...with kindness.

She’d always wanted to see the promenade in spring, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. We still had a long drive to Riverside and to Turner’s way.

This is where ‘the promenade’ sits. The only one that mattered. The one by her grandmother’s second home.

Where she’d read old books in oak rocking chairs between stories of her father’s father or how growing up here felt.

Most pleasant were her father’s stories of Turner’s way in the springtime. The annual porch parties were about to start. The award-winning flowers would be blooming in time for the competitions. The rich salty smell of the warm sea mist as it crashed on the rocks. The glistening wet shower of minerals over the stone homes' exterior walls. Her father would watch the petals in the wind. He'd watch the sunshine in their droplets of morning dew and sea breeze.

But alas, her father was a groundskeeper and spring was the working seasoning. He would ship them home at the first sign of winter’s thaw and then they’d stay put till winter once again began. So she only ever saw the town in winter. Her perfect moment told to her by her father, hung out of reach.

She was sixteen when her grandmother passed. Her uncle took the family home, her father the second and her aunt their money. Without asking Emily her parents sold the home and with it her dreams of staying there during the spring.

“College”, they said, “you’ve got to go to college and that costs money”.

The cruel lesson she’d learn too well in her life. Dreams are ideals. The reality is compromise. Happiness is the balance of how many concessions you can stand versus how much of your dream you can get.

Those unhappy souls have less of their ideal life than they can tolerate. The content ones have enough to fool themselves.

“Happiness is like a luxury hotel. The fancy things look great, and everything you see looks amazing. However, move a few bits around and you’ll find exposed wires and bare walls. It’s a trick, an illusion, and one of self-manipulation”.

That is what Emily wrote in her personal online blog. She’d never show it to anyone. Not even me. Less they learn too much. She was an unhappy person.

She spent her first winter and spring without Turner’s way hating her father.

Until realising he was making compromises of his own design. Her dad was building his ‘close enough life’ that he could stand.

She was not the daughter he'd wanted. Her mother was not his ideal woman. They were what he could get.

No, she learned homes have taxes, they need upkeep, and then you’ve bills like insurance.

No, she knew they’d never be able to afford her Grandmother’s home.

But then there was this pressure.

She arrived at college weighted on by the reality that her father sold his mother’s home. This was his last memories of her. And he did this for her. For this. For her education.

Every missed assignment was a personal insult to him. To her grandmother. And when he passed, without ever seeing Turner’s way in the spring again, she spent her nights lying awake.

She couldn't remember his voice, nor his face. She needed reminders. She'd panic at small things like forgetting her grandmother's stories of him.

That year she failed a class. Of course, she did. She wasn't sleeping. She was grieving. And then her mother went soon after.

She had to pass; she had to graduate. For them.

That is when she met Rodney. He began as her dealer. She needed him for study drugs. Small aids to make sure she succeeded. Then when she got into debt he made his romantic feelings known.

And they began dating.

We were driving to Turner’s way in an old Mercedes, 1965, 220SE with a red paint job and a silver trim. Like her father’s which was his father’s. She had inherited her daddy’s one, but then Rodney needed money. He always needed money.

And so like many of her reminders of home

The car was worth over 80 grand, but they needed the money fast and so sold cheap for 45 thousand. And so her precious car was gone.

Acquiring one wasn’t easy, but it was right. The perfect destination needed the perfect trip. One can never overestimate the impact our families have on us.

My father was a vet, a good one too, and he used to bring home the animals set to be euthanized.

We’d feed them, love them and then let them go. Sometimes we’d even toy with the idea of keeping them, but it wouldn’t be right. Why this one and not the others? And what about caring for the next needy soul?

“It’s the least you can do,” he’d say, “mercy is an active process, not some pity like many will offer.

The intent to do no harm isn’t enough. How can you empathise with those suffering if you won’t help?”

My father would often talk of tragic animals neglected, abused and scared. He would cry often and when he did I’d cry too.

“It is the least we can do, to make them happy before they go”.

You don’t remark on their suffering and try not to add to it. Mercy requires you act.

Rodney died. He did so before I could find out where her father’s car had gone. Strychnine poisoning from tainted heroin was a horrid thing. That reaction curdled his muscle fibres in his skin. The tension building until they tore his tendons from the bone.

The world was better for his absence.

Sunrise woke Emily as soon as I turned onto Turner’s way. The sky was red and velvety with deep warmth. The gradient broke only for wispy clouds.

The whole sky’s hue reflected in the watery expanse that went out as far as could be seen. Nearby red and violet flowers glittered with droplets of seawater and dew. The light caught in their curves shone like crystals or diamonds. Only more precious for they were fleeting and temporary.

“Liam,” she said, “there is this perfect little…”

“French cafe on the corner of the library,” I interrupted, “I know. Your dad took your mom there once and they got engaged nearby”.

Emily often spoke as though I didn’t know these things. Her face always contorted when I’d interrupt her. An over the top facial expression between snarky, playful disapproval and a smile.

She took her coffee black. She hated, but her father took his black. He used to say, “Sugar and milk are abominations. To use them is to admit you didn’t really like coffee at all. Instead, you want simple, non-nuanced, and sweet candy flavours. You just care too much about what others think to order a hot chocolate or something. So you put off your own happiness and so you fake it for approval.”

He’d often say this while brewing himself and Emily black coffee before heaping sugar into his wife's tea.

“Never trust a man who prides the illusion of himself over the reality of who he is,” he’d say.

“Like fake flowers, they do not lead to honey or scent. They only exist in a way of being neither a good use of plastic nor a particularly pretty flower.”

I took my coffee black but did not like it much either. I was a milk and sugar cappuccino person if no one was looking, but Emily was looking.

Once we revealed the bottom of our cups, we walked along the water's edge.

“How am I so tired?” she asked.

“Maybe 'cause you’re living the dream…”

“Shut the fuck up and hold me…”

We sat by the water and her eyes were the first to fall.

"I love you, " I said brushing her hair behind her ear.

Then her heart slowed.

"I love you too," she murmured through her heavy lips. Her breath was labouring but persisted for now. Until it went along with the firm hold of her hand on mine.

And I felt the weight of her body fall into me as her breathing stopped.

In the morning they’d find her. She’d be alone in her Mercedes. Liam Bosworth had only existed for 6 months and in 24 hours he’d no longer be. Instead, a freelance journalist would be driving a Toyota Camry tomorrow. He'd be on his way to ‘accidentally’ bump into Megan Morris. She'd be in her favourite bookshop. At 11:35 am Dennis Jones would begin existing.

Mercy is an active process.