Lavender. Cedar. That faint powdery smell of old books. It was all still there just the way I remembered it.
The room was smaller than it used to feel. Maybe because I had grown or maybe because time had folded in on it. The window was cracked slightly and the cold drifted in like a memory. Her rocking chair sat by the corner, draped with one of her knitted throws. The bedspread she loved was still neatly tucked, the cream-colored quilt she had stitched by hand years before.
I felt something settle in my chest that was both heavy and calm.
I walked to the dresser, slid open the top drawer, and there it was. A wooden box with a tiny brass clasp. I had not opened it since I left home at nineteen. The weight of it in my hands brought back flashes of the last night my mom and I had worked together in this room. She showed me how to finish the hem on a dress, me laughing about something small, her voice soft and warm, telling me to keep creating no matter what anyone said.
I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the box. Inside were folded papers, worn at the corners. The original sketches of the Bloom dress. Her lines were so familiar. Sweeping curves. Tiny handwritten notes in the margins about fabric weight and balance.
I traced the pencil strokes with my fingertip and felt that old ache rise from the deepest part of me. I remembered the night she showed me the design. She had said it was meant to be strong but elegant, simple but unforgettable. Something that could stand quietly yet still hold the whole room.
“Something like you,” she had said.
She had believed in me long before I knew how to believe in myself.
A sound drifted through the room then. A low murmur from the hallway. I looked up. The voices faded again and I closed the box gently, holding it against my chest. I stayed that way for a long moment, eyes closed, breathing through every piece of memory that threaded itself back into me.
The room felt like her hands on my back. Steady. Gentle. The opposite of everything waiting outside that door.
I finally stood and placed the box on the bed beside me. My fingers brushed the fabric of the Bloom dress I was wearing. The one the people at that dinner table laughed at. The one stitched from this very sketch. They had no idea the hours I had poured into bringing it to life. No idea the years between that girl with a pencil in her hand and the woman sitting in their spotlight tonight.
The floor creaked suddenly. I turned.
Michael stood halfway in the doorway. For a second he looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. His hand was still on the doorframe and he lowered it slowly. He said he was looking for the restroom but his eyes flicked to the sketch papers on the bed. He asked if that was Mom’s old stuff. His voice carried a softness he rarely let slip.
I nodded but did not invite him in. He glanced at my phone in my hand. I had not realized I was still holding it. He asked if everything was alright. I told him I had stepped away for some quiet. He said something about the dinner getting loud.
He shifted his weight, studying me like he wanted to ask a different question. Maybe he remembered hearing pieces of my calls earlier in the night. Maybe he sensed something in my tone. He told me Dad had not meant to sound harsh. He always said things wrong. He said Courtney had too much champagne. He tried to explain everyone away.
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