Chapter 17
Four years after the engagement reception, I held a small dinner in the portrait gallery.
Not memorial.
Not wedding.
Just dinner.
The space looked different.
Lenora’s enormous painting no longer dominated the far wall.
In its place hung five smaller family portraits from different generations.
Equal size.
Equal light.
Avelise supervised service.
No lace headband unless she wanted one.
Tonight she did not.
Serilda attended as a guest.
Evangeline sat beside my mother.
Dangerous combination.
Still.
At one point Avelise carried a tray past me wearing dark berry lipstick.
Not Lenora’s shade.
Her own.
I noticed because she smiled.
No fear.
No smeared line.
No sapphire necklace.
Just Avelise.
Good.
Later Serilda looked toward the empty space where Lenora’s portrait once hung.
“Do you miss seeing her there?”
“Yes.”
Truth.
“Do you regret moving it?”
“No.”
Also truth.
She nodded.
Across the room, Evangeline was telling a story about Lenora burning a roast because she forgot the oven was on.
Everyone laughed.
That was new.
For years we had remembered Lenora only beautifully.
Elegant.
Generous.
Perfect.
Now she could be ridiculous again.
Alive in memory rather than embalmed by it.
I thought about the sapphire necklace beneath stone.
About Serilda forcing it onto Avelise.
About Evangeline opening a coffin because she could not bear the idea of another woman becoming important.
About my own part in creating a house where the dead occupied too much furniture.
The necklace had seemed like the mystery that night.
It wasn’t.
The real mystery was why so many living people believed loving Lenora required freezing everyone else in place.
Avelise passed again.
Serilda stopped her.
Not touching.
“Your lipstick looks nice.”
Avelise raised one eyebrow.
“Mine?”
Serilda smiled faintly.
“Yours.”
Avelise nodded.
“Thanks.”
Then kept walking.
Small moment.
Enormous difference.
I looked toward the library doors where Lenora’s portrait now hung among the others.
I still loved my wife.
I always would.
May you like
But love was no longer an instruction everyone else had to obey.
For the first time since she died, that felt like remembering her correctly.
