Chapter 8 - THE ROOM EMILY LEFT BEHIND
Two years after the portrait sale, Hannah asked to change Emily’s room.
Matthew froze.
“What?”
“The walls.”
He stared at pale cream paint.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re boring.”
Matthew almost laughed.
“That room survived an attempted nursery conversion, six legal filings, and a furniture recovery operation.”
“Still boring.”
She held up paint cards.
Green.
Yellow.
Blue.
Matthew stared at the blue.
Hannah noticed.
“Don’t make it weird.”
“I said nothing.”
“Your face said Mom.”
“Your mother liked blue.”
“I know.”
“What do you want?”
Hannah pointed to green.
Matthew smiled.
“Green it is.”
They repainted the room together.
Badly.
Matthew got paint on the trim.
Hannah got paint in her hair.
Jonathan arrived halfway through, looked around, and said:
“Emily would fire both of you.”
Hannah laughed.
They moved the antique desk beneath the window.
Emily’s portrait stayed in the foyer.
The blue keepsake box stayed on a shelf.
But Hannah added her own things.
Art supplies.
School books.
A beanbag chair.
Photographs of friends.
A ridiculous lamp shaped like a mushroom.
Matthew hated the lamp.
Hannah loved that he hated it.
“This is still Mom’s room?” she asked.
Matthew paused.
“What do you think?”
She looked around.
“It can be both.”
That became the answer.
At twelve, Hannah no longer wore pale blue because it reminded Grandma of Emily.
Sometimes she wore blue because she liked it.
Sometimes orange.
Sometimes black because apparently twelve-year-olds discovered black.
Emily’s mother had declined over the years.
Some days she thought Hannah was Emily.
Matthew used to correct her immediately.
Hannah told him not to.
“She’s not doing it on purpose.”
One afternoon, Grandma touched Hannah’s cheek and whispered:
“Emily?”
Hannah smiled gently.
“No, Grandma.”
A pause.
“I’m Hannah.”
The older woman stared.
Then suddenly smiled.
“Hannah.”
“Yes.”
“You got tall.”
Hannah’s eyes filled.
Matthew looked away.
Lucidity came and went.
Love stayed in odd places.
Patricia came home from prison when Hannah was eleven.
There was no reunion.
Matthew told Hannah.
She nodded.
“Okay.”
Months later, Hannah asked:
“Can I read her apology now?”
Matthew stared.
“What apology?”
“The one she wanted to write.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything.”
He should have known.
Matthew contacted Patricia’s attorney.
A week later, a sealed letter arrived.
Hannah read it alone.
When she came downstairs, Matthew did not ask what it said.
She sat beside him.
“She didn’t make excuses.”
“That’s good.”
“She said she was jealous of Mom.”
Matthew nodded.
“She said she was jealous of me too.”
His chest tightened.
“How do you feel?”
“Sad.”
“For you?”
“For her.”
Matthew looked at his daughter.
Hannah continued.
“That seems like a terrible way to live.”
“Yes.”
“She asked if someday I’d let her tell me sorry in person.”
“What do you want?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe when I’m older.”
“Okay.”
She looked at him.
“You’re not going to tell me I should forgive family?”
“No.”
“Grandma might.”
“Grandma is seventy-two and dramatic.”
Hannah laughed.
“Family doesn’t get automatic access.”
He took her hand.
“Family gets responsibility.”
She nodded.
That summer, they held the Emily Sterling hospital luncheon again.
For years Matthew had hated the event.
Too polished.
Too many speeches.
Too many strangers telling him what Emily would have wanted.
Hannah changed it.
“No speeches longer than three minutes.”
The board agreed.
“No giant portrait of Mom behind the stage.”
Matthew blinked.
“Really?”
“She hated huge pictures of herself.”
Jonathan laughed.
“She absolutely did.”
“And kids from the hospital get the best desserts before donors.”
“Done.”
The luncheon became lighter.
Less memorial.
More hospital.
The way Emily had probably wanted.
At the event, Hannah wore green.
A reporter asked why she wasn’t wearing her mother’s “signature blue.”
Matthew started to intervene.
Hannah answered herself.
“Because green is my favorite.”
Then walked away.
He nearly applauded.
That evening, they returned home.
Emily’s portrait hung in the foyer.
Hannah stopped beneath it.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think Mom would care that I don’t remember her voice perfectly anymore?”
Matthew’s chest tightened.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she loved you, not your memory skills.”
Hannah looked up at the painting.
“I remember how she smelled.”
“What?”
“Like soap and mint.”
Matthew smiled.
“She always had mints.”
“I remember her hands.”
He swallowed.
“Good.”
“But not the voice.”
“That’s okay.”
Hannah leaned against him.
“Sometimes I feel bad.”
“Don’t.”
“But what if I forget more?”
Matthew thought of Emily’s ninth-birthday letter.
You do not have to become evidence that I existed.
He said:
“Then we tell stories when you want them.”
“And when I don’t?”
“We don’t.”
“That easy?”
“Yes.”
Hannah smiled.
Then pointed at the portrait.
“Still too big.”
“It cost me a hundred eighty thousand dollars to get that thing back.”
“Technically Uncle Jonathan paid.”
Matthew glared.
“You’re impossible.”
She grinned.
That night, Matthew opened Emily’s final letter again.
Go home, Matthew.
He had.
Not perfectly.
He still traveled.
Missed things.
Got distracted.
Once forgot parent-teacher conferences entirely until Hannah texted:
SPREADSHEETS ARE EASIER THAN FEELINGS, REMEMBER?
He left the meeting.
But he no longer believed love could be proven by never failing.
He believed it was proven by returning.
By listening.
By noticing when the blue dress was not about imitation.
When the missing shoe was not about misbehavior.
When silence was not healing.
And when a child asked whether dead people still mattered, the answer had to be more than yes.
May you like
It had to be visible.
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