“Victor, I need you to back off.” She said, placing a new pebble on top of her stack of three.
A small blue one. Her eye caught on how the stones' iridescence matched the last ring he gave her. Perhaps the ocean offered it as a thanks for all the jewels she’d flung its way.
“Camina, come on.” He walked towards her.
“Stay back,” she said. “I mean it.”
“Camina. After everything, you can’t be serious?”
She opened her hand, revealing a blade. “Cam, Cam, no.”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
“To clear your head I’d hoped. You’d always liked the view?”
She laughed bitterly. “Believe what you must. But why do you insist on calling me Cam Cam?”
“It’s my prerogative is it not? I named you.”
“And I chose to make that name my own. Artists and writers and singers get to choose their names, why can’t I? Why can’t you respect my choice? All my friends call me Mina.”
“Only the ones who didn’t know you before…” he trailed off. But she knew he wasn’t going to say it.
“Before what Victor?” She asked through gritted teeth.
He stepped back.
She took a deep breath and held it, squatting down by her pebble stack and placing a longer one across the top. Miraculously it stayed in place. She willed it to fall, as a sign.
“Mina, please.” He stepped towards her, his hands out and up to his sides. “Please. I can’t-“
“You can't what? Lose me too? Cut the charade. You were relieved when she left us. When I’m gone your life will be so much more simple.”
“Is that what you really think?” He asked weakly.
She saw a glint of something in his eye. A tear perhaps. She turned away. She’d expected anger. Placation. Not tears; the first she’d ever seen him shed. This man. The man to blame for it all.
“How dare you cry?” She yelled. “After everything!”
“After everything…” He sighed slowly, moving towards her as he spoke. “When she left, your mother, when she left us-“
“When she died, Victor. It wasn’t her choice to leave, she died.”
“When she died and left us alone.”
“We weren’t alone. You weren’t anyway.”
He nodded. “I left you alone though. I left you alone. And told myself you were ungrateful for all I provided, for all I gave you. But I see it now. Cam Cam died when she did. I let her starve.” He buried his head in his hands like he always did and she wanted to smash her stack of pebbles. But then he looked up. He looked at her. “I’d like to do better by Mina.”
Mina tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “My God you’re a weirdo. I can’t believe mom chose you.”
“You sound just like her.” He allowed himself a small sad smile.
She placed the blade on a rock by the cliff behind her.
He sat on the ground by her pebble stack. Picking up a small black one from the pile she’d made, he held it up to the sunset, like an offering, then placed it on top of her long grey pebble.
They watched it, both holding their breath as though beholden to the absurd shared secret: this pebble would decide everything.
If it stayed, so would she.
