Chapter 2
The blue room used to be Elise’s morning room.
I knew it immediately once Ethan described the windows.
After she died, I told Mark to leave the room alone until he was ready.
Not forever.
Just no rush.
Grief should not have deadlines.
When I returned downstairs, Claudia had recovered her posture.
Wineglass gone.
Confidence damaged.
Mark stood beside her.
Of course.
I looked at him.
“Why is Elise’s room blue?”
He hesitated.
“Claudia redecorated.”
“Why?”
“She needed a sitting room.”
There were seventeen sitting rooms in that house.
Wrong answer.
I looked at Claudia.
“What happened to Elise’s things?”
She folded her arms.
“Most were boxed.”
“Most?”
“Richard—”
“Where are the photographs?”
Silence.
Mark tried:
“Dad, this doesn’t need to become—”
I turned.
“It became something when my grandson spent nine hours barefoot in a storm.”
He stopped.
Good.
Claudia finally answered.
“Elise’s things were unhealthy for Ethan.”
There.
That language.
Not disrespectful.
Therapeutic-sounding.
Useful.
“He kept asking questions.”
“He’s three.”
“He needs to move on.”
I stared.
“From his mother?”
She looked away.
Then I understood.
This was not about a room.
Claudia wanted a household where Elise had never existed strongly enough to compete with her.
And Mark had allowed it because resisting Claudia meant confronting his own grief.
Weakness wearing domestic peace.
“Why was Ethan outside?”
Claudia answered:
“He kept going back into the room after I told him not to.”
“How many times?”
“Three.”
“So on the fourth, you put him in the snow.”
“He needed consequences.”
I looked at Mark.
“And you agreed?”
He rubbed his face.
“She said he had to learn boundaries.”
I almost laughed.
May you like
A grown woman erasing a dead mother’s photographs lecturing a three-year-old about boundaries.
The irony was almost elegant.
