Where the Water Waits

CW: Suicide, mental health, trauma, grief

The silence was the first thing she noticed, and the last thing she could endure.

The fragrant aroma of freshly fallen rain captivated her nostrils. Anastasia eagerly stretched on her bed and only felt satisfaction after the flutter of her toes told her enough. The silence in the quaint little house on the edge of Grenville was a new, unwelcome guest. Brushing off her covers, she walked to the verandah, the wrought iron railing sending a cool feeling under her palms and looking out past the galvanized roofs of the village, toward the lush green hills that nestled Lake Antoine. The extinct volcano had always been a constant on the horizon, a haunting dark emerald jewel that seemed to look over the parish of St Patrick’s. But to Ana, it was no longer a charming landmark. It was a grave.

“Still waters run deep.”

Joseph had said that to her on their first date. His voice, a low, warm rumble that felt and became her home. He’d taken her to the lake, a bold move for a young man courting a girl in the village. He was originally at his wits' end because Madam Anastasia had rejected him for the 8th time and wanted nothing to do with him. He only got the idea to take her there after he overheard her talking to her brother on the bus home, begging him to take her and their sister there. When he approached Ana with the idea of going, framing it as he just wanted company as friends, she surprisingly agreed. They’d sat on the muddy bank, their feet dangling in the cool dark water, and he’d go on and on about the volcanic origin and unique facts he thought would impress her; he did all of this with the same reverence that people would use to tell jumbie stories. “People think it’s just water,” he said, his shoulder brushing against hers, sending jolts of electricity through her that had nothing to do with the lake. “But it has memories. It holds everything that ever was…and it waits.”

The lake had stopped waiting and taken her beloved Joseph three years ago.

It was simply, foolish mishap. What should have been a typical fishing trip was marred by an unusual storm. They recovered his overturned boat. His remains were never found. Anastasia was left with a hollowed-out chest and two small children to nurture after the lake, which he had loved with a poet's heart and a scientist's mind, simply opened up and swallowed him whole. For months, Ana was inconsolable. It was only when her brother Matthew brought the priest that she started to get a hold of herself.

Well, she'd done it. She was a mother who kept her children afloat in the face of her sadness and a seamstress who worked her fingers raw. Their departure to Trinidad for University was a sign of her strength, but now Carol and Jenny were gone. The map of her life had ended at a cliff edge labelled “Widow.” She was a fish out of water in her own life, gasping in the still air of a purpose fulfilled, stranded on the dry, painful shore of a future without him.

But the lake was an entirely new kind of mystery. It was her ghost's caretaker.

On a Tuesday, the anniversary of the day he never returned home, the silence turned into screams. She strolled through the house, her footsteps echoing over the smooth mahogany floor. She paused in front of the wedding photos on the wall she in a modest white dress, him looking so young and unbelievably alive, his arm wrapped around her waist as if he would never let go. The ache was a new, bodily wound. The lake had carried him away, yet it was the only place he could still be found. It was where the water waited, as well as a part of her.

She didn't pack anything. She simply got in her decrepit car and drove. The ascent into the hills was a whirl of nutmeg-scented air and whispering bamboo. She parked in the empty clearing and walked out. The living silence of the woodland surrounded her. And there it was: Lake Antoine. It lay in the crater's basin, a perfect, almost round stretch of dark jade-coloured water. Its surface was completely, preternaturally still. It had waited for her, she reasoned. It had been patient.

She stood on the water's edge, where they had initially sat together. This was her uncharted sea. Not a future, but a final journey through the past. Stepping in meant admitting that the three years of determination to move forward had been a falsehood. She'd been treading water the entire time. She felt tired now.

She took a deep breath of surrender and slid off her sandals. She unbuttoned her sundress, which was the same faded floral design she had worn that day, and let it fall to the ground. In her basic bathing suit, she felt like a girl again, the one who had fallen in love with a man who thought water had a memory.

She waded in. The cold was a shock, just as it had been previously. It seized her in a familiar, harsh hug. The reeds brushed across her skin, and she nearly felt his hand, his fingers entwined with hers.

"It waits, Stasia," she could hear him say as the wind moaned through the silk cotton trees.

With a final, shattered moan, she pushed forwards and dove.

The world erupted into green, frigid quiet.

The plunge was a return to a realm of loss. The chill represented his absence, seeping into her bones. The stillness filled the void left by his speech. She was hung in the murky gloom, and this time she did not resist the panic. She embraced it. She allowed it to fill her lungs. This is how dumb stories end, she reasoned, yet the thought didn't sting. This was not the end. It was a reunion.

Her arms did not move to protect herself. Instead, they reached out into the darkness, looking for a shape that had been gone five years. Her legs did not kick at the surface. They became heavy, anchors drawing her down into the vast, undiscovered waters that had captured him. She wasn't drowning in her sadness. She was now letting herself fall into it.

She saw their life together flash before her eyes like a calm, peaceful river, rather than a frantic montage. It's their wedding day. The enormous, scary excitement of holding Jennifer for the first time. Carol's first steps, her chubby hand on Joseph's. Joseph's chuckle could break through any sadness. Joseph held her in the kitchen and danced to a melody that only they could hear.

The recollections weren't painful down here. They were warm. These were the currents he had become.

The girls are secure, she reasoned, the words creating a final, tranquil bubble that escaped her lips. They are strong. They have your eyes.

She sank deeper, the green light on the surface faded to a gentle, twilight blue, then black. The pressure mounted around her, culminating in a crushing, final hug. She felt it even in the total, motionless darkness. Not a jumbie, nor a spirit. A presence. A familiar warmth seems to radiate from the water itself. An echo of a hand in hers. A vivid memory that felt like it was happening right now.

