Between What Remains

Janae Avery had tuned in to the rhythm of Ventura Boulevard out in southern California in the way some people acknowledged a clock ticking in a quiet room—by hearing without trying. As the morning dawned, the boulevard exhaled: delivery trucks backing up, commuters inching east toward the interstate, the hiss of bus doors opening and closing, businesses opening up, and the occasional indecipherable voice drifting on the wind - sometimes, a conversation; sometimes, random laughter. By afternoon, the street held its breath, with heat waves shimmering off windshields, and palm branches rattling like loose change. At dusk, it sighed again, as many headlights streaked west toward the ocean she still hadn’t learned to trust. Oh, she periodically took that long bus ride to the beach, for sure, but she wasn’t going out for a swim. Not yet. It just wasn’t what her people did.

Janae had lived in Encino for six months now, long enough for the unfamiliar to at least begin to feel like a rehearsal of home. Long enough for her first thirty-four years on the east side of Detroit to feel like a story she once read somewhere and had now memorized so well, it was a truth in her head but not her reality. At thirty-five, Janae felt older than her years but younger than her grief, which made time behave strangely around her—stretching, collapsing, looping back on itself.

It was an easy walk to work from the guest house she now rented, after flipping the Woodland Hills house she had thought would be her forever home. The sale was an impulsive decision but gave her enough to start a business and find a quiet, private place to think. She owned a small floral shop on Ventura Boulevard near Haskell - a narrow storefront squeezed between a Pilates studio and a place that sold imported rugs that always smelled faintly of dust and lemon oil. The shop’s bell chimed whenever someone came in, a sound that had become the fixed punctuation of her days.

The flowers were kind. They asked only for water, light, and a steady hand. They did not ask questions about the ring she wore hidden on a chain beneath her shirt, or why her smile sometimes arrived a second too late. She liked the way carnations’ stems snapped clean under the blade, the way roses bled green when cut, the way lilies announced themselves before you saw them. She liked that grief could be hidden in petals, rearranged into something people called beautiful.

Brian would have teased her about that—about the way she romanced on flowers. He would have said, “You always did like things that don’t last.”

In her dreams, he’d have said it with a grin, healthy and whole, his shoulders broad, his laugh a low rumble she could feel in her chest when she stood pressed against him. Yes, in her dreams, Brian was still alive. So sleep was not a place Janae fell into; it was a place she entered deliberately and eagerly. Every night she lay in the dark of her small, rented apartment, forcing out the hum of real life, obligations and traffic, closing her eyes like someone closing a door. Inside slumber, a different world waited, one she could rewind, pause, and fast-forward through like a tape she had watched so often she knew where the static lived.

At first, the dreams had been accidents—grief conjuring him the way thirst summons us to water. But then she discovered the controls. By will, she could stop the moment right before the hospital monitor flatlined, suspend it like a held breath. She could wind back to their kitchen in Detroit before the remodel, to the chipped counter where Brian leaned while she cooked, his hands warm on her waist. She could skip ahead to scenes they had planned but never lived: a wedding on a hot June day, her vows written on a scrap of paper that smelled like vanilla Chai, the weight of his ring on her finger. She could live the life she missed, again and again, the way a child rewinds a favorite cartoon.

During the day, Janae was careful with time. She measured it in bouquets and receipts, in lunch breaks eaten on the back stoop with her coworker, Chyrelle, who had moved from Glendale and spoke in half-finished thoughts. Chyrelle knew not to ask about the scar on Janae’s wrist (from the night she had slammed the glass table too hard after Brian died and it had given way), or about the way Janae sometimes drifted off in distant thought when the shop was quiet. She kept guarded about her life and would shut down the conversation with anyone who pried, like when asked why she wouldn’t ride in cars... Chyrelle only knew Janae came from Detroit because Janae had said it once, in the same way you say a fact that used to be important.

“Encino’s a long way from Michigan,” Chyrelle said one afternoon, trimming eucalyptus.

“Feels like it,” Janae responded, and meant more than distance, but never elaborated. Chyrelle hadn’t gotten much more out of her than that. There were no ‘back in the day’ stories to reminisce about. She kept those memories locked down.

On her break, Janae walked a block south on Ventura, the sun pressing its hand between her shoulder blades. She passed the same bus stop where a man always played the harmonica, bending blues notes into the California light. She bought an iced cappuccino she didn’t finish. She watched her reflection in a storefront window—brown skin catching the sun, hair pulled back, eyes that had learned to hold things in. She touched the chain at her neck, grounding herself on exhalation. Daylight had rules. Daylight did not let you rewind.

Brian had loved rules, the way they made things like games fair. He had been a structural engineer, all lines and load-bearing calculations, a man who believed in bridges and weight distribution and the idea that if you built something correctly, it would hold. He had been the one to suggest California, then Encino, months before he died, tracing the target neighborhoods on a map with his finger. “We could do it,” he’d said. “New start. Sunshine. You with your flowers. Me with my bridges...” They had laughed at the symmetry of it. But nothing had happened as they planned.

