Chapter 13
The days that followed were quiet — unnervingly so.
The lighthouse glowed steadily again, casting golden arcs over the sea. Fishermen returned to the waters. The whispers faded. No more shattered glass, no more ghostly radio songs, no more violet glows beneath the waves.
But peace, Amira knew, was never the absence of noise — it was what followed when truth had been spoken.
Elias spent hours walking the cliffs, journal in hand, sketching what he remembered of Mirabelle: her voice, her laughter, her sadness. He left notes inside bottles and cast them to the sea, not for answers, but as offerings. As remembrance.
"I feel lighter," he told Amira one morning. "But also lonelier."
She understood. Letting go of guilt often left a hollow space.
Amira, too, felt the shift. She had been a stranger here once, drawn by a lighthouse and a man of few words. Now she found herself rooted — not to the place, but to its wounds, its ghosts, and its healing.
One evening, she found a final entry in Mirabelle's journal — one that hadn't been there before.
It read:
Thank you, Amira. For hearing what others would not. For remembering what even the sea tried to drown.
A small pressed flower had been tucked inside the page — ocean-blue, delicate as breath.
Amira tucked it inside her own journal.
Later that night, as the moon rose high, Elias played Selene's old piano — something he hadn't touched since her death. The melody was slow, mournful, but full of light.
Amira sat beside him, her head on his shoulder.
"I don't know what happens now," he said.
She smiled. "Then we write it, together."
Outside, the sea lapped gently at the shore.
And above them, for the first time in a long time, the stars blinked peacefully in a sky free of ghosts.