She was not alone in the depths. The flood that had snatched him had held him. It had waited for her, carrying his love in its black, patient heart.

On the surface, the water remained absolutely, deceptively motionless. The waves from her arrival had faded completely, as if she had never existed. The silence of the woodland was complete. Elara's sundress lay on the bank, a little, faded splash of colour against the gloomy ground.

The water had waited, and now it remained motionless. It eventually held them both together in its vast, unending memories. Where the water waits, there is no more suffering, just the slow, cool current of a love that even death cannot drown.

The call came on a Wednesday, piercing through the haze of a hot afternoon in Port of Spain. Jenny was in the midst of a calculus instruction, with the numbers flashing before his eyes. Carol was in her dorm room at Milner Hall, attempting to repair a frayed headphones wire. It was Mrs. Joseph from next door, her voice crackling down the line, filled with anguish she couldn't express correctly.

"Is your Mamma there with you?" She'd inquired, her tone all wrong.

The world did not shatter; rather, it tilted on its axis, removing all of its usual light and music, leaving a chilly, silent nothingness. They boarded the first aircraft available, a small, trembling jet that appeared to share their dread as it plummeted above Grenada's lush, green spine. The familiar sight of the island, which had previously provided comfort, now felt like an indictment.

When they arrived, the house was crowded with aunts, cousins, and neighbours holding plates of food that sat undisturbed on the kitchen counter. The air was heavy with the suffocating perfume of lilies and mumbled sympathy. However, the house was empty. Her absence was a physical force, a quiet that was louder than anything their upbringing had produced.

Carol, the calmer, more watchful of the two, discovered the first clue. the excellent handbag was on the bed, and her wallet contained her ID card and a few EC dollars. Her everyday sandals were near the door. But her fading flowery sundress, which she had worn for years, was gone. So was her old canvas beach bag.

"She didn't go to town," Carol remarked, her voice low and steady, contrasting with the tempest in her eyes. "She went to the lake."

Jenny, with sharp angles and furious intensity, tried to ignore it. "Why? "Why would she go there?"

They both knew. They had always known, on some level, that a piece of their mother would never leave Lake Antoine. While they were learning to live with their father's ghost, she had been living in its shadow, her love a constant, hurting presence.

They drove up the hill in a borrowed vehicle, the excursion a bleak reminiscence of the pleasant trips they had experienced as youngsters. The clearing was vacant. The air was chilly here, and the solitude was profound. They saw it right there, on the muddy bank. Her sandals were in a small, neat pile, upon which was a faded floral sundress folded with her trademark care.

Jenny was broken because of the attention that went into folding. She dropped to her knees, a rough, guttural cry escaping from her throat. The sound was that of a foundation crumbling. She had not fallen. She had not stumbled. She had arrived and prepared.

Carol stood frozen, staring at the water's impossibly quiet, dark surface. The lake that had taken their father had also stolen their mother. It seemed less like a tragedy and more like a conclusion. A dreadful, painful conclusion.

The official search took three days. Men in boats pulled grappling hooks through the deep, dark waters. Divers in slick black suits emerged, shaking their heads, describing the lake's peculiar, frigid currents and near-zero visibility below ten feet. They claimed that the water simply opened up and accepted her. There would be no body to heal. Exactly like their father.

On the fourth day, the girls waited on the porch of the now-completely empty house, as the official search was called off. The food from the neighbours had stopped arriving. The silence had returned, but it was no longer the same. It was no longer the silence of absence, but the silence of a story on its final, painful page.

"You know mommy never got over him," Jenny explained, her voice scratchy. She was staring at her clasped fists on her knees. "We thought she was incredibly strong. We assumed she was going on. "For us."

"Mommy was strong," Carol said, her voice calm yet solid. She was looking out towards the hills and the lake. "She was the toughest person I'd ever known. She stayed for us. She created a life for us. "She waited until her job was finished."

The truth landed on them, as thick and real as the tropical heat. Her love for them had been a tether, anchoring her to the shore of a life she no longer knew how to live. And her love for him had been the riptide, drawing her inexorably back to the depths.

"He always said it," Carol muttered, the memory coming back with agonizing clarity. "Remember? The lake retains memories. It holds everything. It waits".

It now held them both. Their father's scientific poetry, which they had previously disregarded as romantic drivel, suddenly seemed like a premonition. The lake had waited. It had waited for their mother to finish her work and witness her sons enter the world. Then it beckoned her home.

They didn't tell the aunts or priests who came to provide solace. They did not install a headstone in the churchyard close to the empty site designated for their father. A week later, they travelled back up to Lake Antoine alone.

They stood at the water's edge, two young men adrift, navigating the unknown waters of a new and ancient sadness. The water remained as quiet as ever, a perfect, dark mirror.

Jenny picked up a smooth, grey stone and tossed it with all of his strength. It landed on the water with a loud thud, and the concentric rings spread out, marring the immaculate surface for a moment before fading away.

Carol simply knelt, her fingers brushing the mud where her dress had been. She didn’t cry. The tears had all been spent. She felt a strange, unsettling peace. This wasn’t a place of death. It was a place of keeping.

“She’s with him,” Jenny said, her voice finally calm. It wasn’t a question. Carol nodded, looking out at the deep, dark water. “Where the water waits,” she said softly.

They turned and headed back to the jeep, leaving the lake's solitude behind. They had a new, dreadful map to read, one with a large, empty area in the centre where their mother used to be. However, they were their mother's daughters. She'd taught them to be strong. She had shown them how to love, even when it hurt. And as they drove down the hill, back into the bustling, vibrant world, they were unable to shake the conviction that some loves were so deep, so enormous, that not even death could contain them. They just returned to the element from which they originated, held in the patient, timeless memory of the depths.