Chapter 100

Chapter 100
By seven-ten on Wednesday morning, June had already misplaced one shoe, her purple lunchbox, and the paper crown she insisted on wearing to kindergarten.“It’s not a crown,” she told me from beneath the kitchen table. “It’s a queen hat.”I crouched beside her, still holding one sock in my teeth while I searched for the missing shoe. “Of course. My mistake.”She giggled, then popped out with the shoe clutched triumphantly in one hand and the paper crown crooked over her brown curls. June had kindergarten energy before breakfast—bright, determined, and somehow everywhere at once. By the time I got her coat buttoned, she had asked whether clouds got lonely, announced that crackers tasted better when broken into tiny pieces, and reminded me three times that Friday was library day.

Our mornings had settled into a familiar rhythm: toast with too much butter, the same red light near the feed store, and June singing half of a song she had learned at school. I knew exactly when she would reach for my hand in the parking lot and exactly how long the goodbye hug would last. The day ahead felt strangely open. I had the day off from Maisie’s bakery, no early shift and no afternoon decorating to finish. I could have filled the hours with errands, but the thought of going back home had been sitting heavily in my chest since I woke up. After I watched June disappear through the school doors, her queen hat bobbing above the other children, I went straight back home. The house met me with its usual unfinishedness.

The living room sofa was still pushed against the wall. A drop cloth lay folded badly in one corner, gray with dust and dried flecks of paint. Boxes crowded the entryway, their labels facing the wrong direction, while a lamp without a shade leaned beside a stack of framed pictures I had never gotten around to hanging.In the kitchen, two chairs were balanced on their sides so we could reach the ceiling. A tin of brushes sat open on the counter. The air held the faint chalky smell of old paint, cardboard, and the lemon cleaner I kept buying without ever using.June and I had been living around the mess for weeks. We ate at the edge of the table because the rest was covered with hardware. We stepped over boxes to reach the front door. At night, I tucked her into bed while thinking about all the things I had promised myself I would finish tomorrow.Tomorrow had become another room in the house—closed up, cluttered, and waiting.I stood in the middle of the living room and let the guilt arrive. June deserved a home where she could spread out her crayons without asking which box they belonged in. I deserved a place where every object did not feel like evidence of something I had failed to complete.So I made a decision that felt bigger than moving furniture.I was going to put our house back together—not for the person we had been before Eli died, and not to pretend the loss had left no mark. I wanted a home that belonged to the life June and I were actually living now.I carried the paint supplies to the garage, broke down the empty boxes, and opened the curtains to let in the pale morning light. Then I chose the feeling I wanted to follow through every room: green and white, cream and soft florals, baskets and old-fashioned patterns, warm wood, plants that did not mind being forgotten for a day.

Some people might have called it their grandmother’s style. To me, it was cozy, cute, comforting. It looked like a place where a person could exhale.I found floral curtains at the back of a linen cupboard, cream-colored throws in a storage bin, and a chipped green vase I had thrifted before June was born. None of it matched perfectly. That was part of the point.I wanted the house to feel lived in, not staged. Loved, not preserved.

The sofa took three attempts to land in the right place. I dragged it toward the window, stepped back, frowned, and dragged it again until the room opened toward the fireplace. A woven basket went beside it for blankets. I folded the cream throw over one arm and tucked a faded floral pillow into the corner.The curtain rod fought me for nearly twenty minutes. One bracket kept slipping loose, and when I finally tightened it, the rod tilted dramatically toward the floor. I was halfway up the step stool with a mouthful of screws when I started laughing. It was either laugh or cry, and I was tired of letting every difficult thing choose for me.The curtains went up a little crooked, but the tiny green leaves on the fabric softened the windows. Sunlight filtered through them in quiet patches, turning the dust in the air gold.In the entryway, I lined up our shoes in a low wooden crate and hung June’s coat on the smallest hook. I set an old ceramic dish on the table for keys. Eli had bought it at a roadside antique shop because he said the painted bluebirds looked “too cheerful to leave behind.” I ran my thumb over one of their chipped wings before setting it down.For a moment, I could see him standing in this same doorway, rain darkening his shoulders, holding the dish out like a prize. He had always brought home small, unnecessary things—a brass bell, a crooked frame, a jar of buttons—because he believed a house should have stories in every corner.The memory hurt, but it did not ask me to stop.In the kitchen, I cleared the counter and put the brushes away. I filled a wicker basket with dish towels and moved the jars of flour and sugar onto the open shelf. A small potted ivy went beside the sink, its leaves reaching toward the window. I found a cream runner with tiny embroidered flowers and spread it across the table.When I shifted the old wooden chair near the pantry, a jar of dried lavender slipped from the shelf and shattered on the floor. The scent rose all at once—sweet, dusty, familiar. I knelt among the pieces, swept carefully, and saved what lavender I could in a clean bowl.It reminded me that imperfect did not mean ruined.Changing the house did not erase Eli. Moving the sofa did not move him out of my heart. I could make room for floral curtains and a different kind of quiet without changing what he had meant to me. He was part of our story. He did not have to be every room. By the time I finished the living room, entryway, and kitchen, it was lunchtime.

I paused beside the kitchen table and looked around.The house was still the same house, but it no longer seemed to be holding its breath. Cream fabric softened the chairs. Green accents warmed the shelves. The baskets hid the clutter that had been needling at me for weeks, and sunlight rested on the floorboards in broad, honey-colored shapes.For the first time in a long time, I could tolerate being here.The silence remained. It just no longer pressed in from every wall.I felt calmer. Almost proud.I sliced tomatoes for a sandwich, warmed soup in a small saucepan, and listened to the quiet pop of the burner. The ivy leaves trembled when the back door shifted in its frame. Somewhere outside, a bird called from the maple tree. It was an ordinary lunch in an ordinary kitchen, and the ordinariness felt like a gift.

Then someone knocked at the front door.I wiped my hands on a dish towel and went to answer it. When I opened the door, I forgot how to breathe.Liam stood on the porch with a little orange kitten tucked safely against his chest.His dark hair was wind-tossed, and his piercing blue eyes fixed on me with the same quiet steadiness I remembered from the ranch. He wore work boots, faded jeans, and a dark canvas jacket dusted with hay. He looked entirely at home among fences and horses and hard weather.The kitten looked no bigger than a loaf of bread.One tiny paw rested over Liam’s forearm. Its orange ears twitched, and a thin, questioning mew slipped into the warm space behind me.“Hi,” Liam said.“Hi.” My voice came out softer than I meant it to.He glanced at the kitten, then back at me. “Maisie sent me. This little one keeps getting separated from the others.”I looked down at the kitten’s bright face. “Is he hurt?”“No. Just stubborn.” The corner of his mouth moved, almost a smile. “And she thought you might know what to do.”The butterflies returned, light and startled beneath my ribs. I hated that my heart could still do that. I hated that it did not feel entirely wrong.Liam shifted the kitten carefully in his arms. “Am I interrupting?”Behind me, the newly restored house glowed with soft curtains, warm wood, and the faint scent of lavender. In front of me, Liam held a small, living surprise from the ranch.I looked from the kitten to his unreadable face, suddenly certain he had come for more than a quick hello—and quietly curious about what, exactly, he wanted from me.