside, a gull strafes the sand for something softer than shellfish, or perhaps the neighbor’s cat, which has made a game of hunting crabs at low tide. I consider opening the door, just to feel the salt on my tongue, but the wind will snatch the warmth out of the house, and I am not in the mood for a thermal arms race. Instead, I watch the horizon, its blue so saturated it borders on absurd. My eyes water. It might be the light.
I stand, stretch, and perform the circuit—coffee to sink, rinse, dry. Laptop lid down to exactly 17 degrees. Chair returned to ninety, tucked. The compulsion to order is not new, but it has intensified over time. Each precise act leaves the universe fractionally less likely to collapse.
My gaze flinches upward, inadvertently catching the picture frame on the shelf. It is ordinary, the kind you buy in a three-pack from any discount store, and yet it radiates a heat so particular I feel it in the lining of my mouth. For an instant, my hand hovers over the shelf, fingers pricked with the urge to flip the frame, to confirm that the image beneath is unchanged—two people in a car, sunlight flaring behind them, both faces turned half away from the lens. The photo was taken before I abandoned my former life, before the scar and the silence, and it has accrued the gravity of a singularity.
I step back, as if the frame might lunge for me. I retreat to the kitchen island and rest my palms against its cool surface. The scar on my wrist pulses with memory. I glance at the clock. Nineteen minutes until the call. I consider logging on early, but the idea of making myself available for idle chat is intolerable. I would rather drink battery acid.
I pace the kitchen, count the floorboards, recalculate the day’s bandwidth allocation in my head. If I keep moving, the image of the photograph cannot settle in my mind’s eye.
The ocean roars, constant and pitiless, a solvent that will someday erase even the memory of this house, a thought I find perversely comforting.
Seventeen minutes to the call. I go to refill my coffee. The ritual begins again.
Chapter 2
The conference call is not for another fifteen minutes, but my phone rings again. This time the number is insistent, area code 828—North Carolina—the state I have carefully reclassified as “formerly relevant.” My thumb hovers, then lands.
“Yes.”
The pause at the other end is less hesitation than choreography, as though the caller has practiced her script. “Mr. Vaughn?”
“Speaking.”
“I’m sorry to call so early. My name is Diane DelMonaco, from Cummings, Byers & DelMonaco. I handle the affairs of your grandmother, Mrs. June Pritchard.”
The universe narrows to the phone’s warm rectangle and the acid tinge at the base of my tongue. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
A breath on the line. “Yes. She passed in her sleep last night. Her nurse found her this morning when she came in to check on her.” The next part, I know, is formality. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Vaughn. Your grandmother…she always spoke very fondly of you.”
I say nothing. I haven’t spoken to my grandmother in ninety-seven days, eight hours, and six minutes. The last conversation ended in a familiar pattern of strategic withdrawal, both of us too stubborn to cede ground.
Diane fills the silence. “As her sole heir, you’ll need to come back and settle her affairs.”
“Come back? No, that’s not possible. I haven’t been back in fifteen years, and I—”
“It’s required by law, Mr. Vaughn. The estate needs your signature in person.”
My knuckles blanch against the countertop. “I—I can’t. I’m not—I live in Oregon. I have work.”
“I understand. But the reading of the will, the transfer of the house… These are time-sensitive steps. I can walk you through it, but not over the phone. Plus, there are certain personal effects….”
“I see.” My mind races backward, tripping over memories as they clutter the path to my past. Thousands of miles and so many years separate me from that life, a life I deliberately buried in the dust of time and distance.
“Regarding the funeral, arrangements have already been made. She requested a small, private graveside service, to be held at the Evergreen Cemetery. You’re, of course, expected to be there.”
I can see it, the cemetery set amid the rolling foothills, shaded by ancient fir trees. A small gathering of people—friends, neighbors, members of the church she attended—standing around a grave, their heads bowed in prayer or out of respect. “When?”
“Four days from now.”
“Four days?” That’s—”
“I understand it’s short notice, Mr. Vaughn, but I’m afraid your grandmother was most insistent on that. She made all her arrangements herself and left clear instructions.
Seeing no way out, I agree to make the trip. “But the earliest I’d be able to leave would be this afternoon, which means I won’t arrive until late tonight or tomorrow morning.” My mouth moves on autopilot, negotiating the terrain of polite conversation. But the words are hollow, mere echoes bouncing around the sterile kitchen.
“Why don’t we schedule a meeting for Wednesday then? That should give you enough time to make the trip and get settled. In the meantime, I can email you a list of things you might want to bring. Would that be acceptable?”
The ocean is in my ears, hammering. I imagine myself on a plane, pressed between the convex window and a stranger’s shoulder, calculating the time difference as I cut across three thousand miles of air.
“Mr. Vaughn, are you still there?”
“Yes, sorry. Email is acceptable. Thank you,” I say, and the call ends.
I place the phone face-down on the table. For a long time, I stand in the kitchen, every muscle held in a vise of perfect neutrality. The room is bright and so clean it seems uninhabited. I hear my own breath, a half step behind the rhythm of the surf. There is a sudden, animal desire to shatter something. I press my palm into the countertop, so hard that the flesh goes bloodless.
I walk to the window. The tide is receding, leaving behind a new topography of stone and sand. The view is so crisp it looks like the world has been freshly cut from its cellophane sleeve. I remember a time when I believed nothing could ever change, that each day would be a replica of the one before. But now, I see how the ocean moves, how it rearranges the world with each sweep of current, and I am reminded that everything changes.
I pace the kitchen, each lap wearing a groove into the hardwood. I try to summon anger, but all I feel is an immense inertia, the weight of every unmade decision I have ever allowed to calcify. I picture Diane’s face, then my grandmother’s. Her sharp eyes, perpetual frown, hair scraped back so tightly it made her temples shine. She was the last of them, the final observer of my early life. The only person who, even in her fading, could still conjure me as a child.
I want to call someone, to say the words “She’s gone” out loud. But there is no one. Instead, I load my itinerary, search flights, input data. It is soothing, a return to the language I understand. I book a ticket for the next flight out of Portland, select the window seat, confirm, check in. Then, I send an email to my boss, telling her that I need to take a leave of absence for an unspecified amount of time. In the ten minutes this takes, I do not once think of the photo on the shelf. I do not look at the scar.
When I finally close the laptop, the cottage is quite except for the tide and the faint, metallic click of the driftwood clock. I move to the living room, as if compelled by some ancient homing instinct, and stand in the center of the rug.
I stare at the picture frame, its contents hidden from the sun, and realize I am breathing too quickly. With great deliberation, I move to the shelf, take the frame in both hands, and for the first time in years, I flip it over.
Two faces lean in toward the camera. Her smile is half-formed, her eyes squinting at the edge of joy. Mine is off-center, as if I had seen something approaching from the future and am already bracing for impact. I run my fingers across the glass, tracing the outline of her jaw, the crease of her cheek, hoping to revive something lost, a ghost of a pulse. But all that lingers is the static of my own reflection and the icy chill of what remains.
