Chapter 97

Chapter 97
Eight months after June’s first day of kindergarten, I could measure time by the small changes in our mornings. In September, I had walked her to the classroom with one hand clenched around hers and the other around Maisie or Hattie’s hand. By December, she had learned to zip her own coat, pack her lunch, and remind me when we were running late.

By April, she was usually dressed before I was, humming while she searched for a missing mitten. Christmas had come and gone in a blur of cinnamon, pine needles, and children’s voices. Hattie and her husband filled their house with people until every chair was claimed. Their daughter and June built a tower of wrapped presents beneath the tree, while Maisie’s son crawled through the paper like a determined little explorer. Maisie’s husband kept refilling everyone’s glasses, and Hattie brought out another dish every time I thought we had reached the end of the meal. We ate ham glazed with brown sugar, buttery potatoes, green beans with toasted almonds, and rolls that disappeared almost as soon as they touched the table.

The children shrieked over a remote-control car and a glittering art set. Hattie laughed so hard at something Maisie said that she had to set down her fork. I found myself laughing too, helplessly and fully, with tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.For a little while, the house felt held together by warmth rather than silence. Chosen family, I thought, though I did not say it aloud. They had gathered around us without making a ceremony of it, and June leaned against my side as if she understood that this was another kind of home. After Christmas, our days settled again. We shoveled less, stayed out a little longer, and began leaving the porch light on until nearly six. The routines were still ours, but they no longer felt like something I was merely surviving.

By early spring, Idaho was all thaw and hesitation. Snow shrank into gray ridges along the curbs, releasing the smell of wet earth and old leaves. The sidewalks turned to mud beneath our boots, and the pale afternoon sun made everything shine before the temperature dropped again at dusk. The mornings were still cold enough to silver the windshield. By lunch, I could open the kitchen window and hear water rushing through the gutters. Buds appeared on the bare branches outside June’s room, no bigger than pinheads, but I checked them every day as if I could encourage them by looking.Our walks home from school changed. We stopped kicking through snow and began searching for the first green shoots near the library fence. June carried her coat over one arm while I carried her backpack, and she told me elaborate stories about which worms were brave enough to come out after rain.I was changing too, though not in any clean or steady way. Grief still arrived without knocking. It found me in the grocery store, in the space beside me on the couch, in the sound of a man clearing his throat at the hardware counter. But it did not fill every room or every minute. Some afternoons, I caught myself making plans for the following week instead of only getting through the current day.One Saturday, while June drew rainbows at the kitchen table, I spread paint samples across the floor. Cream, dark greens, and a grey color. I had not meant to begin anything. I only meant to look. Then I picked up the dark green and carried it into the living room.

The first wall took me three days because I kept finding reasons to stop. I replaced the curtains in the living room with white cotton ones, moved the heavy bookcase away from the window, and changed the brass pulls on the kitchen cabinets for simple black handles. In the entryway, I put a narrow bench beneath the hooks so June could sit down to wrestle with her boots.The dark green paint got everywhere. It streaked my wrists and dotted my cheek. When I tried to move the bookcase by myself, it caught on the doorway and refused to go either direction. I stood there sweating and swearing under my breath until June appeared with a wooden spoon in one hand.“Do you need a tool?” she asked.“I need a miracle.”She considered this. “The spoon might help.”It did not, but I laughed so suddenly that I had to lean against the wall. We emptied the shelves, turned the bookcase sideways, and eventually dragged it into the garage. June sorted the photographs while I worked: school pictures, camping trips, blurry birthday candles, and one of Eli asleep in a folding chair with a baby June curled against his chest.I almost put that photograph in a drawer. Instead, I placed it on the new shelf beside a vase of dried grass. Changing the room did not require me to remove him from it. Maisie came over the next weekend with a ladder, two sandwiches, and the confidence of someone who had never once doubted that a crooked curtain rod could be defeated. Hattie arrived an hour later carrying a potted fern and a bag of lemon cookies.“You’re making plans again,” Hattie said, steadying the ladder while I tightened a screw.“I’m making a mess again.”“Both can be true.”Maisie looked around at the homey walls. “You’re laughing more easily.”I glanced at her. “Some days.”“That’s enough for some days,” she said. “Nobody’s asking you to turn into a different person.”The three of us ate sandwiches on the floor because the dining table was covered with hardware and paint swatches. Hattie told a story about her daughter putting stickers on the dog. Maisie nearly choked on a cookie. I laughed until my ribs hurt, and afterward I sat quietly with that happiness, letting it be real without demanding that it last.I had felt guilty at first. Eli had chosen the white paint color in the hallway. He had found the old brass handles at a salvage store and insisted they gave the kitchen character. But the house was not a museum of his decisions. It was where June and I woke up, lost socks, burned toast, and came home tired. Making it livable for our present life was not a betrayal.

June chose the soft cream color for her room and helped me paint the lower half of one wall with a small roller. Her strokes wandered, and the color climbed higher on one side than the other. We left it that way and hung paper stars along the uneven edge.She claimed the corner beside the window as her reading place, arranging a cushion, three stuffed animals, and a basket of library books. That evening, she sat there in her pajamas while I folded laundry at the foot of her bed.“It feels bigger,” she said.“The room?”She nodded, then thought about it. “The whole house.”I set down a tiny pair of socks. “Does that feel okay?”June reached for my hand. Her fingers were warm from the blanket. “It feels like us.”I kissed the top of her head, smelling shampoo and the faint sweetness of lemon cookie. “It is us.”By evening, spring light had faded from the windows, leaving the newly painted room washed in the glow of a small lamp. June read aloud from a book nearby, stumbling over a word and starting the sentence again. I stood among the pale blue walls, listening to her turn the pages.For a moment, I remembered Eli sitting on the floor with a paintbrush tucked behind his ear, telling me that every room needed a place for light to land. The memory pressed gently against my chest. I let it stay.Feeling better did not mean I loved him less. It meant June and I were still here, learning the shape of our days. Grief would keep arriving unexpectedly, but now there were open windows, muddy shoes by the door, paper stars on the wall, and room for something beyond sorrow.I turned off the lamp and left the door open. June’s voice followed me down the hall. In the home Eli and I had made together, I was beginning—carefully, imperfectly—to build a future.