I ran my hand along the wood.
Then I stood there in my living room for a moment, my prepared speech somewhere behind me.
In the kitchen, the dark cabinets that had made the room feel like a cave were gone. The broken drawer I had asked Rowan to fix for the better part of a decade had been replaced. The counter was new. The whole room was new.
And sitting on the marble island was a small, folded index card in Rowan’s familiar handwriting.
I picked it up.
“You were right about the yellow. It does look like morning.”
I read it twice. Then I stood there in the kitchen with the note in my hand and let my anger get confused.
In our bedroom, the walls were painted the warm white I’d wanted since we moved in. On the nightstand was another card.
“The good pillow is yours. It was always supposed to be yours. I don’t know why it took me this long.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
I picked up his work shirt from the pile on the floor beside his desk. The fabric was stiff with paint stains that hadn’t been there before I went into the hospital.
On the desk, a stack of contractor invoices and plumber receipts, every date falling within the two weeks I’d been in the recovery wing.
Rowan hadn’t been home doing nothing.
He’d been here. Working. Every day.
The reading nook I had sketched on graph paper years ago and tucked into a drawer, certain it was too impractical to bother with, had been built into the alcove beside the window, exactly the way I’d drawn it. Low shelves, a cushioned bench, the specific angle that catches the afternoon light.
A small card was propped on the cushion.
“You showed me this sketch in 2009, and I kept the paper. I always knew where it was.”
My eyes were burning.
I went to the garage.
The workbench was covered in tools. Around it on the floor were stacked empty hardware boxes, the kind of accumulation that comes from weeks of sustained, obsessive work.
But what stopped me wasn’t the boxes.
On the corner of the workbench sat three plastic bags, still sealed, tags still attached. I reached in and pulled out a stuffed bear with a bow around its neck, a get-well card with a ribbon on the front, and a small box of chocolates.
