Jason didn’t fall asleep right away.
The room was quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioner and the occasional muffled sound of someone moving in the hallway. He lay on his back staring at the ceiling, phone resting on the nightstand beside him.
Hannah’s name sat in his contacts now.
He had looked at it twice before setting the phone down.
Something about the evening lingered in his mind. The painting, the way she had filled in the detail about the ribbon, the strange look on her face when he mentioned the house.
Eventually the steady exhaustion of the day pulled him under.
He was standing on a beach.
The wind came first.
It moved through tall grass and over the sand with a steady, restless sound. The air smelled sharp and salty, and the sky stretched overhead in a wide sheet of gray.
Jason looked down.
He wasn’t wearing the clothes he’d fallen asleep in. The fabric against his arms was heavier, rougher somehow, like something made long ago.
Waves rolled in against dark rocks below him.
And there, just ahead—
The house.
It stood exactly the way he had described it earlier that night. Weather-beaten wood siding faded to gray from years of salt and wind. The boards creaked softly as the wind pressed against them. A narrow porch wrapped around one side, its railing worn smooth.
The house sat right on the edge of the beach, as if the sea had slowly crept closer to it over time.
Jason felt a strange certainty move through him.
He knew this place.
Not the way someone recognizes a photograph.
The way someone knows how many steps there are up to the door.
Behind him, fabric shifted in the wind.
Jason turned.
She stood near the water.
A woman in a long blue dress, the fabric lifting and twisting in the wind as the waves rolled in behind her. The color of the dress caught the muted light of the gray sky, deep and soft at the same time.
Her dark hair moved around her shoulders.
And there. Just like Hannah had said.
A blue ribbon tied loosely near the back, one end slipping free as the wind tugged at it.
The ribbon fluttered and nearly came undone.
Jason took a step forward.
The sand felt real beneath his feet.
He had the strange, overwhelming sense that he had been here before, had stood in this exact place, watching her exactly like this.
The woman turned slightly.
He couldn’t see her face clearly yet, only the shape of her profile as she looked out toward the sea.
But something inside him tightened.
Not curiosity.
Recognition.
The wind carried the sound of the house behind him.
The woman’s hand lifted slightly as if she were about to reach for something or someone.
Jason tried to call out.
But the wind swallowed the sound before it left his throat.
The ribbon slipped loose in her hair.
And just before he could take another step—
Jason woke.
The hotel room was dark and still.
For a moment he didn’t move.
He could still hear the wind. Still smell the salt in the air.
Slowly he sat up, running a hand over his face.
Across the room, the faint outline of the door to the hallway sat in shadow.
Jason swung his feet to the floor and stared down at the carpet.
One thought settled into his mind with quiet certainty.
He hadn’t just imagined that place.
He had remembered it.
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