Chapter 4 - THE ROOM WE PAINTED WHITE
Emily asked me to drive her home.
Not my apartment.
Our old house.
She still owned it.
I had signed my share over during the divorce because I could not stand sleeping there.
The second I stepped inside, memory attacked from every direction.
Our wedding photograph was gone.
My boots were gone.
My coffee mug was gone.
But the scratch on the kitchen counter remained where I once dropped a cast-iron skillet.
Emily walked toward the spare bedroom.
I followed.
The walls were still white.
She stood in the center.
“I hate this room.”
“I know.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“I hate what we did to it.”
“We?”
“We painted over everything.”
She touched the wall.
“As if pretending there was never a nursery would make losing it less real.”
She opened the closet.
Inside was a cardboard box.
Paint samples.
Silver Morning.
Two ultrasound photographs.
Hospital bracelets.
And two tiny pairs of socks.
I stopped breathing.
“You kept them.”
“Of course I kept them.”
I sat on the floor.
Emily joined me.
For a while, we touched nothing.
Then I lifted the first ultrasound image.
“Did you ever name them?”
Emily froze.
I looked at her.
“You did.”
She wiped her eyes.
“Only privately.”
“What names?”
“The first one…”
Her voice broke.
“I called her Grace.”
“We didn’t know it was a girl.”
“I know.”
“And the second?”
“Thomas.”
I laughed through tears.
“You hated Thomas.”
“I know.”
“Why Thomas?”
“Because you did.”
I covered my face.
I had once mentioned wanting to name a son after the grandfather who raised me.
Emily remembered.
Of course she did.
I sat on the white nursery floor and cried for Grace and Thomas.
Children who had existed for weeks.
Children who never breathed outside Emily’s body.
Children I had refused to name because naming them made the loss too real.
Emily leaned against me.
For nearly an hour, we grieved the family we never had.
Then she whispered:
“I’m keeping this baby.”
I closed my eyes.
“Okay.”
“You think I’m making the wrong choice.”
“I think I’m scared.”
“Ryan.”
I looked at her.
“If the doctors believe there is a treatment path that gives you a real chance…”
I swallowed.
“…then I’ll support it.”
“And if something happens?”
“Something might happen no matter what we choose.”
That was the truth neither of us wanted.
Emily’s fingers touched Silver Morning.
“I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left being afraid of hope.”
Whatever time I have left.
I hated the sentence.
But I did not silence her.
May you like
Instead, I picked up the paint sample.
“Then we stop painting everything white.”
