The rain had returned.
It always did, this time of year—early autumn, when the wind carried the scent of dying leaves and the air ached with memory. Mira sat alone on the rusted bench by the riverside, where the stone path curved into silence. Her coat clung to her shoulders, damp and heavy, like grief.
She held a paper cup of coffee that had long gone cold. The steam had vanished hours ago, or maybe minutes. Time had begun to soften around the edges. Out here, there were only two hours: before and after.
The river moved quietly beside her, slick and silver under the grey sky, whispering things only she could hear.
It had been exactly one year.
One year since Jude last stood here, rain dripping from the curls of his hair, his hands trembling not from the cold but from the truth he hadn’t wanted to say out loud. She had known, even before the words left his lips.
“I won’t be coming back,” he had said. No theatrics. No metaphors. Just a sentence, bare and broken.
Mira remembered gripping the sleeve of his coat like a lifeline, her voice cracking:
“You promised.”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he leaned forward, pressed their foreheads together, and said the softest thing she had ever heard:
“I know.”
That was all.
No more speeches. No begging. Just a shared silence between a dying man and the girl who had believed love would be enough to keep him alive.
---
The doctors had called it a miracle he lasted as long as he did. Jude called it borrowed time. Mira had called it unfair.
The cancer had returned with fury. A silent storm. One that laughed in the face of hope.
And now, hope was buried. Along with him.
But he had made her promise something before the end.
“When it rains, come here,” he said, his voice thin as a thread. “So I know where to find you.”
She had laughed through tears. “You believe in ghosts now?”
“I believe in love,” he replied.
That was the last thing he ever said to her.
---
Now, the sky wept above her in quiet torrents, and Mira stared out across the water, listening to the world dissolve into the rhythm of falling rain.
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a photograph—creased and worn. Jude, standing barefoot at the edge of the sea, arms wide open, laughing into the wind like he belonged to it. He always had. He was too alive for a world like this. Too wild. Too kind. Too fleeting.
She pressed the photo to her lips, closed her eyes, and breathed.
Something in her wanted to let it go. To release it into the current and watch it drift into the unknown. But her fingers wouldn’t open. Not yet. Not today.
A gust of wind curled around her. The kind Jude used to chase with open palms and childlike wonder. The kind that made the leaves tremble and the river lean in, listening.
Mira lifted her face to the sky.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “Just like I promised.”
For a moment, the rain softened. A single shaft of light slipped through the clouds and touched the riverbank. Fleeting. Beautiful. Gone.
She didn’t believe in signs.
But she stayed.
She stayed because love, even after death, leaves its fingerprints in the rain.
And sometimes, the sky answers back.
---
The End
