Chapter 13
The crushed gift box became useful again.
Not symbolically.
Beatrix wanted it for crayons.
I almost said no.
Then stopped.
Why?
Because I was assigning trauma to cardboard.
Ridiculous.
We reinforced the bottom.
She filled it with crayons, stickers, and one broken bracelet.
The secret compartment remained visible.
Empty.
Good.
One afternoon she asked:
“What key?”
She had forgotten.
I told her simply:
“Mommy hid something for me.”
“Treasure?”
“Sort of.”
“Gold?”
“No.”
She looked disappointed.
Fair.
“What?”
“Truth.”
She frowned.
“That boring.”
Very.
I laughed.
Then she asked:
“Mommy hide more?”
I had searched everything after finding the music cabinet.
Nothing else.
At first that disappointed me.
Then relieved me.
Amelia did not leave a scavenger hunt from the grave.
One secret.
One warning.
Enough.
I moved most of her belongings out of untouched preservation after that.
Not all.
The house needed to belong to the living too.
Beatrix chose which items she wanted.
A scarf.
A perfume bottle she wasn’t allowed to open.
Two photographs.
The rabbit.
The rest went where it made sense.
May you like
Grief slowly stopped behaving like museum security.
That was good.
