“Thank you,” I whispered.
Chloe nodded, crying again.
The following week, I found an apartment.
It was a studio on the second floor of an old brick building owned by a widower named Frank who wore suspenders and smelled faintly of pipe tobacco though he swore he had quit years ago. The building had creaky stairs, a narrow hall, and a laundry room in the basement with two machines that looked older than Chloe. But the studio was clean. One main room. A tiny kitchen. A bathroom with a blue tile floor. A window facing maple trees and the street beyond.
“It isn’t much,” Frank said, jingling keys in his hand.
“It’s enough.”
He looked at me carefully, with the quiet understanding of someone who had known loss personally and did not mistake small for sad.
“Sometimes enough is everything,” he said.
The rent was $400 a month.
I signed the lease that afternoon.
I bought what I needed from thrift stores and discount shops. A bed frame. A mattress. Two chairs. A small round table. Pots. Dishes. Towels. A lamp with a crooked shade that made the room feel warm when lit. Chloe came that Saturday to help me arrange everything. She had a good eye, better than Vanessa’s in a way Vanessa would never understand. Vanessa arranged rooms to impress people. Chloe arranged mine so I could breathe.
“Put the table by the window,” she said. “You can have tea there.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“I’ve thought about you having your own place.”
We hung curtains. We placed Thomas’s photograph on a shelf above the bed. We folded the shawl across the chair. Chloe put the photo albums on the little bookcase Frank had found in storage and given me for free.
By sunset, the studio looked like a life beginning again.
“It’s cozy,” Chloe said, standing in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips.
“It’s small.”
“But it’s yours.”
That night, after she left, I made tea in my own kitchen. I sat at my own table by my own window and watched the streetlights come on through the leaves.
No one called my name.
No one corrected the way I arranged the cups.
No one told me to make coffee, wash dishes, move aside, be quiet, clean faster, be grateful.
I slept better than I had slept in five years.
The weeks that followed settled into a rhythm. I woke early, made toast, drank tea by the window, walked to the park if my knees allowed it, and spent afternoons at the library or sorting through the pieces of my life Chloe had rescued. Sometimes Richard called. Sometimes I answered. The conversations were short and stiff.
“Are you ready to come home?” he would ask.
“No.”
“This can’t go on forever.”
“It can go on as long as I need.”
“Vanessa thinks you’re punishing us.”
“Vanessa is allowed to think whatever helps her sleep.”
That usually ended the call.
Vanessa never called.
Not once.
It told me more than any apology would have.
One rainy afternoon, about a month after I moved into the studio, I decided to organize the photo albums. The sky outside was dark, and water tapped against the window in uneven rhythms. I made tea, placed a folded towel beside me so the old photos would not touch the table’s rough surface, and opened the first album.
There was Richard as a baby in a yellow blanket. Richard in overalls, covered in mud. Richard missing two front teeth. Richard at the beach, holding a plastic bucket. Thomas asleep in a lawn chair with a newspaper over his face. Me at thirty, hair dark and long, smiling at someone outside the frame.
I turned pages slowly, letting each photograph open and close inside me.
Halfway through the second album, something slid loose.
An envelope.
Plain white. Folded once. Tucked between two plastic pages near the back, where I had not placed anything. I stared at it, confused. It was not one of Thomas’s letters; those were tied with ribbon beside me. This envelope was newer. Clean. The paper inside made a stiff sound when I touched it.
I looked at my name written faintly on the outside.
Margaret Sullivan.
Not in my handwriting.
The rain tapped harder against the window.
I picked up the envelope, and for reasons I could not explain, my heart began to pound before I even opened it.
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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.