In the dream where she rewound that conversation, she paused it just before he said bridges and leaned in to kiss him, savoring the moment the way you’d savor the last bite of tiramisu. She fast-forwarded through the move, the boxes, the first night in the apartment when Brian found out he’d more likely be building overpasses instead of bridges, to the last kiss he gave her before heading off the next morning for what should have been the start of his new position less than 30 minutes away. She let the dream play the life they never got to live together: mornings with the windows open, some evenings walking on the beach hand in hand, weekend drives up the coastal highway, learning the names of all the unique birds they discovered at a wildlife reserve. She let herself be happy there, which felt like both a betrayal and a necessity.

Sometimes, the dreams surprised her. Sometimes, Brian did not follow her script. Sometimes he looked at her with an expression she hadn’t given him, concern shadowing his eyes. “You can’t stay here forever,” he said once, and she woke up angry, the control slipping through her fingers like water.

It was on a Thursday in late summer when the floral shop had received a delivery of sunflowers for an upcoming wedding. She tried to park the dream, as usual, and focus on the day’s work at hand. The flowers were so tall they bowed in the doorway, and Janae laughed despite herself as she wrestled them into buckets. The shop smelled like honey and green things. It was calming. Then, a woman came in asking for sympathy flowers—white, understated. And just like that, Janae crashed into thoughts of Brian as she assembled the arrangement with care, her hands surprisingly steady. The lady chose one of the free cards and wrote a note in looping script, sliding it into the envelope. Janae did not read the note. She never had and never would. Though Chyrelle always did, Janae had learned that private thoughts were better left unopened.

That night, Janae rewound the dream until it frayed. She paused on a scene where Brian lay on the couch, a book open on his chest, his breath easy. She sat beside him and listened to the hum of a refrigerator that wasn’t there. She watched the way his chest rose and fell. She fast-forwarded to their wedding, then rewound again to the proposal, then paused it mid-kneel, caught between yes and forever. The control made her bold and small at the same time. She could do anything. She could change nothing.

The next morning, she woke with the taste of regret on her tongue like old pennies. The boulevard was already awake. She showered, dressed, then fastened the chain on her neck, with a quick check in the mirror before leaving. On the walk to work, she noticed a construction site on Ventura she hadn’t paid attention to before—yellow tape, orange cones, the skeleton of something rising. She stopped and watched a man in a hard hat study a blueprint, the paper fluttering in the breeze. For a moment, the grief pressed so hard she thought her legs would fold. No, she told herself. Not here. Not now.

At the shop, Chyrelle was arranging orchids. “You okay?” she asked, not looking up, though she had glanced at Janae’s distressed expression from her entry.

“Yeah,” Janae said, which meant not now.

Something was thrown off. The dreams began to change after that. Not suddenly, but the way seasons change when you’re not paying attention. Before she knew it, a few years had gone by, and she was still in the matrix of an existence that even outwardly never resembled a life. She had no friends, no interests, no goals… She went to work and came home, with occasional stops for coffee, but mostly grocery delivery. The only time she laughed, danced or enjoyed the view was in her dreams. The controls still worked, but they felt heavier, less precise. When she paused, the edges blurred. When she rewound, scenes overlapped, Brian’s laughter echoing out of sync. When she fast-forwarded, she landed in moments she hadn’t planned: arguments they might have had, silences that would have grown if they’d lived together long enough to make mistakes. She found herself watching a version of their life that wasn’t all light, and it scared her more than the dark. What was this?

One night, she let the dream run without touching it. She watched herself and Brian argue about something small—the dishes, the rent, the way he always forgot to leave his shoes by the door despite her constantly reminding him. She watched herself walk away and come back, watched the reconciliation, the messy tenderness of people choosing each other again. It felt truer than the perfection she had long curated. It felt like grief loosening its grip, just a little.

The next morning, she took a different route to work, crossing Ventura at a light she usually avoided because it was too long. She leaned against the light post, waiting for the signal, and noticed a mural she hadn’t seen before. It was a bright riot of color on a distressed concrete wall. She stopped and absorbed, realizing this mural, like so many other beautiful things, had been there all along. She breathed in its beauty and exhaled a little of her guilt and fear.

About midday, a man came in asking for flowers for no reason at all. “Just because,” he said, shrugging. Janae smiled and suggested daisies. She wrapped them in brown paper and tied them with twine. When he left, the bell chimed, and the sound felt less like an ending. For the first time, she thought about taking home a bouquet for herself, to greet her from the kitchen counter in the mornings. Hmm, just a thought.

That night, Janae dreamt of Brian standing on a bridge, the city below them a tangle of lights. He was healthy and alive, as always, but he did not wait for her to rewind. He did not need her to pause. He took her hand and squeezed it, and the squeeze said everything he hadn’t been able to say before the crash on the 405 that claimed his life. She let the dream play. She did not reach for the controls.

When she awoke, the grief was still there, caught between yesterday’s promise and the future that remains. It would always be there, a river she would learn to cross. But today awaited her. Ventura Boulevard had exhaled with the sounds of a jackhammer in the air, and the flowers needed water. Janae stood up, touched the chain at her neck, and stepped into the morning light, carrying with her the life she had loved and the one she was still learning to live.