"Where the Light Paused" by Nehal

She keeps setting a fourth plate at the table. No one comments anymore. Her mother clears it like clockwork. Her father eats in silence. Her sister rolls her eyes but never removes it.

Even the dog sits by that chair, tail still. It started a year ago. After the accident. After the quiet ambulance. After the unlit candle at the funeral. She set the plate the next morning, and the chair exhaled, not a creak, but something deeper. Like memory stretching.

At first, she tried to explain. “It just feels wrong,” she said. “Like someone might still come home.”

Eventually, she stopped speaking. She only placed the plate, warmed it with breath, and set a fork to the right.

Sometimes, she wonders if the plate is less for him and more for herself. That the ritual is not a memory, but a tether. Something that reminds her she hasn’t drifted too far from who she was before the silence arrived.

Sometimes, a curl of steam escapes. Not from food, just breath, like winter mornings when the air admits something sacred. Once, she caught her father staring at the plate. His eyes weren’t sad. Just curious. As if trying to remember a face he never wanted to forget.

There are days she swears she hears breathing at that seat. A quiet inhale, measured and steady, timed with her own. Once, she reached out. Her hand passed through nothing but came back warm.

Each night, she washes the plate, dries it with the same towel, and places it in the same cupboard. Each morning, she takes it out again.

One morning, the chair had shifted ever so slightly. Not pulled out, not moved with intent, just... different. As if someone had tried to sit and changed their mind. She didn’t mention it, but that day, her hands trembled while pouring the tea.

The world moves on like a polite machine. Teachers talk about deadlines. Strangers hold open doors. Sunlight bends differently in winter, but the chair waits.

She doesn't believe in ghosts. Only habits. Only warmth that lingers too long. Only the way grief builds a home in your bones and calls it memory.

When the light touches the fourth plate just right, she smiles. As if someone’s laughing with her. As if the world never ended at all.

Nehal Sharma is a Jaipur-based writer. Writing is how she lives inside her own curiosity, turning observation into reflection and reflection into story. She runs the blog “Mythology Meets Reality,” where she tries to make sense of it all without pretending it makes sense.